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This is a drop in the bucket compared to military spending; apparently no one cares?
by anonzzzies 2y ago
This is a drop in the bucket compared to military spending; apparently no one cares?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- slantedview 2y agoIn a political system shaped by lobbyists, those without lobbyists go without.
- MrLeap 2y agoStartup idea: like reddit, but upvoting costs money and all the posts are tickets for paid staff lobbyists. Trust/transparency would be the tricky problems.
- tptacek 2y agoNon-defense US federal spending dwarfs defense spending, for whatever it's worth. The US is essentially a benefits management firm with a standing army.
- iancmceachern 2y agoI dont know how we can know this. My understanding is that the pentagon has an unknown total budget. Once you wrap up all the CIA, NSA type stuff too I'm not sure how we can know this?
- tptacek 2y agoThe DoD has a "black budget", but that's money you don't get a breakdown of, not money you don't know about: it's voted in by Congress as a blind total. Total spending is profoundly tilted towards non-defense spending (even more so if you include state and local government spending, but that's not germane to the Forest Service) --- the amount of "secret" money going to defense, if it existed, would have to be economy-breaking to alter the balance.
- feedforward 2y agoNot really. When counting not just DoD spending but DoE nuclear weapons spending, NASA (now Space Force) and satellite spending, VA and veteran's benefits, interest on past military spending and so forth, military spending takes up a large chunk of the pie. It is only small if defined very, very narrowly (which is what they, and you, do).
- AlotOfReading 2y agoNASA is a separate agency from space force. The former is directly under the President as an independent agency while the latter is under the DoD.
- tptacek 2y agoDefense benefits and pensions are a tiny fraction of mandatory federal spending.
- skhunted 2y agoThey call it mandatory spending but this is a misnomer. When you pay into a pension system and pre-pay for insurance it’s expected that you receive the benefits you paid for. That it is government run is irrelevant to how it should be viewed. Social Security is not an expense of the government. It’s a government run pension system.
- vundercind 2y agoFor this reason it’s pretty unusual to see an analysis of the US budget aimed at policy nerds that includes Social Security. Almost all serious discussion about it excludes that. You tend to only see it included when the full total of money disbursed by the government from any pot and for any purpose is expressly relevant (it’s usually not) or in writing that is not aimed at policy nerds, but at everyday voters (to convince them whatever batshit crazy spending we’re doing in the author’s preferred non-social-spending item isn’t bad after all, usually)
- lolinder 2y agoIf anyone is curious, there's a good breakdown here: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Social Security, Health, and Medicare alone account for 49% of the budget, to National Defense's 13%.
- csomar 2y ago18% is more accurate as it includes veteran care.
- blitzar 2y agoIt is a moral imperative to include the cost of looking after the people you feed through a meat grinder once you have ground them up and spat them out in the calculation of how much the machine costs.
- creato 2y agoA big chunk of that healthcare would just be under Medicare/Medicaid anyways though, so it doesn't seem reasonable to ascribe all veteran health spending as military.
- Tostino 2y agoIt does when a huge portion of the injuries military personnel sustain are quite different from the genteel public, and wouldn't have happened if that person decided to be a teacher instead.
- red-iron-pine 2y agoTo put a finer point on it, VA care for Irag+Afghanistan is expected to drive the cost of these two wars to something in the ballpark of $2 Trillion USD. Like I went to Iraq twice and I'm only 40. They're gonna be covering me for probably another ~40 years, and the US is owned lock and stock by healthcare companies that sure as hell aren't going to lower the costs of medicines.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
- skhunted 2y agoSocial Security is not an expense of the government. Well, for the most part. It’s a pension plan that people pay into. Similarly for Medicare. People pay into it before retirement. Then at a certain age they get this insurance benefit. Private insurers will not insure the elderly. If anything you should characterize this as a private insurance industry subsidy. It allows insurers to offload their riskiest clients to another entity. Your characterization is badly wrong. EDIT: Until recently Social Security took in more money than it paid out. It’s run by the government so its expenditures are counted as a budget item. But it is a sound pension system whose defects can be easily fixed if a certain party would actually govern. It is not the largest expense by the government. It’s just that it is a government run pension system. It’s not an entitlement either.
