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by thorwasdfasdf 1905 days ago
Defenese spending is much more than you think: it's not just the "defense" category, it's also department of energy, dept of veteran affairs, dept of homeland security, and there's other sections where defense spending comes from. All together it's a sizable chunk.

Social security (20%), medicare and medicaide (20%). unemployment is a very small part as far as i know.

1 comments

Your numbers are technically correct since you only gave one significant figure, but you're still rounding off more than $300 billion and also forgetting to count almost $400 billion in smaller programs.

Out of $4.4 trillion:

Social security - $1 trillion - 23%

Medicare - $644 billion - 15%

Medicaid - $409 billion - 9%

SNAP, EITC, Unemployment, SSI and other Income Security Programs - $303 billion mandatory spending + $73 billion - 8%

That's about 55% of the total on various parts of the safety net.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324