Where the money goes

Thanks to Ezra Klein (sometimes I worry I wouldn't have anything to blog about without him– good thing I'm not obsessed with Israel), I came across a great series of graphs from the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities that shows quite dramatically where all our tax dollars go.  I especially love this graph of “other” spending after accounting for social security, defense, etc.

So many people (especially my students) seem convinced that we are wasting all our money spending it on other countries.  Here, of course, you can see that “Non-security international” accounts for a whopping 1% of the budget.  If you want to find some room to cut the budget, the 22% in “Defense and Security” certainly presents a better target– especially when you consider that the U.S. represents nearly half of the world's entire defense spending.