A comment by flipspiceland on a previous post, about Democratic senators and “out of control” spending, got me curious about our spending numbers compared to other large, prosperous countries.
Short story: our governments (fed, state, local) are incredibly frugal compared to the rest of the world. This even with a defense budget that’s larger than every other country’s combined.
Here are the facts on the ground, most recent comparable data I could pull: for 2006. (As you can see, even for that year some countries haven’t reported.)
This is all in national currencies for 2006, no jimmying around with inflation adjustments or exchange rates/purchasing-power parities to convert to U.S. dollars. So the data’s pretty much as straight as you can get it.
| Government Spending and GDP | |||
| (In National Currencies, 2006) | |||
| Government Expenditures | GDP | Spending as % of GDP | |
| Korea | 251,982,800 | 908,743,800 | 28% |
| Ireland | 59,912 | 176,759 | 34% |
| United States | 4,795,952 | 13,336,200 | 36% |
| Japan | 183,515,800 | 507,364,800 | 36% |
| Spain | 377,876 | 984,284 | 38% |
| Canada | 568,681 | 1,449,215 | 39% |
| Norway | 873,925 | 2,159,573 | 40% |
| Greece | 89,980 | 210,460 | 43% |
| United Kingdom | 584,779 | 1,325,795 | 44% |
| Germany | 1,052,290 | 2,325,100 | 45% |
| Netherlands | 246,028 | 540,216 | 46% |
| Portugal | 71,944 | 155,446 | 46% |
| Belgium | 154,137 | 318,193 | 48% |
| Italy | 722,751 | 1,485,377 | 49% |
| Finland | 81,343 | 167,009 | 49% |
| Austria | 127,194 | 256,162 | 50% |
| Denmark | 841,076 | 1,631,659 | 52% |
| France | 952,516 | 1,806,430 | 53% |
| Sweden | 1,569,579 | 2,900,790 | 54% |
| Australia | NA | 1,045,674 | #VALUE! |
| New Zealand | NA | 165,903 | #VALUE! |
| Israel | 296,240 | NA | #VALUE! |
| Source: stats.oecd.org. Expenditure from National Accounts: General Government Accounts: Government expenditure by function. National currency, current prices. GDP from National Accounts: Gross Domestic Product, Annual, in millions of Current Prices (National Currrency) | |||
Taking just federal government expenditures, we’re even more frugal. (A higher percentage of our government spending is by state and local governments.) Stats.OECD is kind of a pain in the ass because it’s forever expiring your session and losing all your work, so I didn’t pull this myself–found it on another blogger’s site, pulled from CIA data. (CIA, OECD, UN, etc. all ultimately get their data from the same sources–the countries themselves–using standardized metrics.)
Notice the company we’re keeping?
Federal Spending as a Percentage of GDP
13. Sweden 58.1
14. Denmark 58.1
19. Belgium 56.0
20. Norway 55.8
23. Italy 55.3
24. Netherlands 54.7
25. Austria 54.3
26. Finland 54.2
27. Portugal 54.1
34. Greece 50.7
37. UK 50.0
41. Germany 48.8
43. Canada 48.2
47. Spain 47.3
51. New Zealand 46.6
63. Israel 43.6
64. Australia 43.6
69. Ireland 41.5
76. Switzerland 37.8
78. Luxembourg 37.5
103. Japan 30.9
107. South Korea 29.3
137. Taiwan 21.2
143. Chad 19.9
144. US 19.9
145. Cameroon 19.1
Comments
3 responses to ““Out of Control Spending”? Not So Much”
[…] Click on this for the full list comparing U.S. spending levels with 18 other countries. […]
Not counting state and local US spending is cheating.
@Publius
I agree. Our federalist system means that local and state taxes comprise a much larger portion of taxation than in most other countries. That’s why I showed total first, fed-only second.
But it’s still worth showing the fed-only numbers to counter the “cheating” figures offered up by the right.