What is not seen

James L. Payne's The Unnoticed Deficit That Makes Us $6 Trillion Poorer

Though there is an element of redistribution in many spending programs, basically government is taxing people and then trying to return the money to them as some benefit they could have bought for themselves, such as education, housing, art, pensions, medical care, and so on.

He then goes on to detail how overhead costs of government tax-and-spend programs result in waste.