Funmurphys: the Blog

585 Billion Dollars

Yikes! Does our state and federal governments spend 585 Billion dollars a year on means tested anti-poverty programs?

Moby seems to think that's how much we spent on Iraq up until 2006.

Robert Waste thinks thats how much we spend on our permanent urban crises of high levels of poverty, hunger, homelessness, crime, and low levels of funding for mass transit, infrastructure needs, and education.

Or is that how much money social security taxes will bring in in 2014 in 1997 dollars (doesn't that accounting just make your head swim).

How about the total value of service exports world-wide in 1981 (I assume in 1981 dollars).

Or even the total value of Chinese exports in 2004.

OK, this was sparked by a Bizzy Blog post that used the 585 billion dollar number while noting that it was unconfirmed to determine:

If there are 40 million people living in poverty in the US (that would be 13.3% of the population, slightly higher than the current official rate), that would mean we are spending $14,625 on EVERY man, woman, and child living in poverty. A married family of four in poverty could live very nicely on over $58,500 tax-free dollars a year, as could a single parent with two kids on almost $44,000; but of course, the money and the value of the services isn’t getting to them.

Well, I didn't a little searching (as you can hopefully tell) and back in 2001 Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundation testified before congress that offical figures showed that in 2000 the feds and the states spent 438 billion dollars in welfare and projected the sum to rise to 626 billion dollars -- or you can check out the Heritage Report. I couldn't confirm the 585 figure for 2006, but it sure looks to be in the ballpark.

If we aren't talking about dollars, LG Electronics made a net profit o 585 billion KRW in 2004