Thursday, December 04, 2008

Misleading Graphs

Having screwed up on turkey weights, I return to the fray with a graph from Sebastian Mallaby's oped in today's Post. He argues for government intervention in the short term, but for cutbacks and wiser spending in the long term. He has a graph showing the percentage government expenditures are of the total economy, going from 20 percent in 1947 to 33 percent today.

But during the Ford administration we first breached the 30 percent level (guessing, about 32 percent) and since Reagan we've been in the 30's (except 1999). So for 25 or more years the size of government hasn't increased. That's not the inference one would draw from his words.

No comments: