7 ms·

This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers

This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers, 9 assault carriers, when the rest of the World considers two carriers to be a lot. Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies, the Pentagon/The Congress spends a Trillion USD on a new manned fighter we don't need just to shovel pork into as many Congressional districts as possible. In a similar vein as our Carriers, we have 123 military satellites. Since the X-37 is maneuverable and reusable, it might be cheaper in the long run than more satellites.

willart4food 6y ago
This and similar mission are not NASA missions but USSF's missions (United States Space Force), and USFF is part of the United States Armed Forces, different budget: Sources: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37#Operational_histor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
- whoopdedo 6y ago
  I'll never get used to that "Starfleet" logo. I don't suppose Viacom/CBS would be able to sue the Dept. of Defense for copyright violation?
  - swebs 6y ago
    If they could, they would have done it 40 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ericmcer 6y ago
It’s hard to quantify because military supremacy and having the best weapons in the world is a huge part of why the dollar is THE global currency. And we can print dollars, hell we just printed 5 trillion in a couple weeks. This gives us insane leverage when it comes to foreign debts because most debts are in dollars. The dollars for military budget and the dollars raised by a school fundraiser are not even the same currency.
- brighton36 6y ago
  This. Military spending may just be 'free money' in some world outlook scenarios.
- noch 6y ago
  > [...] military supremacy and having the best weapons in the world is a huge part of why the dollar is THE global currency. However, in "How the United States Could Lose a Great-Power War" (RAND, 2019)[0], we read: > [...] For now, U.S. forces appear poorly postured to meet these challenges. That's because both Russia and China have developed formidable networks of missiles, radars, electronic warfare systems, and the like to degrade and potentially even block U.S. forces' ability to operate in the Western Pacific and Eastern Europe to defend allies and partners in those regions. China in particular is developing increasingly impressive capabilities to project military farther afield, including through systems such as aircraft carriers, long-range aviation, and nuclear-powered submarines. Together, these forces have tilted the military balance over places such as Taiwan and the Baltic states from unquestioned U.S. dominance to something much more competitive. And[1] > The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. [...] [0]: https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/10/how-the-united-states-could-lose-a-great-power-war.html https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/10/how-the-united-states-coul... [1]: https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-wargames-heres-a-24-billion-fix/ https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-t...
  - zipwitch 6y ago
    This is a farce. The United States is done fighting Great Power wars. No one talks about it publicly at all because doing so would shatter America's self-image as the Lone Superpower. The military the United States has now is quite capable of wrecking any nation that is not another Great Power. I say wrecking and not defeating, because as should be obvious from the last three decades, the United States has zero interest in winning wars. It really doesn't even bother trying - too expensive, and too hard. Instead the United States has made it very clear that if you displease it too much, and aren't another Great Power, it will trash your nation, and then either walk away or hang around stomping on you every so often. The unspoken assumption is that there never will be a "real" war with China or Russia or any other 'near peer'. Whether that ultimately turns out to have been a foolish approach remains to be seen. But, it does leave a lot of money floating around to be siphoned off by various parts of the military-security industry, because Americans think they're paying for a Cold War military, when what they're actually getting is a military good for knocking down weaker opponents and then kicking them, but that barely even tries to pretend it can do anything else. (Except via propaganda, which is really cheap compared to manpower and materiel.)
