Graph of the Day

For a solid year now, Randall Hoven has compiled data on various topics and presented it accurately with little or no editorial embellishment as the Graph of the Day on American Thinker.

Today he has stopped. One solid year of that level of work was enough.

In his column today saying adieu to this enormous amount of daily work, he provides a very quick overview of many of the topics he has covered with links to each of those graphs which, themselves, include links to source data. He also educates the reader as to where and how to go and get this information.

As John Adams said, facts are stubborn things. In his column today you will find links to an enormous amount of facts, all of them supporting Maggie Thatcher’s statement that “The facts of life are conservative.”

Argue you might with his conclusions, but the facts he presents remain the facts – you may not like them, you may disagree with them, but that does not, of course, lessen their relevancy or truthfulness; facts ARE facts.

To whet your appetite to link to his column and even to many of the graphs, this:

Now that I’ve explained how fair and objective I’ve been, what can we learn from a year’s worth of graphs and data?

• Government has grown by obscene amounts since William McKinley was president. In 1900, federal, state, and local governments combined spent under 5% of Gross Domestic Product. Today they spend 40% of GDP or more and account for half of all health care spending.
• The federal government alone spends more than 20% of GDP, owns 29% of all land, and controls virtually all ocean activity, including oil drilling, for miles offshore.
• This puts us square into the mix of European welfare states in terms of government spending and debt.
• Federal government debt is on an unsustainable path, set to grow beyond 100% of GDP soon, and driven mostly by increased spending on Medicare and Medicaid. (And not defense.)
• Yet many federal programs are ineffective and/or going broke: Medicare, Social Security Disability Insurance, the PostOffice, the War on Poverty, education, affirmative action, other race-based initiatives, the minimum wage here and in Samoa, bank regulations, regulation in general, etc.

Please link over to American Thinker to read his column and to peruse his graphs. You will be glad you did.