Via
Big Picture
, another
amazing map
. This one shows the states of the US as broken up by GDP and then mapped to the nearest country GDP.
(more)
In 1993 the government tax total as a percentage of GDP was 27.4%, in 2004 it is 36.6%. That is an increase of 9.2% in the space of eleven years. A difficult figure to swallow or justify.
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The Economist has some figures of health spending as a percent of GDP.
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Some older data on government expenditures and taxation as a percentage of GDP. Australia spends less from government, and taxes less than the European countries. Yet of our direct competitors in the Pacific Rim, such as Japan, South Korea, America, Indonesia and others; we tax more, and spend more. We are a Pacific nation, not a European one. We also practice American style capitalism. Consequently we will have to reduce the size of the state to at least American levels, if not Japanese levels, so that the state doesn't over-burden us in relation to our regional competitors.
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