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no, quick napkin math: the US military budget is officially $700B, but more thorough accounting pegs is at $1T+. $800B is roughly $2400 for every american per y
by clairity 7y ago
no, quick napkin math: the US military budget is officially $700B, but more thorough accounting pegs is at $1T+. $800B is roughly $2400 for every american per year, but if only 10% need assistance in any given year, that's a safety net of $24K each. that's not nothing, and it still leaves $200B+ for the military (which is still more than every other country and roughly equivalent to that of the #2 country, china, which itself is 4x larger than #3).
and that excludes the knock-on effects of encouraging economic risk-taking resulting from a functioning safety net.
- luckylion 7y agoI do believe you'll need significantly more than that, but would be happy to be convinced otherwise. As for the encouraged economic risk-taking: we'd see that in Europe, wouldn't we? We don't. Maybe putting a damper on how much of the reward for taking the risk you get to keep decreases the willingness to take it in the first place. We're seeing pretty similar effects: multi-generational poverty, very low social mobility (lower than in the US according to some studies). We're just "keeping the social peace" by doing more redistribution, it does not appear to change anything beyond the immediate redistribution.