Without being inflation adjusted it is not too revealing.
Here is a link to CPI since 1913: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt
A quick modification would make the data more powerful.
Here is a link to CPI since 1913: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt
A quick modification would make the data more powerful.
And don't forget Social Security, Medicaire, gov't pension liabilities, etc - they are important parts of the numerator ..
Plotting as a percentage of GDP can also be misleading, eg US military spending is 4% of GDP but 30% of tax revenue according to wikipedia. They also discuss debt expenditures getting too high on that page.