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Or they just asked for (and presumably will get) an additional $15 B of subsidies for farmers to compensate for the trade war. Nothing against farmers, but if
by georgeecollins 7y ago
Or they just asked for (and presumably will get) an additional $15 B of subsidies for farmers to compensate for the trade war. Nothing against farmers, but if it is so easy to do that, why not fund NASA a bit?
- ianai 7y agoThey could fund nasa at DOD levels and not risk hyper inflation nor any other ills. They could probably be coaxed into helping employ more rural communities too. (Ref: modern monetary theory)
- 2Ccltvcm 7y agoAmerica should reduce corn subsidies. Corn works its way into the American food ecosystem in many ways to the detriment of the Americans' health. It is highly inflammatory by itself and it is processed into compounds which also modulate inflammation in other ways. See high fructose corn syrup and its inflammatory pathways. Processed corn products are a multi pronged attack on Americans' health. End corn subsidies.
- sathackr 7y ago[citation needed] Not that I dispute what you say, but I don't buy it hook-line-and-sinker.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ajross 7y agoI'm not aware of anything specific to HFCS and inflammation that doesn't apply to any other fructose source. It's cheap sugar. Sugar is bad for you.
- behringer 7y agoI think that's the point. By ending corn subsidies, we'd raise the price of sugar.
- ajross 7y agoMarginally, yeah. But spinning that as "corn is toxic" is a bit much. Corn is perfectly fine as a food and a feed.
- A2017U1 7y agoSugar prices in the states are double what everyone else on Earth pays due to perverse protectionism funded by the taxpayer. So many of my American friends never believe this either but it's true. Same with corn which is very much related. https://www.thebalance.com/markets-for-us-and-world-sugar-809301 https://www.thebalance.com/markets-for-us-and-world-sugar-80...
- ryandrake 7y agoNot to mention befouling our fuel supply with engine-destroying and (energy-equivalent) expensive ethanol.
- wallace_f 7y agoTo be fair, the banks got over 400+ billion in TARP money plus over 4 Trillion in newly printed Fed Reserve dollars to buy literally "toxic assets," synthetic mortgage-backed securities, and government debt purchased off their books to shore them up after they negligently destroyed themselves(1). Fundamental, necessary banking services which they are subsidized to perform are not rocket science, either. This was subsidizing risk-taking. This transfer of wealth to Wall St is by far the most egregious heist in the history of humanity. 1-https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/08/18/the-hutchins-center-explains-the-feds-balance-sheet/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/08/18/the-hutch...
- matt4077 7y agoTARP didn't cost anything. From Wikipedia[0]: "On December 19, 2014, the U.S. Treasury sold its remaining holdings of Ally Financial, essentially ending the program. TARP recovered funds totalling $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit or an annualized rate of return of 0.6% and perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation" [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
- monetus 7y agoand perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation... I've seen some spectacularly detailed comments on this from other hn users, specifically in regards to the inequity of QE. If anyone more knowledgeable could comment, I would appreciate it.
- aqme28 7y agoThey made back money, but less than they would have if they had just parked it in regular bonds. It's not an absolute loss of moneyt--it's a loss relative to what they would have done if they hadn't invested in TARP.
- runako 7y ago> TARP didn't cost anything This assumes zero value of having the Treasury backstop a business. There is always a cost associated with making an investment (which TARP was). In a sense, the entire discipline of pricing risk is based on calculating this cost. Whether or not the chosen risk eventually paid off is a different question than the whether the risk had a cost to begin with. * - I was a proponent of TARP as one of the better risks on the table.
- Loughla 7y agoIf you only consider the near future, food and food security is more important than space. If you consider long-term, we should be pouring everything we have into figuring out space colonization and travel, but I also just want to live in The Culture already, so I'm biased.
- honestoHeminway 7y agoIve tryied to change "Ok, Google" into "Planet" or "Hub". It wont work.
- adrianN 7y agoIf you consider mid-term we should pour everything into de-carbonizing the economy.
- JTbane 7y agoNot to be pessimistic but all signs are pointing towards the world economy expanding emissions and fossil fuel usage.
