4 ms·

Yes, we should gut our military spending which would fund all the important stuff

sidhuko 5y ago
Better learn chinese then.
ericmay 5y ago
I'm a big fan of really reducing our military in size/budget but I think this is an easy one to pick on but once you start peeling back layers it gets more and more difficult. Personally I'd rather phase out programs like Social Security that I'll never see a dime of yet have to pay for, and/or combine multiple programs into a UBI of sorts. But then once you start talking about these things (like hey let's get rid of the TSA or the military) you start to realize... they are jobs programs and what are you going to do with so many people out of work? Will they start tech companies? Beats me. At least the military enforces the Petrodollar system which benefits you (assuming you're an American) so it's not like it's just all sunk cost or something. Outside of the general "no" from some people w.r.t universal health care I think that's another reason the federal government has been so unproductive in just making it happen. You going to fire all of those people and completely re-tool the economy? It's not that easy. But also the military while a large portion of the budget isn't that crazy relative to what we're doing. Should we pull out of Germany, Japan, and South Korea? Only sell weapons? Should we pull forces out of the Pacific and let China conquer Taiwan (or unify depending on your perspective)? I think it starts to get very complicated, very quickly. -edit- A quick tangent unrelated to your comment is that we've been trained to assume that all government spending is "waste" which is kind of irritating. Items like the infrastructure bill (or at least components of it at a minimum) can be viewed as investments with ROI instead.
adventured 5y ago
Unfortunately it wouldn't remotely begin to scratch the surface of funding our spending issues. The US is facing perma trillion dollar annual budget deficits, even with tax hikes. You could reduce our military spending to a reasonable 2% of GDP - ~$450 billion - and the difference wouldn't even cover half of our debt interest per year at this point. The US probably needs to be spending $150-$200 billion on additional annual infrastructure spending at this point, for at least a decade. Entitlements or healthcare? Throwing an extra $100 billion at those per year is a drop in the bucket ($100b = ~2.6% of US healthcare spending per year). For 20 years spending growth has been far outpacing economic growth, it has been plainly unsustainable for a long time. Now we're putting everything on the global reserve USD credit card. You can't keep growing spending at 7-8% while your economy grows at half that rate or less - unless you're willing to go the currency debasement route, which is what they've chosen thus far.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
That's about ten percent of spending. The social safety net (the important stuff) is already most spending: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 Cutting military spending to politicians usually means something else, like cutting benefits to warriors who've already served (thus not really military spending).

Better learn chinese then.

I'm a big fan of really reducing our military in size/budget but I think this is an easy one to pick on but once you start peeling back layers it gets more and more difficult. Personally I'd rather phase out programs like Social Security that I'll never see a dime of yet have to pay for, and/or combine multiple programs into a UBI of sorts. But then once you start talking about these things (like hey let's get rid of the TSA or the military) you start to realize... they are jobs programs and what are you going to do with so many people out of work? Will they start tech companies? Beats me. At least the military enforces the Petrodollar system which benefits you (assuming you're an American) so it's not like it's just all sunk cost or something. Outside of the general "no" from some people w.r.t universal health care I think that's another reason the federal government has been so unproductive in just making it happen. You going to fire all of those people and completely re-tool the economy? It's not that easy. But also the military while a large portion of the budget isn't that crazy relative to what we're doing. Should we pull out of Germany, Japan, and South Korea? Only sell weapons? Should we pull forces out of the Pacific and let China conquer Taiwan (or unify depending on your perspective)? I think it starts to get very complicated, very quickly. -edit- A quick tangent unrelated to your comment is that we've been trained to assume that all government spending is "waste" which is kind of irritating. Items like the infrastructure bill (or at least components of it at a minimum) can be viewed as investments with ROI instead.

adventured 5y ago

Unfortunately it wouldn't remotely begin to scratch the surface of funding our spending issues. The US is facing perma trillion dollar annual budget deficits, even with tax hikes. You could reduce our military spending to a reasonable 2% of GDP - ~$450 billion - and the difference wouldn't even cover half of our debt interest per year at this point. The US probably needs to be spending $150-$200 billion on additional annual infrastructure spending at this point, for at least a decade. Entitlements or healthcare? Throwing an extra $100 billion at those per year is a drop in the bucket ($100b = ~2.6% of US healthcare spending per year). For 20 years spending growth has been far outpacing economic growth, it has been plainly unsustainable for a long time. Now we're putting everything on the global reserve USD credit card. You can't keep growing spending at 7-8% while your economy grows at half that rate or less - unless you're willing to go the currency debasement route, which is what they've chosen thus far.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago

That's about ten percent of spending. The social safety net (the important stuff) is already most spending: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 Cutting military spending to politicians usually means something else, like cutting benefits to warriors who've already served (thus not really military spending).