5 ms·
There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the nat
by dataviz1000 3mo ago
There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for.
What boggles my mind is that I make coffee at home because I'm frugal. I guess it is good the government and DoD are seeking cheaper alternatives also.
My favorite interview question: If I gave you a swarm of autonomous drones, what would you do with them?
There is a group in South Florida who stand watch over turtle nests on the beach to ensure the hatchlings make it to the ocean instead of instinctively moving towards the street lamps or the bright hotels. I would use drones to hover over the nests to detect if the turtles hatch so people don't have to stand there.
What would you do?
- ImPostingOnHN 3mo agoOr we can go even further with the fun thought exercise, by spreading the cost even more: Even $100,000,000,000,000,000 doesn't matter if you evenly distribute it across each atom in the usa.
- FatherOfCurses 3mo ago$3 is still too much and I would rather it go towards paying the debt down.
- jschveibinz 3mo agoSide note: The federal government costs about $19 billion per day to operate based on an annual budget of roughly $7 trillion. So $1 billion is about equal to 4 hour hours of government spending.
- ImPostingOnHN 3mo agoYikes, that is a lot.
- mmooss 3mo ago> The federal government costs about $19 billion per day to operate based on an annual budget of roughly $7 trillion. $7 trillion is not operating expenses. Much goes into assets that are retained decades or more. The Interstate Highway System isn't an operating expense.
- craftkiller 3mo agoEvery mile of road is an operating expense. Looking at a report from NY state: > Based on aggregate highway spending reported in 2009, the average statewide cost of maintaining a lane mile was $13,841. source (pdf): https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/local-government/publications/pdf/highwayspending.pdf https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/local-government/publications/p...
- telotortium 3mo ago> Every mile of road is an operating expense. Has, not is. Clearly you didn’t take Intro to Object-Oriented Programming in CS.
- craftkiller 3mo agoNah, I use rust so every mile implements OperatingExpense.
- pchristensen 3mo agoOperations is about 1/4 of the budget ($1.75T), and half of that is DoD. 60% is payments for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The remaining 15% is debt service.
- Noaidi 3mo agoNow you know why there is war. We have war because the U.S. is failing. Just look at the reversal of the 10 and 30 y bonds over the last 20 years. All the free money that was given to the oligarchs killed our economy.
- dawnerd 3mo agoAnd they’re still on cnbc daily saying rates need to go down to save the us. There’s a guy on right now saying rates need to be lower to save the ai bubble.
- Noaidi 3mo agoYes, save the asset holders, damn the peasants. even Trump said he wants to see housing prices go higher. These people do not care about you. You need to hate them more.
- budsniffer952 3mo agoDo you think the common person benefits from high interest rates? Pray tell, how?
- amanaplanacanal 3mo agoIt helps keep inflation under control, for one thing. For another, it helps prevent billionaires from wasting even more money on boondoggles.
- scottyah 3mo ago> prevent billionaires from wasting even more money on boondoggles This is what you want though? If everyone stops "wasting even more money on boondoggles" there is no innovation, and no jobs if nobody is making more boondoggles.
- xienze 3mo agoIn this particular case I think it's just because Trump can't resist doing every single thing Israel wants.
- mmooss 3mo ago> When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for. (Your share of overall defense spending is ~1,000x higher, of course.) I wish political leaders would express it that way. And you need to include the time factor: $10/year for 10 years differs from $20 for a one-time event. And somehow figure in capital accumulation (as opposed to e.g., consumables) and depreciation. But there are clear, effective ways to communicate it: 'I propose each American spend an average of $80/year for 50 years on this fighter jet program'. 'This moon mission will cost everyone $5/year for 2 years.' To nitpick a little, I think your math is off: There are 350 million Americans, but we need to exclude most children, elderly, etc.
- selimthegrim 3mo agoWould have been nice to do that in Lebanon so that woman could still be alive.
- 5upplied_demand 3mo ago> When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. I like to think about how providing 4-week paid parental leave would cost $2 billion annually and actually help US families. Meanwhile we have spent over $100 billion on this war.
- joenot443 3mo agoMy back of napkin figures gave me about $20-40b. I'm curious how you got to the $2 billion number?
