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Comment by rayhendricks | Hacker News Reader

“And the answer [to] why we aren’t going faster is simply money. We can push the accelerator down more today because the digital technology allows it.”

Gong to burn some internet points here but this should not be what we are spending money on right now as a nation.

We have >250k (200k official) people dead (excess deaths) from COVID and many more overdosing on opioids or dying from preventable diseases. Handouts to the military-industrial-congressional complex are exactly what we do not need right now.

We need to get Medicare for all and Universal Basic Income passed or otherwise more people will realize that this country does not care about them and only cares about giving the military new toys.

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Those are orthogonal to each other. Lack of money is not a problem the US has, we can borrow what we needed and trim fat later. Lack of political will is the problem. If the things you note were truly considered as problematic as you (rightly, in my opinion) view them by politicians and the public, then petty grievances would be put aside and progress would be made.

Not enough of the public truly cares, and that in turn lets politicians ignore them or use them as pieces on a chessboard to be moved about and sacrificed as needed.

Waiting only makes the situation worse. Medicare for all could be anything from a significant net savings to an insane increase depending on how it’s implemented. Kicking the can down the road just means larger debt payments in the future.

Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc. The difference is simply the amount of waste involved. Trimming the fat is difficult because that’s people’s income you’re cutting and they will fight you every step of the way.

PS: Politics is not about petty grievances, but elections can be. Shaping the narrative is how you get people to vote against their own best interest.

> Kicking the can down the road just means larger debt payments in the future.

> Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc.

And not getting those stitches can lead to scarring, or infection. There are things worse than debt.

That said, I'm not saying we should just borrow the money to do what we want without considering if we should find a way to pay for it, I'm just saying for things that are really important, money is not an obstacle. The whole point of debt is to allow spending beyond your budget when it's deemed beneficial or necessary to do so.

> PS: Politics is not about petty grievances

Yes, petty grievances are a poor expression for what I was thinking, which is pet issues and turning everything into a chance to bolster your talking point to score political points.

Debt means very different things for the federal government than a personal checkbook. Debt doesn’t create resources or infrastructure from thin air, making it largely useless in an actual emergency. When we needed millions of N95 masks debt can’t simply conjure them from thin air, the same is true of oil or other critical resources.

All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending. Politically it seems great, but economically it’s almost completely worthless. It’s just another political game where you say it’s meaningless when you’re running things and a critical issue when the other party is in charge.

A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option. Build strategic reserves when it’s cheap, and spend them when absolutely critical. But again spending when it’s not obvious you’re raising taxes is the crack cocaine for democracy’s.

> When we needed millions of N95 masks debt can’t simply conjure them from thin air, the same is true of oil or other critical resources.

I understand that, but that's not the context I understood we were discussing, which is "stop funding the military so we can start fixing these other problems like covid or opiates or whatever". In that context, my point was to say that funding for those initiatives is not the limiting factor.

> All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending.

Which is perfectly acceptable and expected in an emergency. I doubt any future administration is going to say "if only Trump didn't spend so much on covid, we're really hurting from that." Going into debt over emergency needs for the country is pretty analogous to floating your house payment or rent on credit for a couple months while you get a new job. You pay for it later, but ultimately it's probably a much better investment than not doing it, as being out on the street has far greater negative consequences (and a negative feedback loop) than the debt usually has. In the same manner, reducing a recession or preventing a depression is generally money well spent.

> A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option.

Sure, but then the whole "reduce this so we can pay for that" doesn't really make sense. I don't think we're really in disagreement, I think we're just slightly contextually misaligned.

No we have fundamental disagreement about government debt. For clarity:

There was absolutely zero need to go deeper into debt over COVID. Further, government waste is not a question of debt without consequences. Paying people to fill out redundant forms or build pointless military hardware means those same highly skilled and capable people can’t being doing something of actual value.

Money is fundamentally an abstraction, and debt is simply another form of taxation. Debt as the least obvious form of taxation has illusionary benefit and real costs.

> No we have fundamental disagreement about government debt.

Since I don't disagree with what you're saying, but also think it doesn't really apply to the specific point I was trying to express, I don't think we do. Apparently I'm just unable to adequately communicate my point.

The only thing additional I can think to say is that you seem to making an argument about how government should be run, which is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing what's required for our legislators to pass legislation on this today. Freeing up money from other sources is not one of those things, as they could borrow whatever extra they needed if they deemed it necessary.

That assumes two things, the legislature is absolutely willing to go into unlimited debt and they feel the change is critical not simply important/better etc. I don’t think those assumptions hold up in practice.

Everything is a complex series of tradeoffs, not just in what’s useful but also in public perception.

> Those are orthogonal to each other.

Budget is the intersection.

Our defense budget was increased to $700 billion. It was already significantly more than every other country in the world, but the Trump administration decided to throw another $100 billion in for good measure.

> Lack of money is not a problem the US has, we can borrow what we needed and trim fat later.

