As of last week, your income taxes are all filed. Congrats! Or, like me, you got an extension. Boo!
In either case, it’s a good week to think about what our tax money bought this year. And since we’ve all been promised federal tax reform this spring or summer from a unified legislative and executive branch it’s also good to reflect on how the federal government spends our tax dollars now, and how it might spend them in the future.
A simple way to understand federal government spending is to compare it to a household. I don’t mean governments should be run like households – they shouldn’t – I just mean that we taxpayers can understand numbers that resemble the size of our expenditures in our own life. Otherwise you know, a billion here and a trillion there, it can get confusing.
The median household income in 2015, according to the US Census, was $55,775. With simplicity as my goal I prefer an easier, rounder number. So let’s just say instead of the median, we have $100,000 to spend each year as a household.
Looking at the federal government as a household with $100,000 in annual income, here’s where all the money goes, rounded to the nearest hundred dollars.
