Copyrighted Image? DMCA | The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fascinating new report out that compares consumer budgets in the United States, Canada, Britain and Japan. As the graph below shows, there's a huge amount of variation in what people in each country are spending their money on...
In short: Americans appear to spend more than their peers on housing, transportation, and health care Ă ‚¬" and we spend far less on clothes, food, and booze. It shouldnĂ ‚¬ „ t come as a shock that American consumers devote a far bigger fraction of their budgets to health care than their peers abroad. ThatĂ ‚¬ „ s partly because Canada, Japan, and Britain all have more comprehensive taxpayer-financed nationalized health systems that curtail out-of-pocket expenses. (Though, as Catherine Rampell points out, when you add up both taxes and out-of-pocket expenses, the United States is still paying significantly more for health |