Christopher Chantrill - Writer, conservative, government spending taxes debt deficit

Christopher Chantrill

Welcome!

WELCOME. I am Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill, writer and conservative. You can see my work at the following sites:

Road to the Middle Class contains the eponymous book and my daily blog. It investigates and celebrates the cultural artefacts that ordinary people appropriate as they struggle to adapt from country ways to the demands of life in the city. Start here.

An American Manifesto is the site for my book and blog. I am writing this book about "life after liberalism" and blogging about it as I go. All are invited to comment. Start here.

USgovernmentspending.com is a resource on government spending in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government expenditure in the United States from 1902 to the present. Spending data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

US Spending 101 is a “university” of government spending. It features several walks through the pages of the usgovernmentspending.com suite of websites. And the learning never stops. But it is not a real university, nor does it offer credits for courses completed. Start here.

USgovernmentrevenue.com is a resource on government taxes and receipts in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government taxes, charges, use fees, and business revenue in the United States from 1902 to the present. Revenue data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

UKpublicspending.co.uk is a resource on public spending in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public expenditure by central government, local authorities, and public corporations in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Spending data is sourced from UK government Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, the UK National Statistics “Blue Book,” and academic studies. Start here.

UKpublicrevenue.co.uk is a resource on public revenue in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public revenues by central government, and local authorities in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Revenue data is sourced from UK Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK National Statistics and academic studies. Start here.

American Thinker publishes my op-eds most weeks. Click here.

US Stuck on Stupid analyzes the perfect storm of political bungling in the years from 1929 to 1939 that plunged the American people into untold misery during the Great Depression. Start here.

US Presidential Elections tabulates the results of presidential elections going back to 1788. Start here.

US Midterm Elections tabulates the history of midterm elections for the US Senate and the US House of Representatives going back to 1790. You can sort the elections by year, by party strength, and by party gains and losses. Start here.

Biography

I AM CHRISTOPHER CHANTRILL, a member of the international capitalist conspiracy. Both my grandfathers owned and operated import/export businesses in the early twentieth century, one in St. Petersburg, Russia, where my father was born, and the other in Kobe, Japan, where my mother was born.

I was born in India and raised and educated in England. I immigrated to the United States in 1968 and worked for many years designing and implementing utility control systems and software in Seattle.

Soon after moving to Seattle, I instinctively revolted against the suffocating left-coast culture of the Soviet of Washington, and soon came to revere the four great Germans who helped inspire the Reagan revolution: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin. Since then I have broadened my appreciation of “The German Turn” that has transformed the world over the last 200 years.

I have written for Liberty, FrontPageMag.com, and The American Thinker. My book Road to the Middle Class celebrates the self-governing culture of the United States in which enthusiastic Christianity, education, mutual aid, and living under law have taught generations of immigrants to rise from indigence in the countryside to a life of competence and prosperity in the city. My book An American Manifesto: Life after Liberalism tries to imagine what America would look like after the end of left-wing politics and big government.

Disclaimer and Transparency

WE make no respresentation about the accuracy of the data presented in these websites. Nor does Christopher Chantrill represent himself to possess any formal qualifications to select, evaluate or present the information. Users are urged to check all data against the published data sources and to report any errors or inconsistencies.

The websites have no relationship with any government institution, or any other institution. They are supported solely by advertising and by the life, fortune, and sacred honor of Christopher Chantrill.

Daily Blogging

WE BLOG DAILY, Monday to Friday, chiefly on national US politics, religion, education, mutual aid, and law. We also look at our junior partners in the global Anglospheric hegemony, the British. It is hard to say why, but very often our blogging zeroes in like a laser on liberal hypocrisies, monopolies, and sinecures. Of course, we love our liberal friends to bits, but we do not take them quite as seriously as they do. If we get too pompous and serious, please get in touch and tell us to lighten up.

We love to get email from our readers. And you can follow on Twitter .

