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

We’re on the Cusp of Something

I’ve been reading Bjorn Merker’s Perishing Promise in PDF. It’s about the failure of the West to implement its promise of freedom and equality. Because we now live under a

soft despotism that wields the slogans of popular sovereignty, self-governance, and democracy as means to buttress its power over the populations under its jurisdiction.

One of the key moments in Merker’s Western story is the socialist frenzy of the university rich kids in Berlin in 1840. Of which our pal Karl Marx was a contributor. Merker represents Marx as a kid who resented having to get a job when his father died and his mom withdrew his allowance.

As they say: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

In our day we have the DSA frenzy of the university rich kids — featuring the girls this time — who really resent… well, something. It looks as if they are taking over the Democratic Party, and, they think, the world.

But as a famous philosopher said, nearly 200 years ago, there is a tendency for historical events to appear: “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.

In 1840, as Marx & Co. were all ablaze, the economy was in the middle of the second technological revolution in 50 years. First was machine textiles in the 1770s, and then steam and railways in the 1830s. The fact is that humans tend to feel totally adrift when the economic foundations are shaking.

I suspect that was particularly true for the educated middle class of 1840. Marx came from Trier, in Germany just east of Luxembourg. You can imagine that the fixed world of guilds and lawyers and bourgeois security was under attack from a rising generation of textile and rail entrepreneurs. Socialism, the best people knew, would put an end to all the turmoil.

Same thing in our era. The Age of the Educated Class, with the credentialed holding forth for the best interests of society overall from their tenured positions in academia, administration, and media, seems to be under attack.

What’s left for a professor if her students can answer the questions on a test with AI? What’s left for traditional media when podcasters can reach millions with YouTube and the internet? What’s left when a college degree isn’t the key to a career in corporate administration any more?

Back in 1840 all the best minds were focused like a laser on the plight of the industrial workers. There was a bit of a cock-up in the US Panic of 1837.

Triggered by wild land speculation, reckless state bank note printing, President Andrew Jackson’s anti-central bank policies, and a collapse in cotton prices, it resulted in widespread bank failures and massive unemployment.

Oh yeah. The end of the Second Bank of the United States. What could go wrong? And in Europe the Hungry ‘40s, as told by Mrs. Gaskell in Mary Barton. Mary’s father was a textile machine worker and big into unions.

What do we have, in 2026? The late COVID unpleasantness with a 40% increase in the money supply. Plus AI. Plus Woke Politics. No wonder the kiddies are all upset.

In the late Cambridge University Unpleasantness, a brilliant black professor was outed by a Dirty Jew. Professor Nathan Cofnas was fired from Cambridge by its girl Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice and is now, apparently, under fire at his new job from the transgender girl rector of Ghent University. I kid you not.

And over last weekend devoted activists held a peaceful protest in memory of the late fabulist Jason Arday in London’s Trafalgar Square.

I know. You couldn’t make this up.

Really, lefties? You make a huge issue about blacks, because slavery abolished roughly 200 years ago. Then you promote unqualified blacks into prestigious academic positions. Then you push back and fire an academic that exposes your follies (or should we say, injustices)?

Then you hold a vigil in Trafalgar Square when the fabulist understandably commits (presumed) suicide?

We all push back mightily when our belief system betrays us, and reality hits us right in the solar-plexus. It’s not that we don’t believe it. It’s worse than that: it’s “inconceivable.”

Ever heard of that River in Egypt?

I don’t know what comes next. Nobody does. But I am certainly getting a feeling that we are approaching a “turn.”

Here’s a Narrative to explain the whole thing.

Back in 1840 when the Marxes and the Engels were holding forth it made sense that the jumped-up bourgeois capitalists were a menace. They were new; they didn’t have credentials. Or breeding. So we all decided to put the curbs on the industrialists to make sure they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But as usual, the problem wasn’t the capitalists. They went on to create steel steamships and internal combustion engines and cars for the common man, and the internet and reusable rockets and AI. The problem was the activist politicians, the Lenins and Trotskys and Maos that demolished the nascent exchange economies in Russia and China and sent 100 million souls to an early grave.

And now the fans of Stalin and Mao want us to elect them for a redo on socialism?

I don’t think so.

Just for a refresher here’s Google’s take on the notorious Robber Barons:

John D. Rockefeller: Controlled the oil industry through Standard Oil, buying out or crushing competitors with aggressive pricing.
Andrew Carnegie: Dominated the American steel industry using vertical integration and severe labor suppression.
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Built a massive empire in shipping and railroads, earning the nickname “The Commodore”.
J.P. Morgan: Consolidated giant corporations like U.S. Steel and dominated American finance and banking.
Jay Gould: A notorious railroad tycoon and Wall Street speculator known for stock manipulation and bribery.

Well? Here’s my take:

John D. Rockefeller: Invented the oil industry, saved the whales including Moby Dick.
Andrew Carnegie: Invented the steel industry, allowing architects to create skyscrapers.
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Built a massive empire in shipping and railroads, helping ordinary people to travel about.
J.P. Morgan: Cleaned up all the railroad debt defaults and bankruptcies.
Jay Gould: Fought Vanderbilt over Erie Railroad. Tried to corner the gold market. But fixed Union Pacific and pushed against monopolistic rate-fixing.

Today we have the tech lords and the venture capitalists. Should we Fight Oligarchy with Bernie or just let the tech bros do their thing and vaporize the education industrial complex with AI?

I think it is time to admit that the Robber Barons weren’t much of a problem, and the tech “oligarchs” even less so.

| Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:25:59 GMT |

It’s Frack Baby Frack, Part 2

Well, I just signed up with Rod Martin’s Substack, after he posted an article on Fracking Part 2.

See, Exxon — you know, the creation of Robber Baron John D. Rockefeller — has just come up with a new way to kill the climate.

It’s an improvement in fracking technology. Fracking’s the deal where you drill horizontal oil wells and the pressurize the well so that it opens cracks in the well walls and oils seeps into the cracks and gets pumped out and oil flows out to power fossil fueled cars that will kill the climate. All over the world.

A big part of fracking technology is pumping sand into the cracks so the cracks stay propped open when you stop pressurizing the well. They call the sand proppant.

But eevil Exxon came up with a new twist on the proppant front.

Now ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others have opened a new chapter: lightweight, synthetic proppant made from petroleum coke, a refinery by-product that used to be treated as waste.

Because it is lightweight it gets further into the cracks that sand can’t get into, and because it’s lighter than sand it flows along easier, and because it’s stronger than sand it keeps the cracks open.

Here’s a map of frack-ology research in North America being conducted by the nation’s credentialed frack-ologists. There’s a lot more than I thought.

U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - Independent Statistics and Analysis

Guess what happens next. Exactly, Uncle Sam gets to rule the world and nobody cares a wink about the Strait of Hormuz.

And mental health professionals will also benefit from treating the mental health crises of our environmentalist friends.

It’s interesting. President Trump has been boasting about a new Golden Age of America. Naturally, as a credentialed expert, I wasn’t at all sure that I believed him.

But here we are. Fracking as far as the eye can see.

And the latest information I learned is that Texas has 335 data centers in operation and 248 under construction. I think that’s important because I don’t think we can really get the Golden Age of America going until we have bombed the entire government education system to rubble and replaced it with mom-friendly homeschooling AI.

But that is another story.

| Thu, 20 Aug 2026 20:47:16 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

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