How many NYT readers know how much the government is projected to spend over the next decade? How many know how large the economy is projected to be? The paper has a well-educated readership, but my guess is that the answer to both questions would be less than 1.0 percent. This raises the question of why the NYT gives a set of spending figures on Baucus health care bill that will be virtually meaningless to nearly everyone who reads it. It would be very simple to make these numbers meaningful by either expressing them as share of the budget or as per person expenditures. ($800 billion over the course of a decade comes to about $350 per person per year.)
--Dean Baker