Confusion, uncertainty in industry as Army contracts seemingly halted
breakingdefense.com
breakingdefense.com
And the same goes for the rest of the government, which to first approximation exists to write entitlement checks and issue health reimbursements. Everyone wants to believe that there's a magic line item that will balance things, but there isn't.
Write it down: the deficit as a fraction of GDP will be higher at the end of this Trump term than it is now, not lower.
Human nature is why we can't have nice things.
This is why I believe the scope of work should be clearly defined. Requests for funding submitted and approved with relation to that work. Then square up the taxes required based on what was spent, adjust up and down automatically.
Congress needs to vote to make that funding come out of the Rich (higher relative % of wealth the more taxed), to largely exempt anyone under an average (E.G. 10X poverty line is where taxes even START), and treat excess property as an Investment while exempting average ownership (E.G. a similar average for 'housing ownership' and 'transport ownership' value).
Using up money before it "goes away" and padding budgets should be expressly forbidden. Yes it's sometimes impossible to prove if it's happening, but you can say it's a standard and tell people to follow it, and catch blatant cases. Plenty of rules and standards are hard to prove.
"Waste" that is trimmed one year becomes the new bar "This can run at X".
Allocating additional resources requires far higher push than taking back something not spent.
Yet some years require more resources. What if there are more natural disasters? What if there's an economic downturn and more people need help? What if companies fail and expected taxes are not paid?
What if it's time to replace durable goods that have reached the end of their projected or useful life? (E.G. Some disgruntled person came to court with a shotgun and fired at all the computers; and oh BTW they're both broke and in jail so there's no cash to be had.)
You can see the very reluctance and assumptions in other posts in reply. They assume there are no audits, no oversight in the system. That the cursory pointer towards a larger process was the ENTIRE process which they then attack.
Entitlements and health reimbursements can and should be reduced.
I'm sure a lot of European countries were trying to do more with less when they embraced the 90s peace dividend, and then what we saw when Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone was checking out the state of their armies, was that mostly they had just done less with less.
Not doing less with less doesn't mean you are doing more with more.
Gotcha! That was actually the Pentagon[1].
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/
Back on topic, however, this is what I'm talking about[1]:
> The radical-patriotic television channel Tsargrad indignantly reported that “the actual scale of corruption under [former Defense Minister Sergey] Shoigu was not in the millions but in the trillions of rubles that officials dishonorably stole from the Russian Army.”
[1] https://cepa.org/article/russias-military-graft-purge-is-des...
Great let's get started.
> Either that or just telling poor people they can die in the streets outside of the hospital
Does the lion's share of US healthcare reimbursements go towards ensuring poor people don't die on the streets? I hadn't see that statistic.
So they're doing theater instead.
The organization that digests humongous amount of taxpayers money, consistently fails audits for years in row, participates and encourages global wars - should be dismantled or severely reformed at bare minimum.
Whether Trump administration be able to achieve that remains to be seen, but hopefully it's a start.
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Are you saying GWB was senile?
Fact is, Russian aggression towards its neighbors has never really stopped. I'm not sure it matters to them who is president in the US.
I am completely sincere.
> I said "senile and incompetent".
Okay, so answer the question: are all us presidents in the last 20 years, in your opinion, senile and incompetent? If so, what is the point of your comment in saying "When did you think the Russian aggression was initiated?"
While I do think Biden was fairly incompetent as a leader, the strategy adopted was probably the best option given the poor circumstances: wait and see if Ukraine could repel the initial invasion, then fund the resistance to draw Russia into a stalemate.
If I understand correctly, noone freezes things indefinitely
Edit - stylometric analysis confirmed what I suspected: your first language is Russian. Makes sense that you would be here making inflammatory posts about the US.
My interest in US politics is based on pure curiosity. And on top of that, it's very unfortunate that US spreads it's "interests" everywhere in the world, starting wars, overthrowing governments and sorts. So no matter where one lives or planning to, it's going to be interesting and relatable.
