Re:Show HN: Exploring the US Budget, 1962-2019
by seanmcdirmid on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:29AM
(#8317280)
It definitely does show large increases during the depression (when the economy shrank) and during WII, when we went all out into war. Fluctuations since then have been quite boring.
Of course, using GDP rather than inflation is also a political choice because GDP has on average increased more than inflation.
Also, comparing the government budget with GDP will never show more than a modest increase because a "large" increase (e.g. quadrupling the government budget as a percentage of GDP) would require the government to be consuming in excess of 100% of GDP.
On the other hand, if compared with inflation there is an exponential increase in the federal budget over time. For example, the 1962 budget of $107B would be $884B in 2014 dollars (using CPI) but the 2014 budget is $3650B, which exceeds the real 1962 GDP.