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Comment by abtinf | Hacker News Reader

Certainly. So would materials expenses and theft and insurance and so forth.

But the confusion is that somehow, money not spent on “salaries and compensation” doesn’t go to people. All of it goes to people.

Defense spending isn’t buying “defense”, it’s buying time and effort for people to focus on and produce defense related things. This is the root of the original post that defense spending is a jobs program.

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> All of it goes to people

That's just straight up false.

It goes to legal entities, some of which are people.

Companies aren't people mate, and neither are investment funds.

The money might still be managed by people, but that cannot be called salary, even if you're stretching the definition.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume everything you said is true.

Would you agree if I reworded my statement to “ultimately, all money eventually flows to people, whether for their labor or due to their ownership of the entities receiving the money”?

Ownership is a legal concept, you could even call it fictional.

So yes, all transactions can be linked be back to individuals, if you ignore all details and make some gigantic leaps of faith... But what's the insight?

Are we just doing philosophy like in ancient Greece?

But companies are owned by people. As are funds.

yes, but "salaries and compensation" are people doing work, and profit gets paid to shareholders. Most people would agree that the bulk of taxpayer dollars should go to working people and not shareholders, these are two entirely different categories. All of it goes to people, is such a reduction. We could just cut a check to Elon Musk and claim "All of goes to people". It is important to establish the difference, between paying people for labor and giving people money in the form of profit.

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