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Yeah and the military is a third of our budget and no one in politics ever wants to cut that. There’s so much excess spending there we could cut $300 billion a

Yeah and the military is a third of our budget and no one in politics ever wants to cut that. There’s so much excess spending there we could cut $300 billion a year from it and still be the world’s bully. China builds infrastructure in other countries as a carrot to insinuate themselves in global affairs but we just build military bases as a stick. Seems like the former is a little bit better even if both approaches have issues.

jimt1234 2y ago
And, remove the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations. It's out of control. A friend of mine told me her church bought a five-story office building. They dedicated the minimum amount of office space to "religious services", and they rent out the rest of the offices. They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  > They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building. Was a Deacon at a church that bought a strip mall (fire sale price). They had to pay regular taxes on income from the other businesses. Even the church's own thrift and book sales had to collect and pay sales tax. Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud?
  - mikestew 2y ago
    Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud? Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      >Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling. Likely after having passed through several motivated reasoning filters along the way.
  - Loughla 2y ago
    That church is 100% committing tax fraud. One of the non-profit colleges I worked at owned farm ground and buildings they rented out. They had to pay taxes on the rental income.
  - UncleMeat 2y ago
    The point is that churches are exempt from some of the oversight requirements that other tax-exempt charitable organizations have to comply with. This makes it much easier for them to commit fraud.
    - KennyBlanken 2y ago
      Churches don't even have to maintain any financial records for the IRS. They're impossible to audit.
- mooreds 2y ago
  > They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building. That seems fraudulent. I was a member of a non-profit org that owned a building and rented out some of it. We paid no taxes on the parts that were used for the non-profit, but owed property taxes on the rental.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sneak 2y ago
We spend Elon Musk’s entire net worth accumulated over a lifetime on the US military every 75 days or so. We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Executive orders were meant for national emergencies. Apparently we're under threat from everyone from whom we have a trade imbalance, even islands with no humans on them! (And it's not like partisans are locking up Congress to spite him.)
  - exe34 2y ago
    and an even greater threat was from whatever's in people's underwear - that was covered early on [0]. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    We are literally two days away from Trumpers hating penguins because Trumps people are such amateurs they put tariffs on these islands and now the cult has to defend it.
  - chris_wot 2y ago
    You guys are under threat - from your President.
- rgbrenner 2y ago
  that puts musks net worth at 150b. you might want to update your numbers.
- smt88 2y ago
  > We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat. We were in a (physical) proxy war with Russia via Ukraine until very recently, and we are currently in a digital war against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and probably other nation-states. Should this be under the purview of the actual military? I don't know, although that arrangement is effective for Israel's cybersecurity command. Regardless, there is an active need for defense spending now, just not the way we've been spending it.
mulmen 2y ago
22.4% of the US Military budget goes to salaries of military personnel. Civilian contractors are part of the separate operations budget but I can’t find the breakout of their salaries. So there’s a lot of consumer spending and economic activity supported by military spending.
timewizard 2y ago
The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families. The individual agencies collectively spend only around $100b. Likewise the other large fraction of the total budget outside the DoD is healthcare spending. We spend a huge amount of money and we don't seem to have healthcare outcomes which justify these costs. Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. 85% of that money comes from individual tax payers and only 7% from businesses. The system is flailing from top to bottom.
- rgbrenner 2y ago
  Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. Why prefix with "Right now"? It's been roughly 20% since 1975, and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S The other side of that (taxes) has changed much more substantially during that time (lower).
  - timewizard 2y ago
    > Why prefix with "Right now"? I'm probably just a bit older than you might assume. > and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that. Really I was doing a bad job of highlighting this problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S > has changed much more substantially during that time (lower). The burden has shifted /more/ onto individual tax payers and less from business and excise taxes was the particular point I was driving at. It suggests more clearly who actually got those "lower" taxes and why our linked graphs paint a bad future.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families. Imagine the benefits to defense if the US reduced health care costs from the 2x-3x it spends relative to peers. I've thought that would be an appealing way to sell healthcare reform to Republicans.
labster 2y ago
It would be foolish to cut the military now, since the US will soon need it to pacify its 51st state, Canada.
- rangerelf 2y ago
  I don't know if you're being sarcastic or obtuse.
  - linotype 2y ago
    Why not both?
  - labster 2y ago
