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Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

This is a drop in the bucket compared to military spending; apparently no one cares?

For everything that isn't social security, medicare, or the military, continued federal support requires explicitly convincing enough members of Congress that it is important so that they will campaign in their committees for even basic inflation-level funding increases to be included in the next budget. National Park Service has a backlog of billions of dollars in maintenance it knows it needs to do across the US, but Congress won't give them the money to do it. They'll toss $18 billion to Israel though even while Israeli politicians and the Israeli public and Israeli lobbying groups in the US criticizes the US for not being generous or supportive enough and gets involved in domestic US politics. We need a serious talk about the strings our very generous foreign aid needs to come attached to.

I support Israel, but it's time for us to pull the reigns.

> We need a serious talk about the strings our very generous foreign aid needs to come attached to

You’re exemplifying the problem. NPS and foreign aid funding aren’t competing with each other. They’re both rounding errors in the grand scheme. But everyone has their hobby horse that they have or must cut so we get some oscillation.

Non-defense US federal spending dwarfs defense spending, for whatever it's worth. The US is essentially a benefits management firm with a standing army.

I dont know how we can know this. My understanding is that the pentagon has an unknown total budget. Once you wrap up all the CIA, NSA type stuff too I'm not sure how we can know this?

The DoD has a "black budget", but that's money you don't get a breakdown of, not money you don't know about: it's voted in by Congress as a blind total. Total spending is profoundly tilted towards non-defense spending (even more so if you include state and local government spending, but that's not germane to the Forest Service) --- the amount of "secret" money going to defense, if it existed, would have to be economy-breaking to alter the balance.

Not really. When counting not just DoD spending but DoE nuclear weapons spending, NASA (now Space Force) and satellite spending, VA and veteran's benefits, interest on past military spending and so forth, military spending takes up a large chunk of the pie. It is only small if defined very, very narrowly (which is what they, and you, do).

NASA is a separate agency from space force. The former is directly under the President as an independent agency while the latter is under the DoD.

Defense benefits and pensions are a tiny fraction of mandatory federal spending.

They call it mandatory spending but this is a misnomer. When you pay into a pension system and pre-pay for insurance it’s expected that you receive the benefits you paid for. That it is government run is irrelevant to how it should be viewed. Social Security is not an expense of the government. It’s a government run pension system.

For this reason it’s pretty unusual to see an analysis of the US budget aimed at policy nerds that includes Social Security. Almost all serious discussion about it excludes that.

You tend to only see it included when the full total of money disbursed by the government from any pot and for any purpose is expressly relevant (it’s usually not) or in writing that is not aimed at policy nerds, but at everyday voters (to convince them whatever batshit crazy spending we’re doing in the author’s preferred non-social-spending item isn’t bad after all, usually)

Indeed! They've done a great job at muddying the waters. Otherwise knowledgeable people don't understand how this works.

This is not at all how the accounting for Social Security, Medicare, and other mandatory spending programs work. Generally, Social Security beneficiaries receive more than they paid in (invariably they do with Medicare). And, obviously, everyone receiving Medicaid and SSDI do. I don't think this technical point about Social Security is going to salvage the argument that the US pays more in defense than anything else.

Apparently you don't understand how pensions work. Take a 401(k). Under normal circumstances what you take out of the 401(k) far exceeds what you put into it. This is what happens with investments generally speaking.

Saying, "Social Security beneficiaries receive more than they paid in..." indicates you don't know what you are talking about. And, believe it or not, Social Security does invest money.

And yes, it does salvage the argument. Defense spending (all of it not just DOD) is the largest expense of the government. This is expected when you are the hegemon.

Defense spending isn't even the majority of discretionary spending.

It's simply an enormous, vast economy, and 13% of a vast economy is a huge number, large enough to outspend the next several countries combined. That's all.

Regardless, social security is funded totally separately from the rest of the budget, with a dedicated tax, and does not contribute to the deficit. It’s typically excluded from budget discussions, for that reason.

