What Are Your Tax Dollars Paying For?

I am not sure why the first week in August became the week of quizzes on this blog, but I can't resist sharing a link to this one with you. It appears in Bloomberg Politics today and is meant to surprise us with some real information about where are tax dollars are going. To be sure, the methods are pretty crude—the authors looked up the annual costs of a number of our high-profile budget items and then divided each by the number of U.S. residents (321.4 million these days). But it's a pretty good way of understanding how easily we lose track of the costs of running an entire nation. I spend a lot of time thinking about politics (and a little too much time mouthing off about them, too). Still, I was caught out by a few of these questions. I figured the Supreme Court is not particularly expensive (there aren't that many of them, for one thing), but I had no idea how our law enforcement dollars were being spent. Give it a try—you don't have to confess your score afterword: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-budget-quiz/