Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

Right now, there is a post on the front page about an American community that is flooded with sewage every time it rains. Reading about the F 35 makes me so incredibly frustrated when I think about all the good we could do with even a small portion of its budget.

View on HN

Don't forget the quarter billion a day the US has been spending on the war in Afghanistan...

We spend 68 million dollars on the military per hour. An aircraft carrier group alone costs somewhere between 2-3 million per day to operate. We spend huge amounts on force projection, but argue over school funding and basic social services.

We also spend the second most of any country in the world on school funding per student. (Or the most, according to some sources for some years).

It's unclear that spending way too much on the military has any bearing there. Both are probably very poorly spent in terms of ROI.

Well, school funding at least has been shown to be irrelevant to outcomes (at the ranges of funding we currently have in the US), so it makes sense that people would argue against increasing spending there. And when it comes to increasing "basic" social services - you do realize we spend multiple times the military budget on them already?

Yep, spending directly into unregulated insurance and healthcare companies who lobby for less regulation.

Regarding the first, while funding per pupil doesn't directly correlate to outcome, it's not irrelevant to outcome. Additionally, students in lower income areas are more expensive to teach per pupil.

> Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to be among the least-productive school districts [1]

Regarding the second, I sure hope that we spend multiples of our military budget on services! If we didn't that would be absolutely astonishing. Other than services for the people, what else should our government be spending money on?

But we spend more than many other countries. We put about 15% of our federal tax dollars into military spending, compared to, say, Germany (12%). If we scaled back a percent or three on our military, we'd have hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on schools, infrastructure, healthcare, public defenders, etc. etc. etc.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/connecting-sc...

The point was that social services cost an absolute fuckton of money. Yes, you could (theoretically) cut the military budget by 20% and move that money elsewhere - but that wouldn't pay for much improvement. The US government spent 771.2 billion dollars on primary and secondary education in fiscal year 2019 [0], and 1,203.3 billion on education as a whole.

890.8 billion was spent on defence.

Cutting the defence budget by 20% and moving that to education, therefore, would be a 15% increase to the education budget.

15% isn't going to do shit to the structural issues that plague our education system. If anything, it'd be counterproductive - because it would shift power further towards the federal government in education and reduce the ability of states to try different things.

0: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2019USbn_...

And yet politicians complain that we can’t afford healthcare for everyone. It’s pathetic.

Funny thing about that - the US already spends 150-200% of the military budget on Medicare and Medicaid. So eliminating the military would be nowhere near enough to expand that to the rest of the country...

(The US spends about $2000/yr/person on the military, and $8500/yr/person on entitlements)

You have a lot more faith in the ability of government to turn money into progress than I do. The exact same corrupt policies of farming out money to political connections for the F-35 program, resulting in marginal services/products, is what will happen in nearly every local government.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that we're coasting on the infrastructure of the past and aren't really capable of organizing successful new projects that aren't destined to fail from all the corruption.

Faith in the US govt, I think you mean. Government is remarkably effective at turning money into progress in the Netherlands. (Not that citizens don't complain incessantly)

There are many examples of effective governments, yet it still is considered an outstanding achievement.

I assume this is a snark, more than 300 mayors to govern 1 city the size of New York doesn't seem like an effective government to me.

Is the correct effectiveness metric the number of people involved or the outcomes for the people served by that government? I don't really care how big/small our government is if everyone is experiencing a high quality of life.

It seems correlated to the "size" (population and density) of the nation? Neglecting nations in a fast-paced social/political transition, most effective governments are active in "small" nations (including politically decentralized ones).

I think part of the problem is apathy to get involved. There's so much that can be done at the local level that can affect things. Our mayor holds an annual meeting with each of the four wards of the city. Just this week the mayor said that last year a total of 350 people attended those meetings. That's 350 out of 52,000. For a once a year meeting to learn about what the city is planning on doing and to give your feedback.

The democratic process has been captured by a corrupt machine ala Tammany Hall in my city. The state government has been captured by a single party. There is not a lot one can do to foster change. If you pay to play or are part of an equally corrupt neighborhood association you could influence change. Every five years or so the feds make an arrest but the machine keeps running.

I think part of the problem is this fatalist attitude that government cannot be fixed. I would like to vote for candidates that promise, not more government or less government, but better government. It's our government, we can fix it, but we have to want to fix it.

Tulsi Gabbard is the only presidential hopeful that appears to be in it for serving the people over personal gain.

Still a few months to go but she is at the top my list right now.

I second this, although I cant vote. With a couple of war tours experience there is not a chance she Pavlov's into any military industrial complex shenanigans. If she doesn't succeed this time, she will be ready next election round. She would be example for girls growing up around the world.

Depends on what your expectations are. The F-35 will work well eventually. All the promises for meeting high expectations on timing and budget are being kneecapped along the way though.

It can be painful but it's not a failure.

The irony of your statement is that the government built both things - the F-35 and the sewer system.

And the sewer system cost is a fraction of the F-35 cost.

So, I would submit (sadly), that we cannot do much good with a fraction of the F-35 project based on prima facie evidence that you just provided.

I get it - we all want to do good in the world. But some people do not, and we have to protect ourselves against them. Others do not want to do good, but rather, do for themselves, and they hide in the system designed to protect us from those who do not want to do good. Finally, we have the Incompetents, which are scattered all over the place and manipulated by both of the prior mentioned types for their own benefit.

THAT is the problem we need to solve. I have exactly zero idea how to solve it, and so far I haven't seen anyone else solve it either.

=====

EDIT - meant to add that it frustrates me, too.

We have tons of instances of building/paying the initial costs for something and refusing to fund their maintenance. Public housing is widely panned for this reason, imo. Public transit likewise.

The US spends 60% of its budge on social security and medicare. Another 6% is just spend on interest. Spending on defense is 16% of the federal budget, and therefore dwarfed by welfare.

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_...

Keep in mind, this does not account for state and local budgets, which is where infrastructure like roads is built and maintained.

As a percent of GDP, the US spends about 3% on defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Yep. Those numbers seem incorrect to me. I'd like to see the defense number be smaller and the human stuff higher.

Aggregated communal waste and corruption makes DoD grifters look like amateurs.

Is that community short of money? Or have they just wasted it? A lot of these city problems have been from decades of poor management.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com