The Federal Debt: Revenues, taxes, fees versus Spending

Federal government spending versus revenue

Via: Do we really have a revenue problem?

The chart comes from political web site and their accuracy has not been checked by me.

The U.S. economy appears to have lagged for a decade.

Updated: I was curious as to what has happened to median income – here is a chart of median household incomes in the U.S. The “red line” is an inflation adjusted income level that adjusts past incomes to 2009. Blue is the actual $s that were earned in the year shown.

Data for 1980 to 2009 come from the U.S. Census. 2010 is estimated by using HUD’s 2010 estimated median income and applying the same difference they found between 2009 and 2010, to the 2009 Census data. Census, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services all produce their own estimates and they are very different from one another.

From the above, we can see that after inflation adjustments, income in 2008-2010 have fallen to 1998 levels. This has interesting ramifications for whether the Federal government reduces spending or raises taxes and the effects either approach would have on families.