    From Prof. Tim Snyder, https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point > War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist. > The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself. The US is preparing for war. It’s not a joke.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      I just don't see how states like California would go along with that, not to mention the EU, Russia (because of control over the arctic) or China (maybe Trump gives them the go ahead on Taiwan).
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
To be fair- Hegseth has said he wants to cut 8% a year for five years from the pentagon. I strongly disagree, the military should be getting more money. Now is not the time for cuts. I'm not sure they have the authority to do this anyway they lack power of the purse and all that.
- jmye 2y ago
  > Now is not the time for cuts. Why do you think that? I would think the technological advantage the US military currently has doesn’t need more money to maintain, but maybe I’m missing something.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    25 years of warfare have taken their toll. Most of the airframes are in their twilight years. The Navy is in a conundrum... the surface fleet strategy is probably not strategically sound, and we slowed down submarine production at one point so many of those assets are also aging and in need of maintenance. The Ukraine war is full of learnings that should be driving transformation and investment. Reality is that a rogue billionaire could probably build drones that could threaten strategic military assets in the field. As time goes on, that capability will likely get cheaper and better.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    You are missing: The technological edge is unknown against a near peer. Any edge has a non-zero maintenance cost. Adversaries are not going to stop improving their capabilities so any advantage naturally decays. The US Military directly employs a couple million people. Our current military industrial complex is highly reliant on free trade agreements with allies.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    The US does not have a technological advantage. This is the type of American Exceptionalism that needs to die. If we got into a full-scale war with China, we would lose. A big part of the US military strength is the logistical network with allies that Trump is systematically destroying.
UncleMeat 2y ago
Ah don't worry they'll just cut the history professors at the military academies. That's what we want, an officer class with no media literacy skills or an understanding of the context that they live in. /s, of course.
mhb 2y ago
What do you reckon is the right amount to spend on defense?
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities without hitting DOD civilians or military employees immediately. There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years, if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point. I've seen IT efforts that cost $25-50 million/year and are already 5 years late and delivering no value (no partial version + updates over the years, these are big bang failed Waterfall projects). Probably more by improving how other functions perform and identifying people like a guy I worked with a decade ago who literally slept at his desk all day and never got fired for it (not even a union shop, just supervisors refusing to do their job).
  - mhb 2y ago
    Thanks. Though I was hoping to hear how SequiaHope arrived at his estimate of what the correct level of defense funding should be.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!) DoD before the rise of China (and Russia) could afford to cut back. But China is an enormous problem, and an enormous problem of resources. Wealth drives victory in war more than anything else, except maybe population. Obviously China far exceeds the US and allies in population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy was (much, I think) smaller than the US, and the Warsaw Pact's was smaller than NATOs. By 2050, with four times the population, if China is only half as wealthy as the US per capita, it would have an economy twice as large. The US has never faced a threat like that. DoD already cuts and restricts many programs because they can't afford them. For example, the NGAD fighter plane - the next generation fighter plane, a big deal - faces great uncertainty (despite Trump's showboating) because the US can't really afford it. That's just one program of many. Allies help share the burden, but we are alienating all of them. > There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years Which ones? And programs exist to solve problems - what better ways do you have for solving the problems? The problems don't go away. > if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point We should cancel every late program? Again, what better solutions do you have? Start a new program and lose the progress of the existing one? Now these are all just words backed by suspicions. Give us some reason to believe!
8note 2y ago
military bases are also a carrot. theyre stocks to the neighbors but not the host
Jtsummers 2y ago
The military is not a third of the budget, it's about 13% of spending this FY so far which is a lot, but almost 3x lower than you suggest (closer to 1/8th than 1/3rd).
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  “The budget” and “spending” are not the same things in the federal government.
- nielsbot 2y ago
  Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B. It never stood - what facts and reasons have you provided to support it?
    - nielsbot 2y ago
      For one thing we spend more than the next 9 countries combined. That’s a huge lost opportunity cost. Dollars spent on “defense” are dollars we could spend on healthcare, education, infrastructure, housing, the arts and more. Give me reasons we should spend nearly $1T on our military.
JeremyNT 2y ago
Say what you will about Clinton, but slashing the military budget is what made the math actually work, and lead to a budget surplus. The austerity and efficiency stuff was peanuts in comparison. Clinton's cuts were ultimately only temporary, since the military-industrial complex got fat again in the post 9/11 gold rush. A correction is long overdue. That this isn't really even considered is pretty telling about the real motivations of the current regime.

