The Distribution of Federal Spending and Taxes in 2006 (and semantics too)

(Commentary by Roger Erickson)

This CBO report is already dated. Has distribution of taxes changed much YET?

ps: there's lots of interesting date here. Something for almost everyone.

Example:

"The largest component of unallocated revenues is remittances to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve System."

Curious. :) Yet there's much more. Just haven't the energy today.

After reading that, I'm visualizing 7 layers of inmate committees, in the inmate bureaucracy running this asylum. :)

There's a LONG way to go. Every person in our current bureaucracy is confused by their own, collective body of outdated semantics. Meanwhile, whole lobbies are dedicated specifically to promoting and prolonging each of the many, independent streams of babble.

It's a semantic trap. Nay, semantic quicksand.

Not even! The Semantic La Brea Tar Pits! (Where future archaeologists will find the extinct, SoberKrug Catatonics, fatally mired in ISLMist layers. Let's hope our whole population doesn't follow the SoberKrug species of Catatonics down that path to stagnant equilibrium. More adaptive paths beckon - if we're agile enough about adapting continuously, rather than arbitrarily equilibrating to ISLMist stasis.)

Our Fiscal Policy staff desperately need a Fiscal Semantics Standards Group .... to work on regaining the capacity for coherent discussion across bureaucracies.

Rumor is that there almost was one, once. It was scheduled to start the day after the Tower of Babel fell down. :)