America’s Debt Problem Is Not Caused By Social Programs

April 18, 2011

By Ray Medeiros

In a previous post I used some information that has since been corrected on the original site, Business Insider due to in-depth research into the actual OECD numbers by myself and others. It turns out that the United States spends 16.2% of our GDP on social programs, NOT 7.2%. But as I investigated further into the actual OECD numbers itself, file number, EQ5.XLS, data file EQ5.2 column (C) I have found something even more disturbing.

The United States spends 16.2% of our GDP on social programs and Canada spends 16.9% on theirs and an even closer comparison, Australia spends 16%. These two countries spend the same amount of their GDP to ensure a comfortable standard of living for their citizens as the United States does, yet we do not have the same outcome.