quietthrow 6y ago
Yet heavens forbid if we spent a little more trying to fix healthcare. This all is thanks to mentality of fear which has deep roots in American consciousness. At the nation level - what if somebody attacks us to at the family level there all kinds of crazies here let’s not let our children play outdoors in the neighborhood without supervision- it’s a fear based society.
- spicyramen 6y ago
  Is my understanding that we already spend more in healthcare than military. What would you like to fix specifically?
  - rswail 6y ago
    The US spends substantially more on health administration than other nations. Removing that administrative burden (ie the private health insurance organizations as arbiters of health care delivery) would substantially lower the cost. As a percentage of the GDP, the health industry is a larger proportion than military production, but as a percentage of the US Federal budget, the military consumes roughly half.
    - Anon1096 6y ago
      I suspect you're only counting discretionary spending, when you should be counting all federal government spending, as important programs like Medicare are non-discretionary. Overall, the military is less than 20 percent of federal spending in the US.
    - bakuninsbart 6y ago
      Covid response was of course badly botched in the US, but look at Germany for comparison to its single-payer neighbors. A decentralised, competitive healthcare industry is worth a lot if push comes to shove. That said, I agree that the american healthcare market is predatory and has way too high margins. But they are only part of the "problem". Doctors make a lot more money in the US than almost anywhere else, and pharmaceutical companies often get more than half their global revenue from the US market alone.
jseliger 6y ago
Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies https://www.epi.org/publication/books_wheremoneygone/ https://www.epi.org/publication/books_wheremoneygone/: "With appropriate inflation adjustment, it appears that total real education spending per pupil increased by 61% from 1967 to 1991." And that's from 1995. Real expenditures have grown enormously in the last four decades, and the results are to be left as an exercise to the reader.
- groby_b 6y ago
  Spending since then has only increased ~20%, though. [1] That is not adjusted for inflation, which since 1996 was an impressive 67.58%. [1] https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
  - iso1631 6y ago
    AS a portion of GDP, US K-12 education spending 2000: 3.7% 2005: 3.8% 2009: 4.0% 2012: 3.6% 2015: 3.5% https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm France and UK spend more in the G7, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan spend less. US defense spending 2000: 3.0% 2005: 3.9% 2009: 4.6% 2012: 4.2% 2015: 3.3% https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm I was surprised to be honest. US spending on defense is way down on most of the 70s and 80s (6%ish, lowest was 78 with 4.9%)
sandworm101 6y ago
>> it might be cheaper in the long run than more satellites. Wrong comparison. It is cheaper than the previous military spaceplane: Shuttle.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
I cannot help myself thinking, although probably is not comparable: USD 1 trillion for new fighter vs. USD 10 billion for the entire Startlink constellation :/
vl 6y ago
>Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies. Did you have a chance to compare US schools to other countries’ schools? By any other standard US schools are lavish. The only reason schools have bake sales to raise funds because of bureaucracy and because parents will pony up anyway.