- adityashankar 3mo agoHow do you even estimate that, human productivity is non linear to worktime and often, employees, when given good benefits are likely to be more productive. also there's the fact of this having a ROI since people generate economic value in the longer run, and hence, more taxes
- 5upplied_demand 3mo agoI'm curious about your napkin math, care to share? I got mine from a paper published by the University of Chicago: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735565 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735565.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- lazide 3mo agoSo far….
- milkytron 3mo agoConsidering the push for reproduction from this admin and his technocrats, I'm curious if they would consider something like this.
- 3mo ago
- red-iron-pine 3mo ago> There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for. tax billionaires, then
- vicnov 3mo agonot a fan of defending billionairs, but is mostly a useless populist slogan* You can do full Dekulakization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization) on them and it won't change anything in current economic situation. Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T): and pretty much kills US ability to rely on private sector (and I dont think we have a way to rely on public sector) The sooner we all start focusing on things that actually matter -- like improving democracy, quality of education (btw spending more may not solve it) etc -- the faster we will improve situation. Cities like NYC pretty much can afford UBI (look at per capita spending on homelessness, public schools etc). Taxing more may not be the answer. *it should be studied what motivates people to repeat it
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- cloverich 3mo agoIMO its a useful populist slogan because it solves a different problem: The power that comes with being a billionaire. E.g. its all well and good to focus on fixing democracy instead, but if (some specific) billionaires are focused on deploying their wealth to destroy democracy, then what? I've generally come around to believe that we need to limit wealth from a purely power / control point of view.
- scottyah 3mo agoI think it's a great system of checks and balances- billionaires are only created by dealing with a lot of people and successfully solving a lot of problems. Once they have it, it's work to hold on to the money though. Politicians don't really produce anything measurable to show if they've helped or hurt society, and so they work to devalue the meaning of the dollar. If you get rid of wealthy people's power, what takes its place other than politicians?
- mitthrowaway2 3mo agoThose drones are pretty noisy though.
- dataviz1000 3mo agoProbably is an issue but sea turtles hearing is adapted to ocean not air and low frequencies. Also, waves and wind blowing likely muffle a lot of noise. The organizations that do this have mobile apps and collect tons of data. If I'm use ML, I'd start with time series forecasting to see if I can get the window done to a few hours.
- kingnothing 3mo ago> My favorite interview question: If I gave you a swarm of autonomous drones, what would you do with them? What signal are you looking for with that question? It feels much more like a thought experiment with friends while having a few pints than something reasonable for a job interview.
- dataviz1000 3mo agoIt was the initial culture / behavioral interview for a job developing AI for education of children. Considering how these drones are used in the article linked, the question is apropos.
- bcjdjsndon 3mo agoI would make them fly around helping people and stuff
- scottyah 3mo agoWorld Peace
- willio58 3mo ago>It pales compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for. Thinking of country-scale finances in the same way you think about personal finance is wrong in many ways. Take debt for example. As an individual, it's arguably best not to have debt at all. As a country, sovereign debt is the foundation of the world's money supply and fuels continuous economic growth. Also, though the U.S. has $31 Trillion dollars of debt, $22 Trillion of that belongs to U.S. domestic traders. If we were to cut our debt down to zero, we'd cripple ourselves with taxes and stifle growth. We'd have zero debt but we'd be sent into a massive economic depression, and that would likely ripple out across the planet.
- stronglikedan 3mo ago> instinctively moving towards the street lamps or the bright hotels. > I would use drones to hover over the nests to detect if the turtles hatch so people don't have to stand there. And put brighter lights on the drones to lead them in the right direction! But if you asked me that in an interview, I would probably question whether I wanted to work there. I don't think random, irrelevant, put-me-on-the-spot questions help anyone on either side of that coin.
- apparent 3mo ago> There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. Less than half are net income tax payers, IIRC. So if you pay income tax, you're actually on the hook for more $6, on average.
- dataviz1000 3mo agoAnother way to look at it; I'll be long gone when a child born today will be paying it. Why do you think I'm concerned about a child who I will never meet getting stuck with debt I voted to accrue?
- apparent 3mo agoSounds like Social Security.
- holgerschurig 3mo agoNa, there aren't "~350,000,000 of us". You are just assuming that the whole readership of Hacker News are US-citizens. I, for example, are from an EU country. So "there are 450,000,000 of us" if I'd had a similar attitude.
- LadyCailin 3mo agoPresumably “us” is “population of the US”, not HN readers.