Hacker News Reader

Comment by spamizbad | Hacker News Reader

We have a tremendous appetite for risk when it comes to intervention. And we're extremely caution and austere when it comes to "investing" in our own citizenry.

It's also amusing how we become extremely obsessed with who "deserves" government money, establishing kafkaesque means-testing protocols, but have little issue handing out billions of taxpayer money to non-citizens in foreign countries.

View on HN

Like the sudden urgency to throw 700,000 off food stamps with work requirements.

You can literally only make additive changes to social programs if you don't want to make people mad. Any change perceived as subtraction will make people scream and you will be made out as a tyrant grinding the faces of the poor even if you are trying to simplify, consolidate, make more efficient, close loopholes, etc.; it doesn't matter. Just look at France.

We've successfully made numerous cuts to social programs with no negative consequence. Like, what was the political cost of 1990s welfare reform? Well, President Clinton was re-elected by a landslide and the Republicans who helped champion the bill won control of the House.

Military spending is less than a quarter of the budget. Medicare/caid is 55% more than the defense budget, to say nothing of social security or other domestic spending. These may not be the right allocations, but domestic spending is hardly "austere".

Not quite. The military budget itself is really just a base operating budget. Developments towards research, weapon systems, and even wars themselves can and are funded separately.

To be fair, the Republicans elected the one candidate that seemed the most opposed to handouts to foreign governments. There are a lot of Rs that don't like those either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com