willart4food 6y ago

This and similar mission are not NASA missions but USSF's missions (United States Space Force), and USFF is part of the United States Armed Forces, different budget: Sources: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37#Operational_histor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force

whoopdedo 6y ago
I'll never get used to that "Starfleet" logo. I don't suppose Viacom/CBS would be able to sue the Dept. of Defense for copyright violation?
- swebs 6y ago
  If they could, they would have done it 40 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ericmcer 6y ago

It’s hard to quantify because military supremacy and having the best weapons in the world is a huge part of why the dollar is THE global currency. And we can print dollars, hell we just printed 5 trillion in a couple weeks. This gives us insane leverage when it comes to foreign debts because most debts are in dollars. The dollars for military budget and the dollars raised by a school fundraiser are not even the same currency.

brighton36 6y ago
This. Military spending may just be 'free money' in some world outlook scenarios.
noch 6y ago
> [...] military supremacy and having the best weapons in the world is a huge part of why the dollar is THE global currency. However, in "How the United States Could Lose a Great-Power War" (RAND, 2019)[0], we read: > [...] For now, U.S. forces appear poorly postured to meet these challenges. That's because both Russia and China have developed formidable networks of missiles, radars, electronic warfare systems, and the like to degrade and potentially even block U.S. forces' ability to operate in the Western Pacific and Eastern Europe to defend allies and partners in those regions. China in particular is developing increasingly impressive capabilities to project military farther afield, including through systems such as aircraft carriers, long-range aviation, and nuclear-powered submarines. Together, these forces have tilted the military balance over places such as Taiwan and the Baltic states from unquestioned U.S. dominance to something much more competitive. And[1] > The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. [...] [0]: https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/10/how-the-united-states-could-lose-a-great-power-war.html https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/10/how-the-united-states-coul... [1]: https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-wargames-heres-a-24-billion-fix/ https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-t...
- zipwitch 6y ago
  This is a farce. The United States is done fighting Great Power wars. No one talks about it publicly at all because doing so would shatter America's self-image as the Lone Superpower. The military the United States has now is quite capable of wrecking any nation that is not another Great Power. I say wrecking and not defeating, because as should be obvious from the last three decades, the United States has zero interest in winning wars. It really doesn't even bother trying - too expensive, and too hard. Instead the United States has made it very clear that if you displease it too much, and aren't another Great Power, it will trash your nation, and then either walk away or hang around stomping on you every so often. The unspoken assumption is that there never will be a "real" war with China or Russia or any other 'near peer'. Whether that ultimately turns out to have been a foolish approach remains to be seen. But, it does leave a lot of money floating around to be siphoned off by various parts of the military-security industry, because Americans think they're paying for a Cold War military, when what they're actually getting is a military good for knocking down weaker opponents and then kicking them, but that barely even tries to pretend it can do anything else. (Except via propaganda, which is really cheap compared to manpower and materiel.)

quietthrow 6y ago

Yet heavens forbid if we spent a little more trying to fix healthcare. This all is thanks to mentality of fear which has deep roots in American consciousness. At the nation level - what if somebody attacks us to at the family level there all kinds of crazies here let’s not let our children play outdoors in the neighborhood without supervision- it’s a fear based society.

spicyramen 6y ago
Is my understanding that we already spend more in healthcare than military. What would you like to fix specifically?
- rswail 6y ago
  The US spends substantially more on health administration than other nations. Removing that administrative burden (ie the private health insurance organizations as arbiters of health care delivery) would substantially lower the cost. As a percentage of the GDP, the health industry is a larger proportion than military production, but as a percentage of the US Federal budget, the military consumes roughly half.
  - Anon1096 6y ago
    I suspect you're only counting discretionary spending, when you should be counting all federal government spending, as important programs like Medicare are non-discretionary. Overall, the military is less than 20 percent of federal spending in the US.
  - bakuninsbart 6y ago
    Covid response was of course badly botched in the US, but look at Germany for comparison to its single-payer neighbors. A decentralised, competitive healthcare industry is worth a lot if push comes to shove. That said, I agree that the american healthcare market is predatory and has way too high margins. But they are only part of the "problem". Doctors make a lot more money in the US than almost anywhere else, and pharmaceutical companies often get more than half their global revenue from the US market alone.

jseliger 6y ago

Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies https://www.epi.org/publication/books_wheremoneygone/ https://www.epi.org/publication/books_wheremoneygone/: "With appropriate inflation adjustment, it appears that total real education spending per pupil increased by 61% from 1967 to 1991." And that's from 1995. Real expenditures have grown enormously in the last four decades, and the results are to be left as an exercise to the reader.

groby_b 6y ago
Spending since then has only increased ~20%, though. [1] That is not adjusted for inflation, which since 1996 was an impressive 67.58%. [1] https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
- iso1631 6y ago
  AS a portion of GDP, US K-12 education spending 2000: 3.7% 2005: 3.8% 2009: 4.0% 2012: 3.6% 2015: 3.5% https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm France and UK spend more in the G7, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan spend less. US defense spending 2000: 3.0% 2005: 3.9% 2009: 4.6% 2012: 4.2% 2015: 3.3% https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm I was surprised to be honest. US spending on defense is way down on most of the 70s and 80s (6%ish, lowest was 78 with 4.9%)

sandworm101 6y ago

>> it might be cheaper in the long run than more satellites. Wrong comparison. It is cheaper than the previous military spaceplane: Shuttle.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

I cannot help myself thinking, although probably is not comparable: USD 1 trillion for new fighter vs. USD 10 billion for the entire Startlink constellation :/

vl 6y ago

>Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies. Did you have a chance to compare US schools to other countries’ schools? By any other standard US schools are lavish. The only reason schools have bake sales to raise funds because of bureaucracy and because parents will pony up anyway.