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I'm still waiting for us to actually cut wasteful spending in areas like defense. Too bad that will never happen. The Gov can just keep cutting science spending.

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Fun fact: even when you exclude defense spending, total government expenditures per capita (federal, state, and local) are $1,500 per year higher in the US than in Canada.

Sure, but it seems somewhat disingenous to mention this in the same topic as public health, safety , ecological and science research.

The US spends more for worse outcomes on entitlements like health care, because we refuse to optimize it.

Per capita GDP is quite a bit higher in the US, so that's not unexpected.

But defense create jobs!

This is very true. However it also creates weapons that are sitting around waiting for justifying their existence. Unless you really need these weapons (and I absolutely recognize it can be the case), shouldn't we use the money on other pursuits that will not have this nasty side effect?

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