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Meh. Is government expenditure bad? The money flows into the economy and technology is researched and developed. It's not like the money would be spent elsewhe
by Grakel 5y ago
Meh. Is government expenditure bad? The money flows into the economy and technology is researched and developed.
It's not like the money would be spent elsewhere, it's all debt we're just going to hold on to until inflation renders it irrelevant.
- samcheng 5y agoIf you're going to be spending billions of dollars, would you rather have a working ship afterwards, or not? Accountability DOES matter.
- TheDudeMan 5y agoThe greater the government expenditure, the greater the taxes.
- Grakel 5y agoThat's not literally true, obviously. There's plenty of money for them to go after if they were actually worried about government debt. I think the big secret is that it doesn't really matter as long as the debt growth rate doesn't become shocking.
- coliveira 5y agoNo, the real secret is that the US government controls dollar creation. At the sign of any problem in the economy, they create more cash and give it to bankers, who on their turn put it in the hands of investors, who use it to buy assets around the world, increasing the assets and profits of American businesses. That's why the US will use any dirt trick to maintain the dollar supremacy.
- thatguy0900 5y agoIf our money was actually backed by something, maybe. As it stands though the government doesn't really need to tax more money to spend more, even banks are allowed to create money for free now.
- lupire 5y agoGovt spending creates inflation which is a tax on everyone. Sometimes its obvious, like Quantirative Easing, and sometimes it's subtle, like wasting human labor and natural resources on worthless stuff/activity instead of value creation. Formal taxation just redistributes the pain.
- pm90 5y agoGovernment expenditure in general isn’t bad… if it delivers on what it’s trying to. Like it’s great we get the research and tech benefits (if that’s really what happens) but if we’re unable to deliver on producing best in class armaments, we risk falling behind adversaries that do develop those capabilities.
- Grakel 5y agoYes, absolutely.
- treeman79 5y agoAt one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
- lupire 5y agoThis reminds of the Feynman quote about outsiders to a field making obvious statements a about an intellectual idea and thinking they had a clever insight.
- HWR_14 5y agoI'm sorry, I don't see your connection. It was a snide aside by an economist (I believe a Nobel winning one), but it wasn't dumb.
- morpheos137 5y agoGenerally overbudget projects have other consequences of poor planning such as technical defects. See big dig, F35 helmet annoxia issue.
- katbyte 5y agoThere are better things to spend it on: infrastructure, education, health, space, and more
- Grakel 5y agoGovernment money isn't finite and doesn't get shuffled from budget to budget in some sort of rational discussion. It's all just numbers and politics.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoIt could go to a Basic Income for all low income Americans.
- Grakel 5y agoThey could do both. Government money isn't finite, that's my point. They certainly would never have a meeting where they said, ok we cut a trillion from the military, what should we move it to? It doesn't work like that.
- Telemakhos 5y agoIt could also be returned to the taxpayers. Instead of inventing new ways to spend money, the government could just stop taking so much from the people who earned it.
- coliveira 5y agoFirst of all is money spent on equipment to kill people. Second, it's money that is not spent on things that really matter, like education, health care, green energy, etc.
- lupire 5y agovery little of it is actual weapons thar sboot at people. most is detterence, and thr actual killing things are cheap like drones.
- gshubert17 5y agoExactly: US President Eisenhower said in a 1953 speech, Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercrossofiron.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercr...
- Grakel 5y agoMoney spent on equipment to discourage China from killing people.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoIt's taking money away from the people who sacrificed a part of their life for it and giving it to people who place zero importance on it.... It's literally parasitic. Are you serious?
- Grakel 5y agoTaxes don't equal government expenditure. It's not a inflow-outflow system.
- gumby 5y agoLook up the economist Basquiat: you can raise the GDP by tossing bricks through windows — money will be spent replacing /repairing them which contributes to the GDP. But that same money could have been spent differently on things people like, or invested. These ships, and the structure of military spending, is more like Basquiat’s example.
- magicsmoke 5y agoThere's another way to frame that argument. The spike in window repairs and glass demand will incentivize glass factories to invest in technological advancements to make cheaper and better glass. Investments they would not have made otherwise because there wasn't enough demand to spread the fixed investment cost across and make it profitable. After all the windows are repaired, the glass factories still retain their capital investment and technical knowledge, are producing glass cheaper than before, out-competing their counterparts abroad, and maintaining a global technological lead in glass production. Bastiat's parable doesn't account for the sticky effects of capital investment. The glass makers in his stories only replace windows with old techniques and never use the spike in demand as an opportunity for technological development.
- gumby 5y agoIt distorts investment away from the direction people would otherwise prefer to invest in.
- magicsmoke 5y agoThere's a global debate happening today about whether complete free market allocation of investment is best, or whether East Asian state-lead investments into technological advancements is. If the free market was all we need, then why should the government invest into scientific research?
- gumby 5y agoThat debate has gone on since the 17th century at least. Obviously neither extremum is effective.