We can also trim the fat right now, and reallocate spending from programs that murder foreigners to programs that help civilians. For whatever reason, that option doesn't often get brought up in the House.

> Not enough of the public truly cares

I don't think that's the case. The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed, while the literal majority of American votes were for a Democratic party presidential candidate.

How much is enough? That's the real problem here. With first past the post voting and electoral college, some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.

> Our defense budget was increased to $700 billion.

That doesn't matter. Money is not the problem. Making helping people contingent on also lowering the defense budget doesn't magically make things easier because there's money for it, as money was never the problem. It just means you have two hard things to accomplish instead of one.

> We can also trim the fat right now.

My point was to say money is not the limiting factor.

> The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed

Let's not pretend the Democrats have been some bastion of good behavior. They've squandered any high ground they might have had through gamesmanship just as much as the Republicans, but to worse effect because they still try to present themselves as taking the high ground.

> some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.

How is this different than it's ever been? The system was designed to be this way. States are supposed to be elevated and have power, only to be offset by the number of constituents they have. States are supposed to be far more important than just some county, they are individual polities with their own laws and are supposed to be used to experiment with different laws specifics of government, and traditionally they were. It's only with the ascendancy of the Federal government and Presidential powers over the last century or so that states have lost of lot of the power they used to hold. In a system where states are supposed to be able to implement their own systems and try new things, it makes sense to allow states themselves a bit more pull than the sum of their people, so they don't get steamrolled.

As I understand it in the US the military is social welfare. Thousands of underprivileged Americans escape poverty through joining and get an education.

... and become traumatized from killing some guys with AKs defending their home country from foreign invasion, seeing civilian death and suffering on massive scale that their efforts and presence brings. Or just end up being killed/crippled.

One hell of a welfare system that is.

There are plenty of opportunities provided by the armed forces that do not include any of those things.

There's about a 10 to 1 ratio between non combat and combat roles, and of combat roles less than 1 in 10 of them will actually see combat. The overwhelming majority of the military are people who just want to get a leg up on a career that can support themselves and a family.

That said, I know several people personally that joined up due to lack of options, saw combat, and are now profoundly broken, so I don't mean to belittle that point. Just don't oversimplify things to thinking it's the only thing.

> There's about a 10 to 1 ratio between non combat and combat roles

That means a 10% risk of being put in a combatant role, which - as you pointed out - is devastating to anyone who joined for the welfare aspect.

Anyone can call 90% an "overwhelming majority", but that really diminishes the issue at hand.

You continue to misunderstand.

The details vary by service, but generally when enlisting you get a choice between open enlistment or enlistment in a particular specialty or skill set. Again, depending on the service, in many cases you can enlist for a guaranteed job role. Even in the case that you do open enlistment, when it comes down to it, no one in the US military is going to force you to go into combat with a gun to your back commissar style, as that's obviously incredibly likely to backfire, and in the worst case, backfire in a way that gets lots of other people killed to.

My friends that saw combat knew what their options were within the military and what they were signing up for. They may have had an idealized picture of what combat would be like, or the odds of a conflict happening, but they weren't forced into a combat role against their will.

I'm all for criticism of the military system of the US, but that needs to be grounded in reality.

I'll add that while PTSD is a very serious problem, it is not a guaranteed outcome of being involved in combat operations - even over extended time periods.

We have more people in the military dying from suicide than combat https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/01/us-military-su... it’s a real problem.

Most of these Americans - vast majority I’d guess - aren’t even in a combat role.

On the balance of the last 70 years, if you live in a developed country you need to thank the US military for allowing you this unprecedented stability and peace for so long (I’m not an American so I’m one of those grateful).

Stability and peace? Definitely not in the Middle East.

Leaving those dictators there in place would have provided more stability than the current state of violent chaos and hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees.

Most of the dictatorships are solid following turmoils of Arab spring. Iraq was the only major change, a rare mistake of the American foreign policy.

>Iraq was[...]a rare mistake of the American foreign policy

Look, I like the US, a lot, but let's not lie to ourselves here.

I'm impressed with the downvotes on this. Anyone care to back up your tacit disagreement with pax-americana [1]? Is it because you don't think it is true? Is it because you don't like the geopolitical landscape today? Just curious. FWIW I don't think the US forcing democracy on countries was universally good for those countries. In some cases it was, some cases it was wishful thinking and in the worst cases it was pure self interest. But to deny the world peace that resulted from US military dominance is extremely naive, and also blatantly disregards a trend we've seen throughout the course of world history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana

The military might be world class and also a mini welfare-state but it has left the rest of the country kinda a shithole (as the president famously described other countries). Literally walked by a huge homeless encampment yesterday where people were shooting up and living in tents.

This government is not of/by/for the people one bit.

> the US the military is social welfare

The military as 'social welfare' is true in other countries. Example: want to become a civilian vehicle mechanic with a driving license but you failed formal education and can't afford a car? Join the British Army and get into a role that involves driving and maintaining a vehicle (many military trades involve vehicle use).

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