Your "226" includes the one-time initial development costs. You're comparing $40/yr in perpetuity versus something like $220 once, $6/yr after that - and I suspect the actual costs of running the system are far lower.
The metrics for this project don't sell it - the politics do. You'll either love it or hate it.
It's a real point but I don't know an example of that happening elsewhere. The US government outcompeting private industry is exactly why communism doesn't work
Given taxes are a government system, and one that’s complicated enough that you shouldn’t expect the average tax payer to need to understand it nor have the money to afford an accountant, it’s actually insane to argue that this should be operated in the private space.
This is exactly the kind of thing the government should operate in capitalist societies.
And those who’s government places policies which benefit their voters generally have a better quality of life than those who accept lobbying, and corruption dictate government policies.
Also fyi the US science budget has literally not changed. So luckily the orange man can kick and scream but our budget for science isn't going away (not to say it's not disrupted).
Our economic influence was based around being a stabilizing force and soft power - both of which we have destroyed. The world was willing to forgive us for 2016-2020, but now they know we are not to be trusted - that we will abandon and publicly abuse our allies no matter how close, that our policy changes based on whichever dictator last talked to Trump, and they know that the other two wings of our government are spineless and powerless sycophants who will never put a stop to any of it. They are forming trade relationships and infrastructure without us, and we will never get back our preferred status.
We have given up generational advantages and are not set up to be a dominant power in anything. We are an empire in accelerating decline.
Massive energy stores, massive military, massive datacenters.
I would not want to bet against that
A massive military that's burning billions and depleting its reserves proving that it can't even protect ships from Iran.
So. Much. Winning.
Drones have made terrorism hard to stop in iran. But it's not over let's see where it goes. The positives are that Iran has effectivelt made lifelong allies of our arab neighbors. They used to lean toward china but now china is supplying weapons to the country bombing their people. Additionally israel and arabs may actually normalize diplomacy between each other as a result which would also be a massive win.
If US can collapse Iran we're looking at it being the strongest it has ever been and likely the strongest power to have ever existed. If not then it's roughly british empire at its peakish as of now.
You mix that with Russia getting it's asses kicked and every single country around china massively aligning with US and that's a recipe for success.
EU honestly is the downside here they are upset but also the sad truth is europe is no longer a world power. A regional one at best.
You could argue that america will BEGIN to decline as the recent policies take effect but as of now really the only negative is we don't do enough social spending and our supply chains aren't secure enough. Let's see how EU does over time if they are forced to build their own military again and population collapse hits their tax base that social spending is gonna get argentina like real fast.
Also, all these technologies are owned by corporate entities, many of which are ran by exactly the kind of people America is trying to deport (ie not birth citizens). So who’s to say they wouldn’t just move their tech to Europe or china is they were to outbid the US?
Meanwhile the middle and lower classes are getting poorer.
None of this screams prosperity. All you’ve done is traded your national wealth for words of good faith from a small subset of known liars. And by all independent accounts, it’s already costing the US billions.
Yes Europe is struggling too. But a large part of that is because we depended on a US alliance and you can see Europe shifting away from that in favour of building its own sovereign technologies. It will be hard, but if successful that would be the final nail in the coffin for America.
Just remember that Russia used to be a superpower on equal technology footing as America. North and South Korea used to be equally prosperous. Countries can fall behind significantly when managed by egotistical and corrupt despots. Which is ostensibly who you have in charge of America right now.
Other countries, when in the position America is now, are usually faced with two options:
1. Spend decades rebuilding international trust
2. Go to war, ultimately lose the war because it’s basically you vs the rest of the world, and then fall back to option 1 after a suitably humiliating defeat and millions of lives lost from all sides and critical infrastructure and manufacturing destroyed.
It very much feels like America is going for option 2. So I wouldn’t be trusting your long term plans to the orange buffoon if were you. The best case scenario is this downwards spiral is a blip. The worst case scenario is you’ll drag the rest of the glob into another world war.
EU is struggling for a lot of reasons the US was supporting the bad design. I do believe it's a kind of learned helplessness though and youre right. If EU stopped social spending reduced regulations rebuilt their military they could actually make a come back in like 15yrs. Sounds like a long time but that actually is really good and their recent discussions on actually rebuilding their militaries is a glimmer of hope. But the greatness of europe like it was in the past? As of now a totally lost cause and that's cultural. Until the current generation dies and people who want to see europe be a real power again come up there's no way. France would be my bet on this front.
An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost" the only question to ask is wether US is currently in it's 1700 British empire mode or 1940 one.
Everyone has said how the us is failing for literally my entire life now. They intensified in 2016 with oramge man's first term and continued to now. But again, in realistic terms the US is not less than it was a decade ago and in obvious terms it's in a better position today since the 80s.
The most obvious example is energy. Middle east and venuzuela were basically light advesaries. Saudi was leaning towards china. Now? US essentially controls the majority of oil in the entire world. Nobody else can put a fleet of ships on the output of ME like that. Sure Iran can commit terrorism on civilians but nobody can drop an army anywhere in the world like the US. Our arab allies have heavily realigned to the US. Our oil is the highest output ever. Venuzuela is ours so in 15yrs so is the next middle east of oil output.
So again. World energy dominance for the next 50yrs minimum. We have the largest datacenter capacity by a stupidly large margin. Possibly in 20yrs a complete monopoly on industrial space flight. Those 3 things together to me are a near garauntee dominance. Even one of those things could be enough to stay a super power but all of them? All at once? That's a wild combo. No other country even has one of those (i suppose ME countries with oil is the only one).
We'll see how Iran turns out though. That would be the chink in the output above. State sponsored civilian terrorism is a hard thing to stop but they have succeeded in aligning every arab ally against them pretty good.
That’s literally the point we are discussing ;)
> An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost"
Yeah, Britain definitely falls into that category too. But it’s also worth noting that the empire was literally build from conquest and exploitation. Which brings me back to my previous comment about war.
Sure but so is every super power. The question to ask is the alternative. US is "nice" compared to previous powers in history. Even the British were "nice" for their time period. They ended slavery almost worldwide as easily the most obvious win. They did alot of good as well as sucking pretty hard, kinda philisophical question at that point though.
Western AI is a bubble. Whether it pops or just fizzles remains to be seen. I obviously hope for the latter. But either way it’s not sustainable in its current guise. Add to that Chinese models being an estimated 6 months behind American frontier models and European leaders agreeing the importance of domestic AI, I think you’ll find Americas ownership of AI will diminish. And if the current political climate is anything to go by, there are strong enough incentives not to ship data to American data centres that there might be real change over the coming decade.
The space program is a bigger asset but that’s largely private and I wouldn’t bank on Musks loyalty.
Europe is producing some high quality military drones too. It’s been well reported in the Ukraine war. Plus I personally know of someone who works in that specific industry.
I’ll concede that it’s impossible to have any confidence in any geopolitical predictions given the current climate. But if I were a betting man, I’d bet against the current administration making America great again.