4 ms·

The surplus came with alot of responsibilities, like policing the world. And that had a hefty price tag... nearly $1 trillion annually. Wasn't much left over fo

The surplus came with alot of responsibilities, like policing the world. And that had a hefty price tag... nearly $1 trillion annually. Wasn't much left over for public transit and free foot massages. I can entertain arguments that it was a bad bargain.

actionfromafar 1y ago
IMHO that's a false dichotomy. The US has the worlds most inefficient health system, which is an incredibly large budget post, most of the money going to middlemen. Besides, it has also benefited from open shipping lanes as much as the rest of the world, if not more.
triceratops 1y ago
"Policing the world" doesn't have to cost that much. Nearly $2tn spent just on the pointless Iraq misadventure. How much public transit and education could that have funded?
- dgfitz 1y ago
  > How much public transit and education could that have funded? Given the current costs for NYC to expand its subway, about 500 miles of track given the current costs per mile.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    That sounds great actually.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    The entire NYC subway, the busiest system in the country, has 660 miles of track. NYC has a GDP of $1.3tn and the subway system has a big hand in making that possible. So that's actually a pretty good RoI. It'll go a lot further (haha!) in a less expensive city. But that also goes back to the original comment about spending the surplus wisely.
- rangestransform 1y ago
  Policing the world is a jobs program for all of the unionized factory workers at lockmart and Boeing that would otherwise be, at best, trades workers earning a more modest wage. We can thank the MIC’s placement of factories in strategic congressional districts for that
wpm 1y ago
There is plenty to pay for public transit, education, and healthcare. There always has been, locked away in stock market value owned by precious few people. On healthcare, we already pay way more than any other developed nation for far worse outcomes, we're literally WASTING money on it to make some shitheel health insurance CEOs a little richer. FOH with this woe is us bullshit, boo hoo it's so hard to police the world (something we also overpay for). We could have been taking care of each other the entire time, there is nothing stopping us but lies and attitudes like yours the lies beget.
- beeflet 1y ago
  >health insurance CEOs a little richer. To be honest, I don't even think it's just the people at the top profiting. The whole system is like designed to create as many useless jobs as possible. If I want to get a blood test, I have to do like 4-5 referrals before I can just get my test done. If I want a diagnosis, I have to wait a week to talk with a doctor who is going to push sponsored medication anyways. I'm better off doing the research myself and buying drugs through telehealth service or the greymarket. You would be better off just having a free market where consumers figure out what doctors/nurses/pharmaceuticals are safe on their own, and you strip intellectual property protections and legal requirements for prescription drugs. It shouldn't cost a million dollars to get an x-ray. It does because there are high legal barriers that allow rent-seekers to creep in.
atoav 1y ago
Yeah, only that if you spend more per capita on health care than comparable national, not less. So the argument of "We can't do $A like other countries do, because of $B" doesn't really fly if you spend more to get a worse outcome. The problem the US has in regards to healthcare, that the goal of its system isn't to supply its population with the best quality healthcare for the lowest amount of cost — the goal instead is to allow all kind of market actors and middle man to make a profit without the population revolting.
fatbird 1y ago
That $1T isn't an expense. Part of it is operational, meaning keepiong boats and bases running around the world, which earns the US yet more influence and soft power and unearned media. Much of it is acquisition costs, meaning $ going into a US defense tech for research and procurement of the most advanced hardware and maintenance of those industrial bases to do so; that hardware then gets sold to allies, among other things. Saudi Arabie just purchased $142 billion of US hardware. Playing "world cop" is a net win for America, not a cost it bears.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Just because there is a soft power upside does not mean that it is a net positive. I often see this stated without any form of quantification. It is essentially a matter of faith.
  - beeflet 1y ago
    The net upside is maintaining the market that allows for a trade deficit in the first place. The problem is really that the two aren't directly linked. If you operate at a trade deficit, you don't need to manufacture at home. But if you can't manufacture at home, you can't build war machines efficiently, so you can't be the world police and ensure the market needed to operate at a trade deficit. By defunding the military you're pulling the rug out from under yourself in this sense. I would still agree that it's massively inefficient and needs to be fixed, but the working US-World system would still invest a lot of funding into the military.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      Unfortunately, at some point the people who are trading products for dollar bills will catch on that there's nothing that they can buy with the dollar bills that are worth the value of the products they sent across the ocean. When that happens, people will stop accepting the dollar bills as payment... but by that point, you've hollowed out your manufacturing to such a degree that you can't ever start it back up. So you can't trade for those products (no products of your own to trade), you can't purchase them (your own currency is worthless), You can't purchase them with other nations' currencies (nothing to sell for that), and you can't make the products yourself. But "soft power". We traded long term prosperity for the short term ability to meddle in other people's countries and lives.