- analog31 2y agoMoney is fungible. The government takes in money, and pays it out. Money paid out is called an expense. But to be clear, I favor social security, and I agree with your other points about it.
- skhunted 2y agoIf the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could. If it did this, keeping in place Social Security “taxes” that would then go to the new corporation, we would not consider Social Security a budget expense. Being government owned or private doesn’t matter in terms of how the expenditures should be considered. This is why Social Security and Medicare are not part of the normal budget negotiations at budget time. These are obligations that need to be paid to the people who paid for them.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could No, it couldn’t. There were promises made with the full faith and credit of the United Stares. > obligations that need to be paid to the people who paid for them Everyone pays taxes. Social Security and Medicare obligations are treated differently because of politics. Otherwise, they’re like any other expense: the Congress can amend them at will. (As is currently expected, e.g. with Social Security benefits beginning to be curtailed from 2035.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nucleardog 2y agoSeems kinda like we're talking about my $1,300/mo budget for candles and you're pointing out "yeah, but your mortgage is $5,000/mo, for whatever it's worth; you're basically just a homeowner with a candle budget". Social security is, even if not legally then practically, a debt repayment. Defense spending is largely discretionary.
- tptacek 2y agoSocial security is not a debt repayment and the point I'm making would stand if you took it out of the budget, even though you shouldn't. Defense spending isn't even the majority of discretionary spending.
- nucleardog 2y ago> Social security is, even if not legally then practically, a debt repayment. How is it not practically a debt repayment? The common understanding is "you pay money in, you get money back when you retire". Do you think you could cut it without widespread backlash? Do you think you could cancel it without borderline revolt? "It's not a debt. It's just that if you don't pay me I'll kill you." Is there any practical difference from a debt?
- tptacek 2y agoYou pay a tax. You receive a benefit. The benefit's connection to your tax payment is nominal at best. It's one of many direct benefits the government awards, none of which are debts.
- nucleardog 2y agoYou replied to none of the questions I asked.
- jerkstate 2y agoIt would be more accurate to call it insurance than a debt, because the tax is called "Federal Insurance Contribution Act." The insurance product that Social Security is most similar to is an annuity, a contract that specifies that you pay in and then the insurance pays out when you reach a certain age. I would be pretty upset if I paid into an annuity plan my whole adult working life and then the insurer reneged on their obligation. Social security not paying out would be even more upsetting, because you're legally obligated to pay for it, whereas buying an annuity is a choice.
- nightski 2y agoMilitary spending is being superseded by interest payments on debt. We need to tackle the deficit.
- analog31 2y agoTackling the deficit, in the absence of a realistic way to raise taxes, is why the Forest Service is losing 2400 jobs.
- nightski 2y agoAgreed, although seeing as the economic plans laid out by both current presidential candidates would result in an increase in deficit the political will to do so does not seem to be there. In reality it feels like the spending is just being shifted elsewhere.
- analog31 2y agoAs I recall, two presidents in history have submitted balanced budgets to Congress: Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- krferriter 2y agoFor everything that isn't social security, medicare, or the military, continued federal support requires explicitly convincing enough members of Congress that it is important so that they will campaign in their committees for even basic inflation-level funding increases to be included in the next budget. National Park Service has a backlog of billions of dollars in maintenance it knows it needs to do across the US, but Congress won't give them the money to do it. They'll toss $18 billion to Israel though even while Israeli politicians and the Israeli public and Israeli lobbying groups in the US criticizes the US for not being generous or supportive enough and gets involved in domestic US politics. We need a serious talk about the strings our very generous foreign aid needs to come attached to.
- datavirtue 2y agoI support Israel, but it's time for us to pull the reigns.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> We need a serious talk about the strings our very generous foreign aid needs to come attached to You’re exemplifying the problem. NPS and foreign aid funding aren’t competing with each other. They’re both rounding errors in the grand scheme. But everyone has their hobby horse that they have or must cut so we get some oscillation.