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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

> I think the rest of the world will withdraw from trusting the US after this and other actions

The USA currently has a problem where a large portion of the US population no longer trusts the USA. That population shifts depending on whichever group is in charge of the federal government

Maybe this is not the way to repair that trust, I don't know. But I think for a lot of people, "Stop sending tons of our tax money to other countries" is a step to repair some of that trust with the population

The next step would have to be "start re-investing that money back into America" but we'll see if that actually happens

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Foreign aid is (was) 1% of the US budget

And that's 1% (of the whole budget) too much.

When the diseases of the third world metastasise and cause a far worse pandemic than the one that just happened you will think the 1% is cheap.

And is highly abused, cut it.

> The USA currently has a problem where a large portion of the US population no longer trusts the USA.

Feature, not a bug.

> But I think for a lot of people, "Stop sending tons of our tax money to other countries" is a step to repair some of that trust with the population

Yes, bingo. On both sides, people have become extremely sick of seeing "billions of dollars sent to X" in the news knowing that we, American citizens, will never receive anything like that amount of aid

> we, American citizens, will never receive anything like that amount of aid

21% of the federal budget goes to Social Security (aid)

16% goes to medicare (aid)

10% goes to other health spending (probably at least partially aid -- edit: further research shows that of this, around 90% is some kind of aid)

7% goes to income security (aid)

4% goes to veteran services (aid)

3% goes to education, training, employment, and social services (aid)

1.5% goes to natural resources and environment (aid)

1% goes to community and regional development (aid)

1% goes to foreign aid

We are already spending a huge portion of our budget on various kinds of domestic aid, the majority of it in fact.

Edit to add, data from 2024, source here: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

If you are a young person today, your chance of getting Social Security is low because it will be scrapped by the time we reach that age. Medicare also is for seniors, Medicaid is for the impoverished. Veteran services are for veterans.

Most of what you describe is not for the average American citizen. But it is the average American citizen who has more credit card debt than ever before, whose wages don't keep pace with inflation, whose ability to buy a home for his family drifts further and further away every year.

Why can't we take that 1% that we send to foreign "allies" (who themselves have better social services and spend more on their populations than we do) and give it to the average American who works hard and makes this country what it is?

I mean, they basically are. They are slashing foreign aid, slashing Medicaid $800B, slashing SNAP programs 20%, and they're giving the money back to the American people in the form of tax breaks.

But not average Americans, no, don't be silly. It's going back to the 1% and corporations, the "real Americans" who built this country.

Average Americans get nothing. Actually, it's worse than that we get less than nothing; we are losing social welfare programs that keep up alive and healthy. Instead, the plan as far as I can tell is to just let people who depend on those programs die.

slashing Medicaid $800B

Note that the full Medicaid budget is $880B. So "slashing" it by 90% is just code for abolishing it entirely.

[to] the "real Americans" who built this country

And to the African immigrant that purchased it.

Your first claim was "we, American citizens, will never receive anything like that" and after that's been thoroughly debunked, you're conveniently moving the goalposts. Now it's suddenly all about some ill-defined "average citizen", and I'm sure your next claim is that veterans, people on welfare, and people with medical problems are all somehow not average.

Do better.

People with medical problems don't receive Medicare and Medicaid, the impoverished and senior citizens do.

Say what you will, but if the only American citizens who receive aid from their country are senior citizens, veterans, and the impoverished, then the rest are gonna be mad when they see billions of their hard earned taxes flying out to other countries instead of spent on them. That just is what it is. Especially as the economic prospects for an average working man in the US gets worse and worse every year

1% is small in terms of the national budget but massive in terms of the average American

If the argument is "it's not that much money and it wouldn't help Americans much" then can't people also turn that on it's head? "It's not that much money, so it's not actually doing much real good overseas either"

It's not the spending itself that's the problem. It's the the waste in each program. The middle men and NGO's that are hovering up free money from the tax payers that is the problem.

All these programs are treated like cookie jars and everyone gets a nibble.

Do you have any proof of this assertion? Most government agencies outside of the military have passed financial audits. People who have worked as auditors in the public and private sectors generally report more waste and fraud in the private sector by far.

No, it's the spending. I'm sick of looking at our "allies" having the social programs our "leaders" tell us we can't have while we subsidize their countries

Except that foreign aid is a tiny part of the US budget.

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