4 ms·
A very small nitpick but the discretionary budget of the US is far smaller than most realize - in 2024 it was only 1.75 trillion. And notably, most military sp
by ANewFormation 2y ago
A very small nitpick but the discretionary budget of the US is far smaller than most realize - in 2024 it was only 1.75 trillion.
And notably, most military spending is discretionary, so the remaining funds for basically all the neat dynamic things government can do is less than a trillion.
A million is of course still a rounding error at e.g. $900 billion, but it adds up really fast, especially when you consider that these are ongoing costs.
- 20after4 2y agoI'm having a hard time taking this seriously: "only 1.75 trillion" What a ludicrous statement. I mean, I know inflation has been bad but not THAT bad. One or two trillion dollars is an absolutely enormous amount of money.
- Ekaros 2y agoIt is only what a few thousand per citizen? That is pocket money for FAANG engineers so not a big deal...
- emchammer 2y agoWe're not all FAANG engineers.
- pfannkuchen 2y agoSeems like sarcasm and possibly a comment on so-called luxury beliefs.
- ANewFormation 2y agoHaha, yeah I should have put quotes around "only" but you have to keep in mind that this ~900billion that remains is the entire government budget for everything besides stuff like medicare, social security, and so on. When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error. But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion. But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt. It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.