jimt1234 2y ago

And, remove the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations. It's out of control. A friend of mine told me her church bought a five-story office building. They dedicated the minimum amount of office space to "religious services", and they rent out the rest of the offices. They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building. Was a Deacon at a church that bought a strip mall (fire sale price). They had to pay regular taxes on income from the other businesses. Even the church's own thrift and book sales had to collect and pay sales tax. Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud?
- mikestew 2y ago
  Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud? Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling. Likely after having passed through several motivated reasoning filters along the way.
- Loughla 2y ago
  That church is 100% committing tax fraud. One of the non-profit colleges I worked at owned farm ground and buildings they rented out. They had to pay taxes on the rental income.
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  The point is that churches are exempt from some of the oversight requirements that other tax-exempt charitable organizations have to comply with. This makes it much easier for them to commit fraud.
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    Churches don't even have to maintain any financial records for the IRS. They're impossible to audit.
mooreds 2y ago
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building. That seems fraudulent. I was a member of a non-profit org that owned a building and rented out some of it. We paid no taxes on the parts that were used for the non-profit, but owed property taxes on the rental.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

sneak 2y ago

We spend Elon Musk’s entire net worth accumulated over a lifetime on the US military every 75 days or so. We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Executive orders were meant for national emergencies. Apparently we're under threat from everyone from whom we have a trade imbalance, even islands with no humans on them! (And it's not like partisans are locking up Congress to spite him.)
- exe34 2y ago
  and an even greater threat was from whatever's in people's underwear - that was covered early on [0]. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  We are literally two days away from Trumpers hating penguins because Trumps people are such amateurs they put tariffs on these islands and now the cult has to defend it.
- chris_wot 2y ago
  You guys are under threat - from your President.
rgbrenner 2y ago
that puts musks net worth at 150b. you might want to update your numbers.
smt88 2y ago
> We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat. We were in a (physical) proxy war with Russia via Ukraine until very recently, and we are currently in a digital war against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and probably other nation-states. Should this be under the purview of the actual military? I don't know, although that arrangement is effective for Israel's cybersecurity command. Regardless, there is an active need for defense spending now, just not the way we've been spending it.

mulmen 2y ago

22.4% of the US Military budget goes to salaries of military personnel. Civilian contractors are part of the separate operations budget but I can’t find the breakout of their salaries. So there’s a lot of consumer spending and economic activity supported by military spending.

timewizard 2y ago

The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families. The individual agencies collectively spend only around $100b. Likewise the other large fraction of the total budget outside the DoD is healthcare spending. We spend a huge amount of money and we don't seem to have healthcare outcomes which justify these costs. Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. 85% of that money comes from individual tax payers and only 7% from businesses. The system is flailing from top to bottom.

rgbrenner 2y ago
Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. Why prefix with "Right now"? It's been roughly 20% since 1975, and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S The other side of that (taxes) has changed much more substantially during that time (lower).
- timewizard 2y ago
  > Why prefix with "Right now"? I'm probably just a bit older than you might assume. > and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that. Really I was doing a bad job of highlighting this problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S > has changed much more substantially during that time (lower). The burden has shifted /more/ onto individual tax payers and less from business and excise taxes was the particular point I was driving at. It suggests more clearly who actually got those "lower" taxes and why our linked graphs paint a bad future.
mmooss 2y ago
> The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families. Imagine the benefits to defense if the US reduced health care costs from the 2x-3x it spends relative to peers. I've thought that would be an appealing way to sell healthcare reform to Republicans.

labster 2y ago

It would be foolish to cut the military now, since the US will soon need it to pacify its 51st state, Canada.

rangerelf 2y ago
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or obtuse.
- linotype 2y ago
  Why not both?
- labster 2y ago
  From Prof. Tim Snyder, https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point > War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist. > The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself. The US is preparing for war. It’s not a joke.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    I just don't see how states like California would go along with that, not to mention the EU, Russia (because of control over the arctic) or China (maybe Trump gives them the go ahead on Taiwan).

