Walter Williams

Well Walter Williams, for some reason, really really doesn't want to touch the war. As near as I can remember, he hasn't touched it once. However, he's still got his favorite cause to keep him interested. And that cause is the government taking money away from you and giving it to poor slobs who don't deserve it. While discussing the morality of this situation, Williams comes up with this interesting statement, "How about all the government programs that account for at least two-thirds of federal spending, such as: aid to higher education, Medicare, food stamps, welfare or farm subsidies? Are they moral?"

Hmmmmmm. Two thirds of federal Spending? That sounds like a lot.



Well, lets take those five categories he suggests and graph them and see what that looks like. Do we get close to Williams' two-thirds?



Hmmmm, that's not very close, it seems to me. Now I am using 2001 data, because that appears to be the most recent year for which we have firm numbers. I got my information from Office of Budget and Management's website. Of course there isn't a budget category marked "Welfare," so I used the Unemployment Compensation and Other Income Supported programs under Emergancy Response Fund, which seemed to fit the bill for "Welfare."

Of course the missing piece could be Social Security. I mean that is a huge chunk of the budget, and I'm surprised that Williams didn't mention that in his initial 5. But then again, I'm not surprised. Social Security is a very popular program, precisely because it isn't technically a means of giving money to lazy bums. You put money in and then when you retire you get money out. It's a big harder for Williams to demonize that program in the same way he demonizes Farmers. So lets see what the graph looks like with Social Security in.



Still not even close to two thirds. Oh well, perhaps we'll never know exactly what Williams meant, except that he wants the government to fold it's tents and get out of dodge and so on and so forth.