Enjoy.

LATEST BLOG

Understanding Lefty Love for Failing Collectivism

What is it with these lefties thinking it is cool to show their support for the Cuban dictatorship by taking 20 tons of supplies to the island on the Nuestra América Convoy for the rulers to distribute collectively?

Never mind. Our mission, if we accept it, is not to judge our lefty friends but to understand them. Or to understand Neville Roy Singham and his support for CODEPINK: Women for Peace and its leader Medea Benjamin who is on the trip.

Let us start with Google AI’s analysis of NYC Mayor Mamdani’s inaugural speech:

In his 2026 inaugural address, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to replace “rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” advocating for a shift toward community solidarity, shared responsibility, and social ownership. This vision emphasizes public enterprises, worker cooperatives, and mutual support over isolated self-reliance, aiming for a more compassionate city.

Let us unpack the memes:

Community solidarity. But if it’s financed or mandated by the government it isn’t really community solidarity but state compulsion.
Shared responsibility. But if it is mandated by the government it isn’t responsibility but simple subordination.
Social ownership. But if it is managed through the government it isn’t social, it’s state ownership.
Public enterprises. You mean like the Post Office and the DMV?
Worker cooperatives. You mean like Brook Farm in the 1840s? But who owns it and who provides the capital? Politicians? Activists? Bureaucrats?
Mutual support. Oh, you mean restore the world of mutual-aid organizations that were crowded out by the welfare state? Or just gubmint social programs?
Compassionate city. With whose money?

The point, as Vladimir Lenin once said, is not the wonderful words but “who, whom.” Who gets to have the power to do what to whom?

We humans have been conducting an astonishing social experiment for the last 500 years, in which the traditional world of the village and the hierarchical world of feudalism has been transformed by the market economy.

Is individualism rugged? Yes, as rugged as you want it to be. Or you can go to work for wages or salary and become part of a collective that we call a company or business. Let us be clear. Working for wages means that your income is not directly dependent on your employer making a profit. You exchange risk for a fixed income.

Is collectivism warm? Yes, if it is conducted without compulsion, as in the mutual-aid societies and fraternal organizations that flourished in the 19th century. But when collectivism is co-opted by the state it becomes frigid and cruel. As we know from the history of the 20th century.

But why do our liberal friends long for the warmth of collectivism and worship at the shrines of collectivist regimes? I think it is an instinctive longing for the world before the modern state. And even before the agricultural era, when humans lived in small bands, where the women lived and worked together in community and the men sat around sharpening their weapons. Experts say that agriculture is only 10,000 to 12,000 years old. Before the invention of the plow about 7,000 years ago agriculture was conducted as horticulture almost entirely by women. But women suffered miscarriages from plowing, so men had to be put to work.

But 12,000 years is the blink of an eye, so we humans are still programmed for pre-agricultural life.

Let me be the first to say that we really don’t know how or why the economy works or came to be. Just as we don’t really know how or why life, in its three forms of plants, animals, and fungi, works or came to be.

All we know, about the human economy and about life, that it works in incredible hidden complexity and remarkable visible simplicity. Explain that, if you can!

We humans, we still instinctively yearn for the olden time, and feel the tug of instincts that made human social life work for hundreds of thousands of years before the present.

| Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:07:18 GMT |

Understanding BLUE STATE FRAUD

In my American Thinker article published today I wrote about the rampant BLUE STATE FRAUD that young kids like Nick Shirley are bringing to our attention. Only AT decided to italicize BLUE STATE FRAUD as Blue State Fraud. What an insult!

But you and I, as we view the coming and goings with our characteristic philosophical detachment, we wonder. Why this? Why now?

First of all is the definitive word from Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt that politics is all and only about Friend vs. Enemy. As in:

There is no politics without an enemy — Curtis Yarvin
There is no politics without a handout — Christopher Chantrill

So the point of the BLUE STATE FRAUD is simply that the politicians are rewarding their friends with a handout. That is all.

