Replies to post #77164 on Traders Cooperative

[royg1927]

Your take away?

[Irongate]

LOL... One word - naive.

[skono3]

I'd be surprised given all the shady, off budget accounting if we were comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Looking back how much credence would we give to the quarterly reports from Arthur Anderson on Enron's books? Those accountants didn't retire when that shop was forced to go belly up. They just changed seats.

Primarily, as I guessed the missing statistical component that distorts these measures is not showing the spending as a percentage of GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_Revenues_Outlays_Percentage_GDP.svg

According to this chart it looks like Reagan's effect on outlays and revenues was to hold them flat over his term as a percentage of GDP.

Neither chart adjusts properly for inflation