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From: rf@wu1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: The actual functions of the U.S. government
Message-ID: <253@wu1.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Feb-84 16:38:23 EST
Article-I.D.: wu1.253
Posted: Sun Feb 26 16:38:23 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Feb-84 08:20:35 EST
Organization: Western Union Telegraph, Mahwah, NJ
Lines: 20

Recently, I spent an hour studying the *1982 Statistical
Abstract of the United States*.  I was reading the sections on
the federal budget hoping to find facts to buttress an argument.
As a result of this research I concluded that:

The federal government of the United States of America is the
world's largest insurance company, offering mainly three kinds
of insurance: income insurance for the elderly ("social
security"), war insurance (the military budget), and medical
insurance for the elderly ("Medicare").  By war insurance, I
refer to the national policy of investing in armies.  These
three items comprise roughly two thirds of the federal budget.

Do we really want to be governed by an insurance company?

Incidentally, Nasa and the various federal welfare programs are
under 5% of the budget; possibly less (I didn't compute the
exact figure).

				Randolph Fritz