Where Do Your Taxes Go?

I haven't written in a while for a number of reasons, none of them real good. I started a new job in August, which severely impinges on my free time. After almost 2 years, I'd almost forgotten that. And that leads us into today's post.

One usually has a job for two reasons. You make money and, if you didn't work, your wife would find even worse things for you to do around the house. This money making part is pretty important cause that's how you eat good food and have shelter from the elements. It also allows you to do other important things like watch "Dancing with the Stars" in HD on your 1080p 46" LCD TV, if that's what turns you on.

One of the challenges associated with making money is hanging on to it. In many jobs, before you even see a check or a direct deposit in your bank account, a big chunk of your money is taken away by the Fed and the state. I recently came across a blog that had a chart of where the average taxpayer's money goes and I found it somewhat enlightening. So I'll share it with you. I took the liberty of downloading the data and putting it into a spreadsheet so I could add the percentage column. Click on the chart to make it larger.


I found it pretty interesting. If you're worried about where your government is spending your money, this gives you an idea. If you have a pet peeve about how the money is spent and you think that if they would not spend so much on "So and So", you can see if your plan to save money would amount to anything substantial.

Here are the credits. I originally found this on a blog I read regularly called PharmaGossip, which got it from a different blog called Third Way, which would probably be called a somewhat liberal blog, given it's contributors, though there doesn't seem to be any political bias in the article. And the original article can be found here.

If you are interested in a bit more detail on the budget, look here.

Bye!