6 ms·
So much for build back better. Always enough money for war and weapons, while the infrastructure, education, and health systems disintegrate.
by whatnotests2 2y ago
So much for build back better.
Always enough money for war and weapons, while the infrastructure, education, and health systems disintegrate.
- llamaimperative 2y agoWhat suggests that the money approved for infra, education, and health is getting diverted?
- _heimdall 2y agoThe money doesn't have to be diverted. The Pentagon, who regularly fails audits, generally gets whatever they ask Congress for. Throw in concerns of a nuclear arms race and we'll print whatever money they ask for.
- randomdata 2y agoWhat suggests that there is suggestion of it being diverted? The parent claims that the infrastructure is disintegrating even with all of the funding currently being given to it. Said with the implication that more funding for war magically appears when there is threat of war, but not when infrastructure is under threat.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jmoak 2y agoAgreed, on healthcare our government spends ~2x the amount it spends on defense. Medicare: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W824RC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W824RC1 ($0.99t) Medicaid: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W729RC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W729RC1 ($0.95t) Defense: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FDEFX https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FDEFX ($1.048t) What should a good ratio be?
- bobthepanda 2y agoit would be nice if America could do the minimum that the rest of NATO theoretically agree to and spend just 2% of GDP on defense. Right now that figure is 2.9%.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- baerrie 2y agoUnfortunately among higher order mammals one being above the rest usually is one of the few ways to have peace.
- hollerith 2y agoConsider that most industrialized countries would have nukes by now if the US hadn't guaranteed to come to their aid if they are attacked by a nuclear power in exchange for their not trying to acquire nukes.
- rqtwteye 2y agoWe also spend around way more per capita on health care than any other country. I bet both health care and defense expenditures could be reduced significantly if they were run with at least a little efficiency and less profit making by middlemen.
- deciplex 2y agoThat would defeat the purpose of our health care system and military-industrial complex.
- tptacek 2y agoDepending on who you categorize as "middlemen", this health analysis is a common misconception: our outsized health care spending comes from providers, not insurers/payers. We just do more procedures (we lead the world in making procedures doable quickly and outpatient-ly) and pay our medical staff more.
- kube-system 2y agoFederal spending on transportation, education, health, and social services outnumbers defense spending by over 4 to 1. https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function And in my opinion, compared to the first half of the 20th century, pax Americana is well worth that 13.5% chunk of the budget. War is also bad for health.
- feedforward 2y ago"Defense" spending (the US is currently involved in "defense" by its involvement in bombing Yemen, Gaza, Russia and other countries) is considered very narrowly - you don't count veteran's benefits as military spending. You don't count interest on the debt for past military spending as military spending. You don't consider international affairs spending, very wrapped up in military spending, as military spending. You don't count NASA's military work as military spending.
- kube-system 2y agoEverything is military spending if you consider anything two or three degrees removed as military spending.
- whatnotests2 2y agoTHIS.
- kurthr 2y agoWell, technically those might be negative spending to the extent that they are arms sales not offset by any subsidy or aid. Certainly, the cost of disposal for many of the older shells would have been higher than sending them off to Ukraine has been. Even the M4/M16 5.56 (223 cal) is now being replaced with the XM7 using 6.68mm ammo so that will all also have to be disposed of too (likely with the weapons). I don't want them on the streets here, and I'm not sure some wouldn't come back wherever in the world they're sent. Arguing whether sending weapons to a government and if it is justified is a reasonable conversation, but trying to claim they are particularly expensive (when they aren't) dilutes that point. Further, NASA's military work is paid for from the defense (or black) budgets not the publicly available ones so I'm not sure that's a great argument either.
- tptacek 2y agoA reminder that "money for weapons" is also a major 50-states jobs program; there are reasons having nothing to do with bellicosity that kind of spending is sticky.
- adrianN 2y agoYou could take that same money and fund jobs to build things that don't kill people
- tptacek 2y agoYes, and you would end up firing hundreds of thousands of voters. By and large Americans don't even agree with the overt merits of the policy you're proposing, but even if they did.
- deciplex 2y agoWhy is it that "creative destruction" is so celebrated here right up until you propose eliminating jobs that murder people (either in the direct manner, or indirectly by needlessly denying them care etc) and replacing them with jobs that don't do that. Suddenly all that "people will adapt, people will need to retrain" shit goes right out the window in place of "won't somebody please think of number?"
- tptacek 2y agoI don't personally care, though unlike you I believe that the median United States citizen does benefit from our global military supremacy and that it's probably worth what we're spending to maintain that position. But the point I'm making is more banal than that: people do not like "creative destruction". We have a lot of stupid weapons programs that aren't doing anything meaningful to preserve our ability to project force; we keep spending money on them because voters in the districts they're built would freak out at the prospect of their towns being gutted. That's not a normative claim! As is so often the case, the real, useful answer to all of this stuff is that it simply isn't up to message board nerds like us to make these calls, and our axiomatically-derived top-down economic plans are worth all the paper they're not printed on. My point is simply that there's more to military spending than a values statement about military force.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoThe US spends a trillion dollars per year on education, an astounding number compared to other countries even on a per capita basis. There are few issues that would be solved by diverting military spending to other already indefensibly bloated budgets. It isn't an argument of should the government be spending this money on something else but more if the government should be spending this money at all. Particularly given the budget deficits.