Make your own free website on
Home. Contact.
Total taxes. By nation. International comparisons. Americans pay more per person for healthcare and taxes than people in many other nations. 
Mirrors 1. 2. Change mirror pages if problems.


*Recent charts. Total taxes by nation.
*Healthcare cost charts.
*Related info, links, charts.

*Drug War charts, and more.

Recent charts. Total taxes by nation. [TopLink]


For the latest tax comparisons (by nation) see this Wikipedia page:

Wikipedia. List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP:

Add around 5 to 7% to the U.S. tax percent to have a fair comparison to European nations. Their taxes pay for a much higher percentage of health care costs compared to the USA.

*OECD = Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
OECD Country Taxes as Share of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Great chart: PDF file. Excel chart.


Chart for public share of health expenditure, OECD countries, 2005. By percentage of total health expenditures:

OECD Health Data 2007. How Does the United States Compare. Charts: - Source for quote below:

"The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries, except for the United States, Mexico and Greece. In the United States, only 45.1% of health spending is funded by government revenues, well below the average of 72.5% in OECD countries. The public share of total health spending remains the lowest among OECD countries, after Greece."

*OECD Health Data - Frequently Requested Data.,3343,en_2649_37407_2085200_1_1_1_37407,00.html


Healthcare cost charts. [TopLink]

For more current info see: and

  OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Health Data 2007. How Does the United States Compare. - Source for first chart below.

OECD publishing. Rights and Permissions. Allows use of 2 tables or graphs. 

Public share of health expenditure, OECD countries, 2005. By percentage of total health expenditures. - Source for chart below.

(1) 2004. (2) 1992. (3) Share of current expenditure rather than total. (4) 1991 and 2004. (5) 1990/91 and 2004/05.Source: OECD Health Data 2007.


Related info, links, charts. [TopLink]

Nearly all Western nations except the USA have universal healthcare and pay for it mostly through taxes. When U.S. private healthcare costs (as a percentage of GDP) are added to the U.S. total taxes, then the U.S. total taxes plus healthcare costs exceeds the total tax GDP percentage paid by many  nations. Total public and private U.S. healthcare costs (as a percentage of GDP) are higher than all other nations, yet U.S. healthcare statistics are worse than most other Western nations due to the lack of universal healthcare in the USA. For worldwide healthcare cost comparisons, GDP charts, etc., please go to one of these mirror sites: and

Americans waste a lot of money to imprison its population. Incarceration costs $25,000 a year on average per inmate in the USA. That does not include costs of police, courts, parole and probation officers, etc.. All those costs are listed in the chart below. Many times the nations with the lowest incarceration rates often have the lowest crime rates. Other nations use higher minimum wages, universal healthcare, and better welfare systems to keep crime rates low. Studies have shown that money spent in those areas is much more effective in lowering the crime rate than money spent on incarceration. Studies in the USA have shown that for parolees and released prisoners the lack of jobs for ex-inmates, the lack of healthcare (especially mental healthcare) for poor people and ex-inmates, and the lack of even something so basic as a place to stay for ex-inmates, are predictors of recidivism. Social ills may not be a moral justification for crime. But they are statistical predictors of crime. So a pragmatic approach in some nations has been to deal with crime pragmatically and not religiously. And many of those nations pay less in taxes and healthcare costs than people in the USA pay (on average per person as a percent of their nation's economy).


U.S. Criminal Justice Expenditures.
1982 to 2003. Timeline with yearly totals.
From Bureau of Justice Statistics charts and tables.
Direct expenditures by criminal justice function.

The_Courier_New_font_lines_up_the_columns.___________________________ mirror page. mirror page.

*Drug War Casualty Statistical Graphs. Page with many charts such as the one above. The above chart has been reduced in size from the original by using the highly-rated freeware at ~ For the original charts click the link below:
Large and small chart images of all kinds are found here:


Drug War charts, and more. [TopLink]