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The obvious thing to cut is the goddamn military. I’m not even talking about cutting things off to make the military weaker in a world that largely doesn’t need

The obvious thing to cut is the goddamn military. I’m not even talking about cutting things off to make the military weaker in a world that largely doesn’t need a powerful military. I’m talking about actual insane over spending. But even Elon couldn’t do that. I don’t know if any president can. Something is deeply wrong here.

shigawire 1y ago
>Even Elon I think that is the wrong framing. I'd be more surprised if someone with no real government experience has much success with that venture. I'd rather have someone with years and years of experience with DoD budgets and the expertise to prioritize the right cuts.
watwut 1y ago
Of course a guy with zero knowledge of how things work, but a lot of confidence and ideaologically fueeled ressentment could not cut spending. Then again, goal was to destroy and harm and that was achieved.
tracker1 1y ago
I'm all for cutting the military spending to less than half... that said, it's still much smaller than entitlement spending at this point... there needs to be a lot of effort to reduce fraud and increase competition in medical/pharma space. Why there aren't licensing and dual sourcing requirements for medications is beyond me. Let alone allowing commercials that nowhere else in the world allows.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Pharma companies already aren't very profitable and it's getting worse and worse every year (called "Eroom's Law" for the reverse of Moore's). The US's uniquely fucked healthcare situation is thanks to 1) administrative overhead of tons of competitive and extremely complex distinct health plans, and 2) the labor cost of doctors, much of which gets captured by the extremely consolidated health systems that employ them. The US needs to dump money into training a lot more doctors. Not by subsidizing student loans, but by directly creating public medical schools that train doctors on the cheap and let them escape with no student debt.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    I'd settle for not capping residency slots and in return allowing doctors to own hospitals.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Residency slots are not capped. Common misconception. Private parties are welcome to create and fund residency slots if they want. They typically don’t because it’s a totally nonsense investment — perfect example of a problem that private investment markets would fail to solve. The “cap” refers to the fact that CMS doesn’t fund an infinite number of residency slots. So you and I are saying similar things, which is that the government needs to fund more MD training.
johnsmith1840 1y ago
Watching the events over the past several years and thinking we need to reduce military spending is a wild take. Even the EU and Japan have massive increased amount of additional spend into military. The free world is under WW2 levels of threat. Hundreds of millions of people are going to perish unless deterence works.
- kjellsbells 1y ago
  Wanting to reduce spending does not automatically mean reduced force capability, nor reduced deterrence. The challenge is that the next war wont look like the last one or the one before that. So you might decide that instead of sinking a gazillion dollars on a 25-year project to build some fighter jets or littoral ships, you spend half a gazillion dollars on cyber and drones. Problem is that states and their leaders (politicians, business, resident voices) find it emotionally and politically hard to pivot from building X in state A to building Y in state B. Right now, everyone is studying the lessons of the Ukraine war. That certainly should be looked at and learned from (build drones at mass scale, say) but it would also be possible to draw entirely incorrect conclusions for the next war. As a land war in Europe, Ukraine shows us the importance of essentially 1900s-style tools: shells and ordnance by the million. Tanks. Etc. If (god forbid) someone got into a hot war with China, the needs would be entirely different.
  - johnsmith1840 1y ago
    I don't disagree but clearly not what the op was trying to say. To your points. Isreal just leveled iran without a single plane shot down, tech still dominates. The F35 is a terrifying weapon and Irans drone and missle attacks were ineffective. Ukraine shows us what two poor and land locked countries fight like.
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    It’s always tempting to look at the Russian assault on Ukraine and “learn lessons” but you also have to remember that NATO countries aren’t Ukraine and Russia isn’t China. The use of drones by both sides is in part because neither side could get air superiority, Ukraine because it barely had an air force and Russia because..well decades of corruption. If the US had invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have lost in under a month, the insurgency would be horrific and make Iraq look mild but militarily Russia was a complete basket case. The lesson we should take is that ammunition stockpiles evaporate faster than you expect always in a full scale war, this has been true all the way back to the invention of the bow though.
johannes1234321 1y ago
> But even Elon couldn’t do that. Why should he? Who pays for Starlink? Who pays for rocket launches with satellite cargo? Who pays for advanced vehicle research? Musk is benefiting of that by a lot. Where he cuts is oversight over his business and areas where one can provide commercial products.