If we take this particular case, my welcome to the measure is partially based on hope it will help to deescalate and eventually stop the Ukraine war - useless meat grinder and money laundering machine for corrupted politicians.
And if it makes my posts "inflammatory" - I will humbly welcome that as well.
We might expect to see a civil war within the admin between the factions who favor traditional defense hardware programs vs newer tech (drones, AI, autonomous). There's a lot of $ at stake so there will be heavy lobbying. Also, the traditional revolving door.
Also the opportunity for insiders to enrich themselves. Perhaps 2025 will be to defense and AI stocks what 2020/1 was to pharma and vaccine stocks.
One political self-preservation mechanism that traditional defense has done that tech hasn't yet much is to spread the federal spending around across states and congressional districts (think B-1 bomber). So, don't expect these battles to be fought on the merits, let alone net benefit to the taxpayer.
[0]: "The F-35 Program is Costing More and Doing Less, GAO Says" https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2024/04/19/the-f-35-pr...
You can get thousands of suicide drones for the equivalent price of one F-35A ($80m). Both Ukraine and Russia are using these daily. (Obviously they don't have a fraction of the capabilities of an F35.)
The Houthis interdicted the Red Sea to commercial shipping in 2024. This is asymmetric: the US Navy couldn't afford to keep shooting down cheap Houthi drones with $2m missiles ("cost exchange ratio"). This is costing billions in economic damage. [0][1]
Another obstacle to where the F35 can't be deployed is the US blocks deploying leading-edge technology to some allies, for multiple reasons (espionage, lack of training, geopolitical), so such conflicts will determine which mix of drones or missile systems or F16s (yes, generations older) are more cost-effective.
[0]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/07/houthi-yemen-defens...
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/dp-wor...
Noone suggested cheap suicide drones can replace the F-35 in general. I did point out that the military has a weak spot in economic asymmetric warfare using drones against it. This has been manifesting for over a year now, with commercial shipping in the Red Sea/Suez. You're quite aware of that. The military has more than one mission, and air(/sea/satellite) superiority with China in a hypothetical Taiwan war is not the only scenario.
> Funding for the F-35 program will not be cut; if anything it will increase.
Clearly the tech lobby's interests compete with traditional defense contractors. Supposedly they are now competing for the same (possibly shrinking) overall defense appropriations. If that is not the case, then defense spending will continue to bloat.
Does it? Do we truly need to be born anew every day, unable to look into the past to see how Trump has run his businesses, or how he conducted his first term, or how he has promised to run his second?
He has had severe successful business enterprises.
But it makes sense that you’re answering every question with another and the one that accused him of being a grapist.
You're grasping at straws to avoid admitting he's a successful businessman.
ABC News has agreed to pay $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found "liable for rape".
Does it? Do we truly need to be born anew every day, unable to look into the past to see how Trump has run his businesses, or how he conducted his first term, or how he has promised to run his second?
His character is relevant to the discussion. He cheats. He lies. He steals. He rapes. He shirks responsibility. But he has made a lot of money. Like the $30 billion in bribes he took 2 weeks ago. He is a great buinessman but that is not relevant to the discussion. Reread what the origanal poster wrote to see this. It was about his character and how we can judge the future by his past deeds.
My responses included rhetorical questions.
I'm not interested in arguing about the comments someone else made.
First comment asked “we’ll need to wait and see if the admin can deliver”, then next “do we? Or do we have data to go on?” and my comment “he has run several successful businesses” followed by “his character is bad”.
The logic doesn’t follow, just an attempt to bad mouth.
No, he wasn’t convicted of accounting fraud. What else do you believe that’s wrong? Not to mention it’s a misdemeanor unless politics demands a felony.
And “delivering the kinds of returns YC does”? Is that the bar now? How’s Obama stack up? LOL
He's built numerous building from scratch. He gathered investors, built, then operated or sold.
Sound familiar?