You could change the law to axe social security, keep its highly-regressive tax, and instead use that to pay for other stuff—but lots of things are possible with a change in the law, and that’s not possible now without such a change. That’s not something that can happen as an ordinary part of the budgeting process.

I'm not saying I like everything about federal spending (or even defense spending), just that the argument that we spend most of our money on defense (or even a plurality of it) is false.

I didn’t say it was a majority. I said it was the largest expense. Plurality vs. majority.

You are absolutely wrong in your belief. Defense spending is roughly 50% of discretionary spending.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729

If anyone is curious, there's a good breakdown here:

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Social Security, Health, and Medicare alone account for 49% of the budget, to National Defense's 13%.

That 13% is still more than the next 9 highest military budgets in the world combined. We're not financing our military, we're lining the pockets of the military industrial complex, on the taxpayer's dime.

The military industrial complex is a socialist jobs program, both for those directly on the DOD's payroll and for the employees of the firms that contract with the government under the auspices of the military.

Many/most countries have national tax and not (any or as much) state taxes. To compare across nations you’d need to divide the expenditure by the national sum of the taxes of the various government levels.

I don’t understand your point here, isn’t comparing US military spending to other countries’ military spending in terms of USD a fair comparison?

18% is more accurate as it includes veteran care.

It is a moral imperative to include the cost of looking after the people you feed through a meat grinder once you have ground them up and spat them out in the calculation of how much the machine costs.

A big chunk of that healthcare would just be under Medicare/Medicaid anyways though, so it doesn't seem reasonable to ascribe all veteran health spending as military.

It does when a huge portion of the injuries military personnel sustain are quite different from the genteel public, and wouldn't have happened if that person decided to be a teacher instead.

To put a finer point on it, VA care for Irag+Afghanistan is expected to drive the cost of these two wars to something in the ballpark of $2 Trillion USD.

Like I went to Iraq twice and I'm only 40. They're gonna be covering me for probably another ~40 years, and the US is owned lock and stock by healthcare companies that sure as hell aren't going to lower the costs of medicines.

Social Security is not an expense of the government. Well, for the most part. It’s a pension plan that people pay into. Similarly for Medicare. People pay into it before retirement. Then at a certain age they get this insurance benefit. Private insurers will not insure the elderly. If anything you should characterize this as a private insurance industry subsidy. It allows insurers to offload their riskiest clients to another entity.

Your characterization is badly wrong.

EDIT: Until recently Social Security took in more money than it paid out. It’s run by the government so its expenditures are counted as a budget item. But it is a sound pension system whose defects can be easily fixed if a certain party would actually govern. It is not the largest expense by the government. It’s just that it is a government run pension system. It’s not an entitlement either.

Money is fungible. The government takes in money, and pays it out. Money paid out is called an expense.

But to be clear, I favor social security, and I agree with your other points about it.

If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could. If it did this, keeping in place Social Security “taxes” that would then go to the new corporation, we would not consider Social Security a budget expense. Being government owned or private doesn’t matter in terms of how the expenditures should be considered. This is why Social Security and Medicare are not part of the normal budget negotiations at budget time. These are obligations that need to be paid to the people who paid for them.

> If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could

No, it couldn’t. There were promises made with the full faith and credit of the United Stares.

> obligations that need to be paid to the people who paid for them

Everyone pays taxes. Social Security and Medicare obligations are treated differently because of politics. Otherwise, they’re like any other expense: the Congress can amend them at will. (As is currently expected, e.g. with Social Security benefits beginning to be curtailed from 2035.)

I agree on Medicare. But it's plausible that the Supreme Court could find government meddling on Social Security unconstitutional, because similar decisions have already been made in other countries.

In Finland, the mandatory pension system is similar to Social Security, except that it aims to replace ~60% of earned income without any limits. Pensions based on past contributions have been established as constitutionally protected private property. If the system seems to be out of balance, the basic tools are raising the contribution rates without increasing the benefits and increasing the retirement age for younger generations. Any changes that would substantially lower the pensions that have already been earned would have to go through the same process as constitutional amendments. (There is also a third tool: increasing the tax rates for all retirement income, regardless of the source. But that is understandably unpopular.)

