dancing on your desk in 1988

i need more than a leaky bucket metaphor.

total federal expenditures increased from $118 billion to $946 billion in current dollars between 1965 and 1985, by a factor of eight. total redistributional expenditures, however, increased from $36 billion to $465 billion, by a factor of thirteen. by comparison, national defense expenditures, long thought to be large and burdensome, increased from $51 billion to $253 billion, by a factor of only five. this massive redistribution, however, hasn't made much of a dent in income distribution. [robert] haveman* concludes that 'the incidence of poverty today is only slightly lower than when the War on Poverty was announced in 1964 and inequality is, if anything, greater.'

Stevens, Joe B. (1993). The Economics of Collective Choice. Boulder: Westview Press.

*economist; poverty expert