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The headline price is an artifact of congressional accounting. It is an estimate of the 10-year cost. The MSM uses that number when their corporate masters wan
by _jal 5y ago
The headline price is an artifact of congressional accounting. It is an estimate of the 10-year cost.
The MSM uses that number when their corporate masters want you to be against the spending. They actually explain why it is a fairly meaningless number when they want the spending.
- nerdponx 5y ago$100bn/year is still an astronomical amount of money.
- wolfram74 5y ago100E9/300E6~=333 that's ~2 netflix subscriptions per US citizen. Outlandish!
- nerdponx 5y agoYes, everything at the scale of 300+ million people all seeking a comfortable modern living standard is outlandish. That's my point!
- Brian_K_White 5y agoIt's $300 per person per year. Even factoring that I will have to cover for several other people who can't pay, all I say is, well we have an astronomical amount of infrastructure and it's been neglected for decades, and, as long as I get something for it. I don't care that it's 100bn, that was going to be collected and spent on something regardless. I care far more about what it's spent on. Maybe it will add incentive down the road to close the loopholes on the Bezos's of the world a little.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI like your optimism that it was going to be covered anyways and that you'll get something out of it
- ralfn 5y agoFor a person: yes. For 330 million people: no. To compare: the US occupation of Afghanistan cost about this much per year, but that budget has been freed up. I live in Europe and I see the same lack of basic understanding of finance. People claim the EU costs a lot of money. And it does. But not per person. Not at all. And any reporter that talks about macro economic numbers like this without normalizing it per capita is either an idiot or is intentionally manipulating.
- garmaine 5y ago> To compare: the US occupation of Afghanistan cost about this much per year, but that budget has been freed up. It has not. Do you think we downsized our military after leaving?
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoIt's still a bill authorizing a trillion dollars in spending. Of course it's spread out over time as it's for things that will need money over time rather than all at once. But it's still a trillion dollars.