Government Expenditures
Economists classify government expenditures into three main types. Government purchases of goods and services for current use are classed as government consumption. Government purchases of goods and services intended to create future benefits--- such as infrastructure investment or research spending--- are classed as government investment. Government expenditures that are not purchases of goods and services, and instead just represent transfers of money--- such as social security payments--- are called transfer payments.
Read more about this topic: Public Finance
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)