> But it's plausible that the Supreme Court could find government meddling on Social Security unconstitutional, because similar decisions have already been made in other countries.

I sincerely hope SCOTUS doesn't care at all about similar decisions made in other countries. What is or is not constitutional in the US should be based solely on the US constitution.

> If the government decided to make Social Security a private corporation it could No, it couldn’t. There were promises made with the full faith and credit of the United Stares.

I'm not a lawyer so I'll rephrase. In an alternate universe the U.S. government created a corporation to run Social Security. It mandated that people participate in it. Everyone called it a pension system because that it what it is.

Congress can amend them at will.

All pension systems are subject to amendment. Many pension systems have been amended over the years.

> In an alternate universe the U.S. government created a corporation to run Social Security. It mandated that people participate in it. Everyone called it a pension system because that it what it is

If the U.S. then explicitly guaranteed that corporation's liabilities, sure.

> All pension systems are subject to amendment. Many pension systems have been amended over the years

No. Many state legislatures, for instance, are constitutionally prohibited from fucking with certain obligations, commonly pensions.

> Many state legislatures, for instance, are constitutionally prohibited from fucking with certain obligations, commonly pensions.

Which is a serious problem. The entire idea of a truly guaranteed pension is not feasible and always leads to a pyramid scheme and then insolvency.

> entire idea of a truly guaranteed pension is not feasible and always leads to a pyramid scheme and then insolvency

Sure. But the point of full faith and credit is it's irreversible. (Actually, the point of credit, period. You can't declare your past debts pyramid schemes and unilaterally absolve yourself of them.)

Irreversibly, like all political concepts, is a fiction that humans choose to believe in rather than a law of physics. If social security became insolvent while the US was distracted by some other future national crisis, I'm certain that the people of the future would find a way to cut the pension while staying within the letter of the law (probably via inflation or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgRz3nSG7o).

They're not part of negotiations because there was such a backlash during the Reagan era. Part of his campaign platform was to reel in the entitlements. Then he discovered that people like their entitlements. George Bush tried to privatize Social Security, and the idea went nowhere in a hurry.

The value of Social Security is the expectation that it will be bailed out by the government if it goes bust, for instance if the trust fund is depleted.

You do not understand how this all works. Social Security "spending" does not add to the deficit. It is not the source of any budgetary imbalances or of any structural budgetary issues in the United States. It is a pension system that is funded by workers that happens to be run by the government.

Social Security is not a pension plan, it's pay-as-you-go and barring massive tax increases and/or benefit cuts, its collapse is more-or-less inevitable in the next couple decades because of locked-in demographic changes.

You are wrong. From ssa.gov:

The Social Security Retirement benefit is a monthly check that replaces part of your income when you reduce your hours or stop working altogether.

Most people would refer to this as a “pension”. Call it whatever you want to. The fact is that its issues are easily fixable and your benefit is based on how much you put into it.

This is not a very useful semantic argument. Pension programs routinely pay out to workers more than what was paid in; that's practically the definition of a defined-benefit pension plan. Either way: it's money the government pays out.

It doesn't really matter what people would call it. What matters is what it actually is.

I've been hearing that since the eighties. Congress can change contribution rates and/or benefit rates at any time to keep it solvent, just like they have in the past.

Beyond a certain point, the working population will not be able to afford to pay for the retired population. It's a mathematical inevitability unless birth rates increase or people stop living as long any more (both probably impossible). Maybe the benefits could be eliminated/reduced, but this is politically untenable because older people generally vote while younger people don't.

immigration solves the birth rate problem, and is one of the big reasons why illegal immigrants is a hilariously terrible wag-the-dog wedge issue. make them legal, tax them, and have them contribute to the system as well.

At some point even the countries people immigrate from will run out of people.