actionfromafar 1y ago

IMHO that's a false dichotomy. The US has the worlds most inefficient health system, which is an incredibly large budget post, most of the money going to middlemen. Besides, it has also benefited from open shipping lanes as much as the rest of the world, if not more.

triceratops 1y ago

"Policing the world" doesn't have to cost that much. Nearly $2tn spent just on the pointless Iraq misadventure. How much public transit and education could that have funded?

dgfitz 1y ago
> How much public transit and education could that have funded? Given the current costs for NYC to expand its subway, about 500 miles of track given the current costs per mile.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  That sounds great actually.
- triceratops 1y ago
  The entire NYC subway, the busiest system in the country, has 660 miles of track. NYC has a GDP of $1.3tn and the subway system has a big hand in making that possible. So that's actually a pretty good RoI. It'll go a lot further (haha!) in a less expensive city. But that also goes back to the original comment about spending the surplus wisely.
rangestransform 1y ago
Policing the world is a jobs program for all of the unionized factory workers at lockmart and Boeing that would otherwise be, at best, trades workers earning a more modest wage. We can thank the MIC’s placement of factories in strategic congressional districts for that

wpm 1y ago

There is plenty to pay for public transit, education, and healthcare. There always has been, locked away in stock market value owned by precious few people. On healthcare, we already pay way more than any other developed nation for far worse outcomes, we're literally WASTING money on it to make some shitheel health insurance CEOs a little richer. FOH with this woe is us bullshit, boo hoo it's so hard to police the world (something we also overpay for). We could have been taking care of each other the entire time, there is nothing stopping us but lies and attitudes like yours the lies beget.

beeflet 1y ago
>health insurance CEOs a little richer. To be honest, I don't even think it's just the people at the top profiting. The whole system is like designed to create as many useless jobs as possible. If I want to get a blood test, I have to do like 4-5 referrals before I can just get my test done. If I want a diagnosis, I have to wait a week to talk with a doctor who is going to push sponsored medication anyways. I'm better off doing the research myself and buying drugs through telehealth service or the greymarket. You would be better off just having a free market where consumers figure out what doctors/nurses/pharmaceuticals are safe on their own, and you strip intellectual property protections and legal requirements for prescription drugs. It shouldn't cost a million dollars to get an x-ray. It does because there are high legal barriers that allow rent-seekers to creep in.

atoav 1y ago

Yeah, only that if you spend more per capita on health care than comparable national, not less. So the argument of "We can't do $A like other countries do, because of $B" doesn't really fly if you spend more to get a worse outcome. The problem the US has in regards to healthcare, that the goal of its system isn't to supply its population with the best quality healthcare for the lowest amount of cost — the goal instead is to allow all kind of market actors and middle man to make a profit without the population revolting.

fatbird 1y ago

That $1T isn't an expense. Part of it is operational, meaning keepiong boats and bases running around the world, which earns the US yet more influence and soft power and unearned media. Much of it is acquisition costs, meaning $ going into a US defense tech for research and procurement of the most advanced hardware and maintenance of those industrial bases to do so; that hardware then gets sold to allies, among other things. Saudi Arabie just purchased $142 billion of US hardware. Playing "world cop" is a net win for America, not a cost it bears.

s1artibartfast 1y ago
Just because there is a soft power upside does not mean that it is a net positive. I often see this stated without any form of quantification. It is essentially a matter of faith.
- beeflet 1y ago
  The net upside is maintaining the market that allows for a trade deficit in the first place. The problem is really that the two aren't directly linked. If you operate at a trade deficit, you don't need to manufacture at home. But if you can't manufacture at home, you can't build war machines efficiently, so you can't be the world police and ensure the market needed to operate at a trade deficit. By defunding the military you're pulling the rug out from under yourself in this sense. I would still agree that it's massively inefficient and needs to be fixed, but the working US-World system would still invest a lot of funding into the military.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    Unfortunately, at some point the people who are trading products for dollar bills will catch on that there's nothing that they can buy with the dollar bills that are worth the value of the products they sent across the ocean. When that happens, people will stop accepting the dollar bills as payment... but by that point, you've hollowed out your manufacturing to such a degree that you can't ever start it back up. So you can't trade for those products (no products of your own to trade), you can't purchase them (your own currency is worthless), You can't purchase them with other nations' currencies (nothing to sell for that), and you can't make the products yourself. But "soft power". We traded long term prosperity for the short term ability to meddle in other people's countries and lives.