Comment by icegreentea2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icegreentea2 | Hacker News Reader

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FY2023 total spending ~6.2 trillion (it's a bit higher in FY2024, but not sure where you're getting 9 trillion from).

The largest buckets non defense buckets are social security (1.4 trillion), medicare+medicaid (~1.6 trillion), interest payments (~800 billion). Total DOD spending is like ~750 billion, and DHS is like ~100 billion. FY2023 deficit was roughly 1.7 trillion dollars

Social security and medicare together at like ~2.4 trillion dollars a year, and are supporting a population of roughly 55 million Americans (just grossly taking the 65+ age population). This works out to roughly 43k per year per 65+ adult. You can decide for yourself is this seems like the right way for the government to work.

Anyhow, I am certain there is a lot of waste, and a lot of different types of waste there.

But fundamentally, the US government is trying to do a lot of frankly difficult and gigantic tasks. The DoD is tasked with amongst other things, perpetuating American hegemony, which right now is kinda critical for the entire US government funding situation. The USG's ability to leverage USD status as the world's reserve currency to help fund expenditures is contingent on it being if not THE global hegemon, then at least amongst the world's top powers, and the hegemon (or uh... senior security partner) for a substantial fraction of the world's economy.

Clearly the military could spend less (every other nation does) but it would require changing foreign policy.

For example the navy exists as "force projection" - not coastal protection. Force protection is a foreign policy goal, not a "defense" goal.

The US military is not designed to fight on the US mainland, it's designed to fight on someone else's mainland.

Equally the medicaid budget could be way less. Other countries manage with less (for their entire population) but they dictate pricing, whereas in the US the suppliers dictate pricing. And they expect healthy profit margins at every point.

In general, the govt spends so much because the people charge so much. The govt has enormous negotiating muscle, but dares not flex it least they incur the wrath of "the free market".

We spend more because it enables our influence around the globe. Other countries spend less because they do less and/or rely on our protection.

> Clearly the military could spend less (every other nation does) but it would require changing foreign policy.

Every other nation spends less because they are not the global hegemon. USD is in the position it is because we are the global hegemon. If you remove that by spending less on defense, USD strength goes down and our budget deficit and outstanding government debt start going up, weakening the country.

Very narrowly defined the DoD spent ~$750 billion in 2023 (over 800 billion). This doesn't count over $300 billion in veteran's benefits. Nor does it count Department of Energy military nuclear expenditures, nor tens of billions of military/intelligence spending in non DoD departments. Then when we look at the $800 billiom interest on the debt, a chunk of that is for unpaid military spending from last year and the years before.

This idea that military spending is not a large chunk of the budget is only when one has a very, very narrow definition of military spending.

The military and defense related spending absolutely is a very large chunk. I think your accounting is fair and better than mine. I did not mean to imply that defense funding was "small", only that defense funding is not the overwhelming gorilla that many people seem to think it is.

> Social security and medicare together at like ~2.4 trillion dollars a year, and are supporting a population of roughly 55 million Americans (just grossly taking the 65+ age population). This works out to roughly 43k per year per 65+ adult. You can decide for yourself is this seems like the right way for the government to work.

New City Herald

Rioters set fire to the entire city after the Mayor's new budget accidentally starved roughly 8.6 million disabled people and 6 million survivors of deceased retirees.

Try File -> New City to start over.

> accidentally starved 6 million survivors of deceased retirees.

Wait, so they had wills for their kids and the government just... took that money? How does that work, or am I way off base?

>A surviving spouse, surviving divorced spouse, unmarried child, or dependent parent may be eligible for monthly [Social Security] survivor benefits based on the deceased worker’s earnings.

https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-02083

Steve Ballmer's USAFacts has a bunch of info on US Govt, including DoD budgets. It's a good start on data analysis of the US economy: https://usafacts.org/

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