On October 28th, I wrote a blog post, “The NSA’s Rent Is Too Damn High,” in which I looked at the $52.6 billion price tag for America’s spook infrastructure – the so-called “black budget.” When allocated across every American taxpayer, this staggering sum comes out to $574 per taxpayer, per year.
But, there are other edifying ways of gaining perspective on such a whopping amount of money. Doing so is important. Indeed, according to John Maynard Keynes’ biographer, Lord Skidelsky, Keynes believed that a good economist must always have “a sense of magnitudes.”
We can get a sense of magnitudes by looking at this year’s black budget as a portion of the major sources of the federal government’s revenues. The table below tells that tale:
| Source of Federal Revenue 2012 | Amount $ Billion | Black Budget $ Billion | Black Budget as % of Revenue Source |
| Individual Income Taxes | $1,132.21 | $52.60 | 4.6% |
| Corporate Income Taxes | $242.29 | $52.60 | 21.7% |
| Social Insurance Taxes | $845.31 | $52.60 | 6.2% |
| Excise Taxes | $79.06 | $52.60 | 66.5% |
| Estate and Gift Taxes | $13.97 | $52.60 | 376.4% |
| Customs Duties | $30.31 | $52.60 | 173.6% |
| Miscellaneous Receipts | $107.01 | $52.60 | 49.2% |
| Deficit (Borrowing) | $1,086.96 | $52.60 | 4.8% |
| Source: Congressional Budget Office | |||
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