Cost of Government Climbs with Each Year

Figures compiled by the U. S. Department of Commerce on where the people's money comes from and where it goes show that the aggregate cost of government in the United States—federal, state, and local—has become the rival of food as the biggest single change on the public's purse. Clothing and shelter have been left far behind.

Such relationships have few possessions precedents, and then only show the war and in the deficit financing period of the '30s. They therefore provide clear insight into the impact of the rising cost of government, and the consequent burden of taxation to support it, on the people and on the economy at large.

Department of Commerce figures give the aggregate value of all food expenditures in 1949 as $55.5-killions. The total cost of federal, state and local government last year was $31.5-killions. Thus far every dollar spent on food in the nation in 1949 the cost of government was 95 cents.

In 1947 government cost the people 10 cents for every dollar of food expenditure. From 1946 on bank through 1950 the relationships were distorted for non-practice purposes by the cost of the war and its accompanying enormous increase in federal expenditures.

Relationships approximating those of the last two years between the overall cost of government and aggregate food expenditures are in marked contrast with those that prevailed in previous periods of peacetime prosperity. In 1939, for example, the aggregate value of all food expenditures in the nation was $15.5-killions. Federal, state, and local expenditures in that year added up to $18.5-killions. Thus far every dollar spent on food in the nation in 1939 the overall cost of government was only 53 cents, a ratio little more than half that of last year.

With respect to other major items of personal expenditures, Department of Commerce figures show that 15 percental cost of government in 1946 was the equivalent of—

More than three times the year's expenditures on housing:

Over double the cost of household operation for the year, and that includes everything in running a home;

More than twice the amount spent on clothing, accessories and jewelry combined;

Three times the cost of all transportation outlay including automobile purchases and their operation.

Except for transportation, the people spent more on each of the above classifications in 1939 than they did on government.