Can was kicked too far, it is not easy to fix. It's easy to make the mathematical problem go away by reducing benefits AND raising taxes. Nonstarter. We will need a tragedy to illicit change.

elicit

This is incorrect per the US Supreme Court e.g. Flemming v Nestor in 1960. Social Security contributions are purely an income tax like any other, it is explicitly neither a pension nor insurance plan. Contributions create no obligation for the government to give you anything in return, same as the other income taxes you pay. The government largely treats it as tax revenue.

It is intentionally (mis)represented as a pension plan where contributions are connected to benefits but that fiction is solely to maintain popular political support, they can disqualify citizens from eligibility at any time regardless of contributions and, on occasion, have.

The main issue with Social Security is that most people in prior generations took far more out than they contributed, in part because it wasn’t really a requirement since it wasn’t actually a pension.

If the Supreme's deem it so then it must be. Are there any decisions they've gotten wrong?

Your benefit is based on what you pay in. It pays out less than what it takes in. If it were privatized you and the Supremes would call it a pension. It acts like a pension, quacks like a pension and is a pension.

>Are there any decisions they've gotten wrong?

This list paid for with your tax dollars:

https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...

Notably, if the gov’t starts making pensioners subsist on cat food because they refuse to honor their obligations, hopefully a whole lot of senators will be out of jobs ASAP.

SS is explicitly sold as a pension. If it stops acting like one, there will be consequences - even if it means rewriting laws.

Seems kinda like we're talking about my $1,300/mo budget for candles and you're pointing out "yeah, but your mortgage is $5,000/mo, for whatever it's worth; you're basically just a homeowner with a candle budget".

Social security is, even if not legally then practically, a debt repayment. Defense spending is largely discretionary.

Social security is not a debt repayment and the point I'm making would stand if you took it out of the budget, even though you shouldn't. Defense spending isn't even the majority of discretionary spending.

> Social security is, even if not legally then practically, a debt repayment.

How is it not practically a debt repayment?

The common understanding is "you pay money in, you get money back when you retire". Do you think you could cut it without widespread backlash? Do you think you could cancel it without borderline revolt?

"It's not a debt. It's just that if you don't pay me I'll kill you."

Is there any practical difference from a debt?

You pay a tax. You receive a benefit. The benefit's connection to your tax payment is nominal at best. It's one of many direct benefits the government awards, none of which are debts.

You replied to none of the questions I asked.

It would be more accurate to call it insurance than a debt, because the tax is called "Federal Insurance Contribution Act." The insurance product that Social Security is most similar to is an annuity, a contract that specifies that you pay in and then the insurance pays out when you reach a certain age.

I would be pretty upset if I paid into an annuity plan my whole adult working life and then the insurer reneged on their obligation. Social security not paying out would be even more upsetting, because you're legally obligated to pay for it, whereas buying an annuity is a choice.

The US Supreme Court asserted in 1960 that no one is entitled to Social Security. There is no connection between contributions and future benefits. Many people are under the misapprehension that this is not the case.

Without a doubt it would not be popular if the government eliminated some or all of Social Security. But it would be strictly legal and Constitutional, popular backlash notwithstanding. This is an important distinction. There are no Constitutional protections that ensure Social Security benefits. Ignorance of this fact doesn’t change its reality.

The constitutional protection is that if Congress tried to do that, they would be replaced in the next election. As stupid as they sometimes appear to be, they are not that stupid.

And you can bet the people who replaced them would put in additional protections for it going forward.

In a political system shaped by lobbyists, those without lobbyists go without.

Startup idea: like reddit, but upvoting costs money and all the posts are tickets for paid staff lobbyists.

Trust/transparency would be the tricky problems.

Military spending is being superseded by interest payments on debt. We need to tackle the deficit.

Tackling the deficit, in the absence of a realistic way to raise taxes, is why the Forest Service is losing 2400 jobs.

Agreed, although seeing as the economic plans laid out by both current presidential candidates would result in an increase in deficit the political will to do so does not seem to be there. In reality it feels like the spending is just being shifted elsewhere.

As I recall, two presidents in history have submitted balanced budgets to Congress: Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter.

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