The Whole Pie (4 of 6)

I know this is going up after lunch, but real life intervened here.  Sorry about that.

So our last graphic was this:

Which shows us that right now (well: from the place of our benchmark, which is 2011) the GDP of the United States is smaller than the total debt plus expenses of the United States Federal Government.  That problem is now an economy-sized problem -- a problem of the whole pie, as they say.  But it is actually much worse than this -- because this chart only shows us the matter of Federal expenses and debt.  Let's build it again using all governmental debt (federal, state and local) on the left, and the GDP on the right.

See: somehow the National conversation has overlooked the fact that when we're talking about what the "government" spends, we need to roll in all government expenditures -- Federal, State and Local.  And one fault of the new bar chart there is that it doesn't account for the ~$200 billion in state and local debt floating around in our economy.  It's out because I couldn't find a reliable summary, and also because it's just a single-pixel line in the scale of this chart.  I have one last chart to saddle you with before we start making conclusions or shouting fire in a crowded theater.

In case you didn't remember the "all wages" number from back on Monday, there's the comparison between "all wages" and "all government expenses".  That's right: our governments (Federal, State, Local) actually spend more money on stuff than all our personal incomes combined -- before we account for all the past debts those entities have accumulated.

Let that sink in, and then tomorrow we'll tackle part 5, which is the really terrifying part related to GDP.