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Comment by qwe----3 | Hacker News Reader

That bill and these types of projects are basically why we have 10% inflation now.

Inflation isn't at 10% but it seems like investing in infrastructure is a good idea. If we needed to pinch pennies we could start at the bloated military budget

Right, in the middle of war with Russia and with war with China on the horizon. Great idea.

The US aren't at war with Russia.

Sure, they're helping an ally in a De facto war against Russia, but currently the us spends more on "defense" than both Russia and China combined, when it is technically at peace. In case of a war with China, are you expecting the military budget to not increase at all?

How do you stay at peace? A strong deterrence.

The US has the strongest deterrence in the history of the world, and it's constantly at war.

Wars we've provoked/are provoking but that's not a discussion relevant to the original submission

When is the time US has not been at war? Maybe, we are inverting cause and effect here.. US is always at war because the budget allows for it?

Say it this way. Tomorrow if the american security /defence budget was cut to 0, do you think the rest of the world will storm/attack Americans because they have an eternal blood thirst for them? Don't they have their own problems to deal with?

This is the problem with mitary and security infra of any country. They keep the bogeyman alive because their paychecks depend on it.

This is literally exactly what would happen. It need not be blood thirst motivation; simple profit dynamics are enough to ensure this outcome.

keep on dreaming

Good thing you will never find out.

How does spending a lot of government money make goods and service more expensive?

EDIT: At least here in Western Europe, we mostly have a supply side inflation, because energy got a lot more expensive, not because the government has been "printing" a lot of money. I suspect it's the same in the US.

It does not unless that money is spent competing with businesses and citizens for resources. However, in this case the money had already been earmarked for rural internet service and is not being used to purchase goods and services that citizens would be buying instead.

Yes, inflation is currently a world-wide issue, and explanations at the world level lead somewhat obviously to the pandemic and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.

But here in the USA, people like to believe it must be political and local, completely unrelated to the totally-coincidental worldwide issue that happens to be very similar.

>But, here in the USA people like to believe it must be political...

Cool, whats your prognoses for effectiveness of the Reduce Inflation Act

I'm in favor of the bill, but the name is stupid, even misleading. The spending is largely good, but it won't have much effect on inflation, if any.

Actually Europe has been printing a lot of money by having less than 0% interest rate for loan. Current inflation is due to many factor, some estimate it has been slowly growing since 2008, plus covid where we printed money to just to keep business alive, plus negative interest rate that allowed countries to loan too much, etc...

But I suspect that subsidies for infrastructure is one of the least impactful factor for inflation.

Damn, this project is even hurting me in the UK then because we're also at 10%. Curse you Jared.

Yeah I'm sure this is the exact US "government waste" driving the global inflation right now.

That doesn't make any sense.

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