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Several people asked I share the information I received from
this (and a couple of other) list serves. Here (below) is a compilation of responses to my inquiry on
where our tax dollars go. It was great to get such a variety of responses
(e.g. from look in the IRS tax booklet to some very critical analysis of what
that IRS booklet says!). Thanks so much to everyone! Tina True Majority did an interesting cartoon on defense spending
recently--making a bar chart out of oreos. If you contact them, they may direct
you to sources. Good luck. Sara Sara L. Crawley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology Women's Studies Department ph (813) 974-0982 fax (813) 974-0336 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Needless to say, Truemajority.org presents a biased
perspective, but a few years ago, I showed my students Ben Cohen's Oreo Budget,
which is a great illustration on how our country spends tax dollars. I don't
know if this site is updated each year or if this is outdated information; I
haven't used it in awhile: http://www.truemajorityaction.org/cookiebudget/ Pat Scheib Academic Support Services, DIF 74 (570) 326-3761, x7575 In Jeffrey Sachs recent book (The End of Poverty), he goes
into a lot of detail about how much money (from all countries) is necessary to
reduce, and then, end world poverty. As for the Evan Cooper For me, the value of the show was that it gave no credence
to the idea that global poverty is a technical or financial problem--the money
is there, the technology is there. Since there always seems to be a student or
two insisting that limitations in those factors WOULD prevent a solution, I may
show a bit of the program to my classes. Gerry Grzyb I often have my students "google" the
"federal budget" and ask them to look over the expenditures. The
federal budget is public domain. When we do, we find that the budget primarily
lists discretionary spending items. The budget usually has summary tables that
list expenditures over the previous 5-10 years. In these, you can see that
usually, about 15-20% of the discretionary spending in the federal budget is
allocated to the department of defense. This DOES NOT include the routine
supplemental budgets presidents send to Congress for specific projects (like In addition, a large chunck of change in the federal budget
is what would be considered "non-discretionary spending:" things the
president does not control. I do not know what that goes toward, nor what
proportion of the full As to the notion of increasing our federal expenditures on
"International Aid" programs six fold (e.g., from 0.1% to 0.7%), I am
sure a sixfold increase would make some sort of difference. On the other hand,
I like to suggest that if we were to take about half of the expenditures on the
Military for one year, and simply commit those $200 billion toward poverty in
the Peace to all, Robert Robert J. Hironimus-Wendt, Ph.D. Sociology and Anthropology Morgan Hall 421 phone: (309) 298-1457 fax: (309) 298-1857 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Did a million people already mention this? The govt
publishes a pie chart on the tax form prep booklets....of course, I don;'t have
that anymore, but I bet you could find it..... Here is a great website for information about the federal
budget, as well as interacting with it - a fun thing to do with a class. http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/ Gail Murphy-Geiss Sociology I can only speak to the last part--re: federal
expenditures. Stat Abstracts often lists different expenditures; but also the
Congressional Budget Office. You have to be really careful in interpreting
this information, however; and most people, including sociologists, don't
realize this. What I mean by that is that most of the budget figures include
Social Security and Medicare. HOWEVER, Social Security does NOT come out of
the federal budget; it comes form a separate trust fund. So too do many of the
Medicare dollars (Medicare is a bit more complex as some of the expenditures
from Part B do come from the federal budget; and the new Part D, the drug
benefit, well, that's a whole other story!). Anyway, the reason this matters
is that if you include SS and Medicare--which almost everyone does--then the
percent of federal budget going to defense (and interest on deficit) looks a
LOT lower (and expenditures for old people looks really high--which is another
tactic used to cut money from old people). If you get more info, I'd be interested in it--so please do
share! best, tc As I recall, the pie chart about such is on the IRS booklet
or at least used to be. Michael Assistant Professor of Sociology Department of Sociology 326 Brewer Hall Office Phone: 256-782-5350 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- |