shigawire 1y ago

>Even Elon I think that is the wrong framing. I'd be more surprised if someone with no real government experience has much success with that venture. I'd rather have someone with years and years of experience with DoD budgets and the expertise to prioritize the right cuts.

watwut 1y ago

Of course a guy with zero knowledge of how things work, but a lot of confidence and ideaologically fueeled ressentment could not cut spending. Then again, goal was to destroy and harm and that was achieved.

tracker1 1y ago

I'm all for cutting the military spending to less than half... that said, it's still much smaller than entitlement spending at this point... there needs to be a lot of effort to reduce fraud and increase competition in medical/pharma space. Why there aren't licensing and dual sourcing requirements for medications is beyond me. Let alone allowing commercials that nowhere else in the world allows.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Pharma companies already aren't very profitable and it's getting worse and worse every year (called "Eroom's Law" for the reverse of Moore's). The US's uniquely fucked healthcare situation is thanks to 1) administrative overhead of tons of competitive and extremely complex distinct health plans, and 2) the labor cost of doctors, much of which gets captured by the extremely consolidated health systems that employ them. The US needs to dump money into training a lot more doctors. Not by subsidizing student loans, but by directly creating public medical schools that train doctors on the cheap and let them escape with no student debt.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  I'd settle for not capping residency slots and in return allowing doctors to own hospitals.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Residency slots are not capped. Common misconception. Private parties are welcome to create and fund residency slots if they want. They typically don’t because it’s a totally nonsense investment — perfect example of a problem that private investment markets would fail to solve. The “cap” refers to the fact that CMS doesn’t fund an infinite number of residency slots. So you and I are saying similar things, which is that the government needs to fund more MD training.

johnsmith1840 1y ago

Watching the events over the past several years and thinking we need to reduce military spending is a wild take. Even the EU and Japan have massive increased amount of additional spend into military. The free world is under WW2 levels of threat. Hundreds of millions of people are going to perish unless deterence works.

kjellsbells 1y ago
Wanting to reduce spending does not automatically mean reduced force capability, nor reduced deterrence. The challenge is that the next war wont look like the last one or the one before that. So you might decide that instead of sinking a gazillion dollars on a 25-year project to build some fighter jets or littoral ships, you spend half a gazillion dollars on cyber and drones. Problem is that states and their leaders (politicians, business, resident voices) find it emotionally and politically hard to pivot from building X in state A to building Y in state B. Right now, everyone is studying the lessons of the Ukraine war. That certainly should be looked at and learned from (build drones at mass scale, say) but it would also be possible to draw entirely incorrect conclusions for the next war. As a land war in Europe, Ukraine shows us the importance of essentially 1900s-style tools: shells and ordnance by the million. Tanks. Etc. If (god forbid) someone got into a hot war with China, the needs would be entirely different.
- johnsmith1840 1y ago
  I don't disagree but clearly not what the op was trying to say. To your points. Isreal just leveled iran without a single plane shot down, tech still dominates. The F35 is a terrifying weapon and Irans drone and missle attacks were ineffective. Ukraine shows us what two poor and land locked countries fight like.
- noir_lord 1y ago
  It’s always tempting to look at the Russian assault on Ukraine and “learn lessons” but you also have to remember that NATO countries aren’t Ukraine and Russia isn’t China. The use of drones by both sides is in part because neither side could get air superiority, Ukraine because it barely had an air force and Russia because..well decades of corruption. If the US had invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have lost in under a month, the insurgency would be horrific and make Iraq look mild but militarily Russia was a complete basket case. The lesson we should take is that ammunition stockpiles evaporate faster than you expect always in a full scale war, this has been true all the way back to the invention of the bow though.

johannes1234321 1y ago

> But even Elon couldn’t do that. Why should he? Who pays for Starlink? Who pays for rocket launches with satellite cargo? Who pays for advanced vehicle research? Musk is benefiting of that by a lot. Where he cuts is oversight over his business and areas where one can provide commercial products.