[128shot]

I've been reading this interesting link I got from another board. see here

According to the link above. The US government-including state and local govs-own 28 percent of the economy, the rest, the 72 percent the state supposedly doesn't have a stake in, is driven by consumer spending.

How can this be though? Assuming that the GDP is roughly 14 trillion dollars, is this an accurate assumption made by the Article?

I believe not. Lets just look at some government enterprises that drive this consumer growth.

We have Fannie Mae, who's revenues are strong, at 53.8 billion dollars. It is the 9th largest corporation in the top 1,000 according to Forbes, and is the second largest institution of finance after Citigroup. Thats pretty good. However, Fannie Mae has an asset holding of over 1 trillion dollars.

So lets sap that from the 14 trillion. Given the 1 trillion is a figure from 2004 to now-lets add another 300 billion. thats 1.3 trillion dollars Fannie Mae has in assets.

So what does Fannie Mae do? According to their website, it says this.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) were chartered by Congress as
government-sponsored enterprises with public missions. They perform an important role
in the United States mortgage market by gathering funds and purchasing mortgages from
mortgage originators and guaranteeing mortgage-backed securities. In chartering the
Enterprises, Congress charged the Enterprises with: (1) providing stability to mortgage
markets; (2) responding to the changing capital markets; (3) assisting the secondary
markets including the support of these markets for affordable housing; and (4) promoting
access to credit throughout the country by increasing liquidity and improving distribution
of investment capital for residential mortgage finance. These functions require the
Enterprises, as principals in the secondary mortgage market, to serve as bedrock in
providing liquidity to the U.S. housing finance system.

[Tanada]

I don't think you go far enough, the government on all levels has its finger in so many pies you probably wouldn't beleive it. Home financing is just one aspect, what about food stamps plus farm subsidies? Both those increase rampant consumer spending by removing food costs from the consumers. How about infrastructure spending like roads and bridges to facillitate suburban/exurbanization of the populaton and vastly increase consumer spending on fuel?

You could probably go on for a dozen or more points, at which end you realize the government is actually the cause of most consumerism, not just 28%

[kpeavey]

Governments exist for 2 reasons:

1) War
2) Control

I've made 2 observations about the US government:
1) You will be hard pressed to find a finger of the government that does not support one of the above objectives
2) The US government is very good at its job.