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US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low
- ofslidingfeet 3y agoMaybe instead of hiring private contractors to invent new propulsion systems and then conceal them from the public good, we should give some of our ~$600 billion military budget to these agencies.
- xyzelement 3y agoI am curious, let's say we wound down the military and gave all the money to something else... what do you think would immediately happen to us right after?
- RangerScience 3y ago(not OP) Defense contractors would start pulling out the cost-saving technologies, etc that they've been sitting on to win bids, now that there's less money in the pot. Cost-plus contracts are whack, man. Source: Way back when, worked in industrial augmented reality, and some colleagues came from defense (ship building) because of exactly this issue. Their prior employer had (quietly) pioneered various uses of AR in ship assembly, which drastically reduced costs, but wasn't actually deploying it because cost-saving actually reduces their profits, so they only actually use them when it comes time to win bids. Pretty sure you're fishing for "we get attacked" tho, which I neither agree with, nor have the background to coherently argue against.
- ofslidingfeet 3y agoI wouldn't be in favor of winding down the military. I would be in favor of giving private contractors a choice between subjecting themselves to meaningful oversight or we can reallocate their funding to entities that will.
- orangepurple 3y agoLiterally nothing. America is armed to the teeth. If the government deputized and allowed citizen militias to patrol its borders, there would be very low risk of invasion. Any invasion force would face tremendous logistical problems and irregular warfare by a well armed populace. Simply put, nobody can invade and control America. We would see a repeat of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAwesome - so we would live in a mad max world fighting irregular warfare across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, instead of developing open source software and playing video games? I think I’d rather be conquered if that’s the alternative and go back to playing video games and developing open source software.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoTV used to be the opiate of the masses. Now it's video games and social media.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAnd open source software.
- rhcom2 3y agoHow does a populace with small arms defend against a cruise missile? A bomber? A submarine? Certainly there would be irregular war akin to any of the irregular warfare the US military has faced and control might never be completely established, but it wouldn't have to be for it to be the end of the US as we know it.
- orangepurple 3y agoYou don't. You pull a North Vietnam and never surrender to the occupation forces. Eventually the enemy cannot afford to sustain an occupation and withdraws. America has so many more guns than any other country on earth and people intelligent enough to use them well that an invasion force has NO CHANCE of success in the medium to long term. Never underestimate the amount of power and influence a small group of people with rifles and irregular warfare tactics can wield. Especially locals that know every square inch of their backyards by heart. Look no further than Ukraine for a recent example, which is somehow hanging on for over two years mostly with light arms, almost no training, while completely outgunned. America has geography strongly in its favor except Alaska. A successful adversary would need to fragment and manufacture American allegiances with divide and conquer tactics to succeed.
- stetrain 3y agoSomeone suggestions diverting some wasteful spending from the military and you jump to winding down the military and giving all of its money to something else?
- henry2023 3y agoOptimizing the DoD is very different from having all the money going to something else. To stop funding overseas wars as one of many many more example shouldn’t affect our ability to protect our country
- rl3 3y ago>Maybe instead of hiring private contractors to invent new propulsion systems and then conceal them from the public good, ... Citation needed.
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoThe official budget for 2023 was $773 B with ~$350 B going to contractors. There are multiple elements to issuing grants. It's not simply moving money around from one line item to another. If agencies have been gutted or don't have the budget, then can't write requests for grant proposals or can't offer what they don't have.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI agree, this is a great time for a peace dividend. The geopolitical situation in Europe and Asia is more stable than ever before. The Soviet Union is gone, NATO seems like an irrelevant relic from the cold war, and China is rapidly liberalizing thanks to free market forces. The rules-based international order has won and history is finally over. Yours truly, Rip Van Winkle.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- peepeepoopoo43 3y ago[flagged]
- roenxi 3y agoBy traditional indicators the US is broke. Debt to GDP is at historic crisis levels, debt service is eclipsing the military budget (though I didn't check if that includes the spending for the war in Ukraine) and it is unclear where the oomph to pay for retirees will come from. The main thing optimists seems to be pinning their hope on is that the authorities can print money and it will all turn out OK. What is the conversation around science funding meant to look like? Spending money on productive investments is a great idea, but the practice of the US government is nowhere near that.
- tonmoy 3y agoDebt to GDP has no meaning as one is a balance and the other is a balance over a time. A better indicator will be Debt to GDP until the year infinity. Same goes for military budget, it’s for a year.
- roenxi 3y agoWhat measure do you want to use? Given that debt has been consistently trending up faster than GDP for a while ... I dunno, couple of decades? ... Debt:GDP until year infinity is also quite concerning (we could reasonably project a ratio of infinity unless policy changes - ie, the US is at crisis levels).
- tonmoy 3y agoI wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. I’d compare my monthly income vs my mortgage payment and my investment incomes. Same goes for the government, divide debt by number of years needed to pay it off including interest subtract the earnings from economic activity and interest earning from giving out loan to other entities and the see if GDP is able to counter that
- roenxi 3y agoI'm not sure what you're wanting to angle for here, that doesn't seem like a specific formula. If you're trying to calculate a single metric it seems to be number of years to pay off the debt? At current trend, that is infinity years. I'm not seeing how it could get worse than that, although no plans to pay back the debt is just business as usual by now. And I suspect the information in your sentence is actually contained in a Debt/GDP ratio (eg, is interest + GDP growth going up faster than debt implies Debt/GDP ratio dropping). > I wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. Pretty sure that is actually a fair way to assess your creditworthiness. I can see the conversation in the bank going "Yo I want $400k", "What is your income?", "$X", "Yea"/"Nay" with some basic due diligence.
- apsec112 3y ago* as a percentage of US GDP, not in terms of actual dollars
- taway1237 3y agoActual dollars are meaningless anyway, I wonder what about inflation adjusted dollars?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]