- noir_lord 7y agoIt sometimes annoys me I was born too early to live in a possible culture like society. Then I realise I'm happy to have been born at all, getting to appreciate the universe for 39 years (next Thursday) was a good deal.
- gremlinsinc 7y agobeing a newly born atheist/agnostic (ex-mormon), I have to say I never felt as spiritual and in 'awe' of the galaxy as I do post-belief-in-god, as I see it life is a miracle, to be able to be here, in this time of technology, to have a family that I adore two little babies that make me feel lucky every day. To experience daily beautiful music like Queen, it's truly amazing what we have and if it is all random how much more beautiful is it that this all came from chaos? Maybe our chaos that is politics/divisions might work itself out into something more beautiful as we lift ourselves up and move into the universe. It's inevitable that life on earth will end someday, entropy and all. I'm hoping mankind doesn't. I'm hoping we figure out how to get past the great filter if we haven't already. I sure as hell hope we get past climate change, as that could be the filter and it's ever looming, even on my own children's heads.
- bregma 7y agoMaybe NASA should just ask for farm subsidies to grow corn on the moon?
- pjmorris 7y agoOr, could they get Lockheed-Martin to build a moon-based F-35?
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI, for one, support this goal of awesome space jets. Wake me when I can play Starlord.
- Rooster61 7y agoSounds like a Cave Johnson initiative.
- petercooper 7y agoI wonder if there were a viable commercial motive if NASA would suddenly get a ton of funding. For example, let's say platinum was discovered on the moon in large quantities.. would the money suddenly appear?
- emiliobumachar 7y agoThe price would collapse from excessive supply before the mining costs could be recouped. Though there are companies seriously considering mining asteroids, they're supposedly cheaper than the Moon because they have no appreciable gravity.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoMining asteroids will be crucial for space economy, but there's little point in shipping mined resources downwell. What makes sense is to move manufacturing of space-related hardware and possibly of things benefiting from fabrication in microgravity up there, and then use asteroids and the Moon as resource base for building things in space, and mostly for space.
- joncrane 7y agoBecause farm subsidies are a very subtle form of vote buying but launching space ships isn't as effective in garnering votes.
- rayiner 7y agoBecause NASA hasn’t produced anything useful in decades?
- sorenn111 7y agoBecause NASA has had no funding to do so? Even still that's probably not true. I don't have the sources in front of me, but I know most of modern climate monitoring is done with recent NASA innovation.
- nickik 7y agoWrong. NASA funding now is high as it was during avg. appollo years. NASA now does more different things but in terms of human spaceflight they have basically totally mismanaged it for 60 years.
- dahart 7y ago> NASA funding now as high as it was during avg. appollo [sic] years. Well that’s easy to fact check... so how do you figure? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA NASA's budget peaked in 1964–66, when it consumed roughly 4% of federal spending. The agency was building up to the first Moon landing; the Apollo program involved more than 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors.[18] In March 1966, NASA officials told Congress that the 1959–72 "run-out cost" of the Apollo program would be an estimated $22.718 billion. The total cost turned out to be between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (about $136 billion in 2007 dollars).[19] The costs of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rockets came to about $83 billion in 2005 dollars. Apollo spacecraft cost $28 billion, including the command and service module, $17 billion; lunar module, $11 billion; and launch vehicles (Saturn I, Saturn IB, Saturn V cost about $46 billion in 2005 dollars).[20]
- bardam 7y ago> Wrong. NASA funding now is high as it was during avg. appollo years. That's not a true statement, unless you're talking about non-adjusted nominal dollars (that while technically true, is somewhat misleading). In inflation adjusted terms, the current budget is less than half of what it was during the Apollo years. Expressed as a percent of the federal budget, current funding is 1/8th of what it was at its max, though that's largely a function of the growth of non-discretionary federal spending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
- nickik 7y agoThink of it as an elaberate system of bribes payed to interest groups in order to buy votes.
- dylan604 7y agoThe subsidies are entirely a political decision in an attempt to soften the pain of the tariffs. The farmers would much rather be selling their crops than accepting handouts.