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

To be fair- Hegseth has said he wants to cut 8% a year for five years from the pentagon. I strongly disagree, the military should be getting more money. Now is not the time for cuts. I'm not sure they have the authority to do this anyway they lack power of the purse and all that.

jmye 2y ago
> Now is not the time for cuts. Why do you think that? I would think the technological advantage the US military currently has doesn’t need more money to maintain, but maybe I’m missing something.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  25 years of warfare have taken their toll. Most of the airframes are in their twilight years. The Navy is in a conundrum... the surface fleet strategy is probably not strategically sound, and we slowed down submarine production at one point so many of those assets are also aging and in need of maintenance. The Ukraine war is full of learnings that should be driving transformation and investment. Reality is that a rogue billionaire could probably build drones that could threaten strategic military assets in the field. As time goes on, that capability will likely get cheaper and better.
- mulmen 2y ago
  You are missing: The technological edge is unknown against a near peer. Any edge has a non-zero maintenance cost. Adversaries are not going to stop improving their capabilities so any advantage naturally decays. The US Military directly employs a couple million people. Our current military industrial complex is highly reliant on free trade agreements with allies.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  The US does not have a technological advantage. This is the type of American Exceptionalism that needs to die. If we got into a full-scale war with China, we would lose. A big part of the US military strength is the logistical network with allies that Trump is systematically destroying.

UncleMeat 2y ago

Ah don't worry they'll just cut the history professors at the military academies. That's what we want, an officer class with no media literacy skills or an understanding of the context that they live in. /s, of course.

mhb 2y ago

What do you reckon is the right amount to spend on defense?

Jtsummers 2y ago
I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities without hitting DOD civilians or military employees immediately. There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years, if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point. I've seen IT efforts that cost $25-50 million/year and are already 5 years late and delivering no value (no partial version + updates over the years, these are big bang failed Waterfall projects). Probably more by improving how other functions perform and identifying people like a guy I worked with a decade ago who literally slept at his desk all day and never got fired for it (not even a union shop, just supervisors refusing to do their job).
- mhb 2y ago
  Thanks. Though I was hoping to hear how SequiaHope arrived at his estimate of what the correct level of defense funding should be.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- mmooss 2y ago
  > I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!) DoD before the rise of China (and Russia) could afford to cut back. But China is an enormous problem, and an enormous problem of resources. Wealth drives victory in war more than anything else, except maybe population. Obviously China far exceeds the US and allies in population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy was (much, I think) smaller than the US, and the Warsaw Pact's was smaller than NATOs. By 2050, with four times the population, if China is only half as wealthy as the US per capita, it would have an economy twice as large. The US has never faced a threat like that. DoD already cuts and restricts many programs because they can't afford them. For example, the NGAD fighter plane - the next generation fighter plane, a big deal - faces great uncertainty (despite Trump's showboating) because the US can't really afford it. That's just one program of many. Allies help share the burden, but we are alienating all of them. > There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years Which ones? And programs exist to solve problems - what better ways do you have for solving the problems? The problems don't go away. > if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point We should cancel every late program? Again, what better solutions do you have? Start a new program and lose the progress of the existing one? Now these are all just words backed by suspicions. Give us some reason to believe!

8note 2y ago

military bases are also a carrot. theyre stocks to the neighbors but not the host

Jtsummers 2y ago

The military is not a third of the budget, it's about 13% of spending this FY so far which is a lot, but almost 3x lower than you suggest (closer to 1/8th than 1/3rd).

snowwrestler 2y ago
“The budget” and “spending” are not the same things in the federal government.
nielsbot 2y ago
Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B. It never stood - what facts and reasons have you provided to support it?
  - nielsbot 2y ago
    For one thing we spend more than the next 9 countries combined. That’s a huge lost opportunity cost. Dollars spent on “defense” are dollars we could spend on healthcare, education, infrastructure, housing, the arts and more. Give me reasons we should spend nearly $1T on our military.

JeremyNT 2y ago

Say what you will about Clinton, but slashing the military budget is what made the math actually work, and lead to a budget surplus. The austerity and efficiency stuff was peanuts in comparison. Clinton's cuts were ultimately only temporary, since the military-industrial complex got fat again in the post 9/11 gold rush. A correction is long overdue. That this isn't really even considered is pretty telling about the real motivations of the current regime.