One of the rallying cries of #OccupyWallStreet is “We are the 99%,” distinguishing themselves from the one percent who not only enjoys a certain camaraderie with government officials, with whom they wouldn’t dine if they didn’t hold office, but who tend to enjoy a certain freedom from the costs of maintaining society.  They don’t have to pay a lot in taxes.

That means the 99% are the ones paying the freight for the things our government does, and yet few of us have any meaningful appreciation of how our money is spent.  Sure, we all know that government is wasting our money because they take a ton of it and don’t seem to provide the services that benefit us, but this is just a vague, muddled view.  Details matter.

Via Seth Godin, there’s a chart, a poster available on Amazon, by Jess Bachman, that provides a visual presentation of where the money goes.  Godin asserts that the story, as reflected in Bachman’s poster, makes it real to us.

Jess Bachman wants to help you turn the data about the US budget (the largest measured expenditure in the history of mankind, I’m betting) into information that actually changes the way you think.

Hence Death and Taxes, which we’re publishing today. The new version belongs on the wall of every classroom, every public official’s office, and perhaps in the home of every person who pays taxes.

Imagine this poster on the wall of your children’s classroom, your office kitchen, your Senator’s fundraising wall. 



While most of us in the 99% are satisfied with the vague sense that we’re getting screwed, or at the very least not realizing value from our tax dollar, this effort at providing the real story is certainly worth knowing and spreading to others.  This isn’t some anarcho-syndicalist’s rhetoric, but just the data. If you’re interested in more detail, here’s a really big image of the poster.

And it’s our money.