One Big Beautiful Country

As Washington consumes itself with the One Big Beautiful Bill and as the Second Season of the Trump Show launches a fragrance line of perfumes and cologne, it’s an opportune time on the eve of the 249^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to remember that the United States, like most countries, is far more than the sum total of its government.

That should be an obvious statement, and yet year by year, the federal government consumes more of our limited public bandwidth to the point that it has become the dominant news story on any given day. The ability of Trump himself to manipulate and dominate the media landscape is part of his genius, yet it is creating an even more distorted optic. In fact, it’s getting to the point where we are discussing the United States almost entirely in terms of what emanates from Washington. That is a profound mistake. We are far more than what the federal government does or doesn’t do.

That’s certainly true economically. In 2024, government spending in the United States was about $6.75 trillion, which is a bit less than 25 percent of the country’s GDP. Almost half of that is health spending (Medicare and Medicaid primarily) and Social Security payments, which means that much of the budget is simply transfer payments for the safety net. Another $1 trillion is interest on the debt, and nearly another $1 trillion is spent on defense. Another $1 trillion or so is veteran benefits, retirement plans for federal employees, and an array of income security programs like unemployment insurance and SNAP (which used to be called food stamps). That leaves less than $1 trillion of non-defense discretionary spending, and for the most part, it is that $1 trillion that becomes the focus of all debates, pro and con.

It is that $1 trillion that includes USAID, the Department of Education, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the State Department, the Parks Department, transportation, and the EPA. It is that $1 trillion that everyone fights over, and that is less than 3 percent of the U.S. economy.

For sure, that $1 trillion is a lot of money, and cutting that spending affects a lot of institutions and people. But not nearly as much as you would think given the intense focus. Yes, you could fill up every news site and podcast for weeks and weeks with stories of people adversely affected by how that spending is allocated, but that’s because in a country of 330 million people and that many programs funded, the absolute number of those impacted is huge.

Relatively, however, it isn’t nearly as big. I wrote a few weeks ago about how the R&D budgets of the five top tech companies are about 3x greater than the entire research funding that the federal government provided in 2024. On just about every meaningful metric, the same pattern exists, and even more so. The amount of money spent on education locally is vastly more than whatever the federal government spends, as is private money for private schools. The amount spent on land conservation privately and at the state and local level (often in the form of tax abatements) is also immense relative to public efforts. Private universities spend nearly $300 billion a year. Public universities (most of which receive no more than 10% of their budget from the states) spend close to $500 billion. In every area of life, non-governmental spending dwarfs governmental.

The point of these stats is to highlight that the vast bulk of how we live our lives is not funneled through Washington D.C. And yet, we have created a collective narrative that the fate of everything runs through the beltway.

Government — federal, state and local — has one unequivocal monopoly: it alone has the legal right to use violence and force against citizens. That makes government everywhere loom large in people’s lives because it has the tools to coerce. We hope that those tools are used sparingly and in the service of an agreed-on public good. Often, however, those tools are abused and misused. And with July 4th in the United States, we should remember that one animating force of the rebellion, and then the subsequent founding of the Republic in 1789, was the fear and awareness that with the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, people and institutions of power will tend to abuse that power unless checked.

Americans are in no celebratory mood this Fourth of July. But they should be by Zachary Karabell | July 2017

There was also, of course, a strong inclination to limit the scope of government that animated the founding of the United States. Yet, starting in the mid-19th century, especially with the Civil War, the scope of the federal and state governments began to expand. The expansion of government took off during the New Deal and then World War II. The subsequent creation of the national security state apparatus, and the Great Society programs of the 1960s, further accelerated it. The result is that we have far more government than most generations of Americans wanted or fully intended, and we have a far more expansive array of presidential powers as well.

Even with that, however, much of American life remains only marginally touched by the federal government. Paying taxes and receiving Social Security checks and medical benefits are by far the most common and regular interactions any of us have with Washington and its agencies. Much of our lives is both untouched by and unaffected by government, even in an age of draconian immigration enforcement and the attempt of the White House to exact retribution on public and private institutions it finds objectionable.

A more balanced daily discussion would, of course, expand beyond what Congress, the presidency, and the courts decide and debate. To a degree, I suppose, news about celebrities and gossipy lurid trials à la Sean Combs are broadening the aperture, but that can be like substituting one set of hollow calories for another rather than creating a more balanced diet. A more balanced daily discussion would look intently at AI, at medical discoveries, at innovative urban programs to address pressing needs, at non-profits and what they are accomplishing (and non-profits spend close to $4 trillion annually, which is 4x the discretionary budget of the federal government), at local governments and what they are doing well, or not doing well.

And with this July 4th, it is worth recognizing that in most respects, the United States has carved out a remarkable space of individual freedoms and liberties over the last 249 years, compared to most societies on the planet. The United States remains an open society, even as the limits of that are tested and contested. Even with its monopoly on the use of force, the government is constrained by the rule of law to a degree that most societies for much of history would have found astonishing and enviable. In many of my pieces this year, I have been trying to remind us how dark the American past has been, because recognizing our past ugliness makes the present more a part of a problematic continuum than a dramatic break. As we celebrate July 4th, it’s equally vital to recognize the best of us.