But there is more. It seems that our Democratic friends are in the middle of a BLUE STATE TAX FRENZY, with California proposing a 5% tax on billionaire assets, with Washington State proposing a state income tax even though it is banned in the state constitution, with New York State proposing to raise the state and local income tax to a max of 15.9%, with NYC Mayor Mamdani proposing to increase the estate tax from 16% to 50%.

And there is more. In Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson is proposing a vacancy tax on office buildings.

How are we to understand this?

My go-to on the Democratic Party moderate-to-extremist lurch comes from Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution. His take is that revolutions start with the moderates, as in the French Revolution. Then, as the revolution fails to transform the world and eliminate injustice, the extremists can’t take it any more and they capture the revolution and burn the place down.

Of course, the extremists, as in Jacobins and Bolsheviks and our own DSA types, fail even worse than the moderates. And the reason is simple. Politics is war on the enemy, a total social mobilization that puts normal life on hold while we defeat the enemy that threatens us. And that is all.

We normies may wonder why our liberal friends have totally mobilized against the Trumpian enemy and are determined to defeat him and his billionaire friends with taxes and regulations and anything else they can think of. Because there is no politics without an enemy.

But there is more. Remember when your liberal woman friend was telling you at lunch back in 2009 how pleased she was that the US had just elected its First Black President?

(I voted for Obama, not because he was black, but because I believe fervently that, to keep the peace, you need to change parties after two consecutive terms.)

But just think what it is like for a liberal that thought we had entered a new world of peace and justice after the election of Barack Obama. It started to go wrong almost at once. Remember what happened in 2010? The Republicans flipped 64 seats in the House and we had the first Republican Congress since 1952. And then it got worse with the election of Donald Trump in 2016 instead of the First Woman President.

If you are an Alinsky believing liberal, you start looking under rocks. Or blaming it all on Russian collusion. Just like back in the day when, for Republicans after five consecutive Democrat presidential terms, it was Commies in the State Department.

Now, what is BLUE STATE FRAUD about, mostly? It seems to be about rewarding the street operatives that help get the immigrant vote out for Democrats. Clearly that’s what is was about in Minnesota. And Democrats are desperate, because the ordinary American middle class has been deserting them for the last generation. That’s what the immigration surge in the Biden administration was about: creating new Democrat voters. That’s what mail-in voting is about. That’s what Motor Voter registration is about. That’s what resisting the SAVE Act is about.

Democrats feel that political power is slipping away, and they can’t understand it. They are the good guys: they are fighting the oppressors for the oppressed; they are fighting the racist-sexist-homophobes; they are saving the climate. How could they be losing to a monster like Trump?

I know. Where do I start? But, to make it Real Simple, dear liberal friends, know that politics is always and only about the fight against the enemy. But 97.2% of the time there is no enemy coming over the horizon, and thus no need for politics. So the politicians have to make it up.

But Democracy! But Human Rights! But Climate Change!

I know. Bless their hearts.

| Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:20:56 GMT |

Chris Chantrill

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US GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE

At usgovernmentspending.com we have assembled a record of government spending in the United States for the last century. You can view government spending, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

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US GOVERNMENT RECEIPTS

At usgovernmentrevenue.com we have assembled a record of government revenue in the United States for the last century. You can view government receipts, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that revenue. more>>

UK PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

At ukpublicspending.co.uk we have assembled a record of public spending in the United Kingdom for the last century. You can view British public spending, central government and local authority, for every year from 1983 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

ROAD TO THE MIDDLE CLASS

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king’s peace, the law of contract, and private property.

Road to the Middle Class: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

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AN AMERICAN MANIFESTO

With the failure of the welfare state, it is time to consider what comes next. In "An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism" I develop a narrative about where we are and where we should go to redeem the American experiment.

An American Manifesto: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

>>more>>