Neither is 1.5, if you look at the state of our nation.
So, both sides?
Timex
4595
$1.5 trillion, or $150 Billion increase in spending every year, is in fact a huge amount of money, dude.
RichVR
4596
And let us not forget the military funding. Which is not even given a moment of scrutiny.
Even though their accounting is notoriously a total joke. Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex.
Timex
4598
The immense military expenditure of the US does not make $1.5 trillion dollars a small amount.
7.5 trillion is spent every 10 years. So, it kind of does.
7.5 is more then 1.5 trillion, or so my math teacher would tell me.
Isnât some of that amount (over ten years) just meant to run the federal government, or would it be all new spending? We know that the BIP isnât all new money.
Timex
4601
7.5 trillion is bigger than most numbers you will ever deal with, but that doesnât mean all those numbers are small.
To put it into more useful context than âomg military spendingâ, 1.5T over ten years is around 5-6 times the entire funding of NASA. To compare it to concrete terms of military spending, itâs 11 USS Gerald Ford aircraft carriers. Every year, for ten years. So at the end of it, we would have 110 aircraft carriers. Itâs a ton of money, man.
Is this really where we are these days? Thinking that one and a half trillion dollars is chump change? Come on man, thatâs crazy.
Isnât that a bit of a silly comparison? A ln aircraft carrier every year? Thatâs like saying your salary is a lot because you can by a car (or two) every year. But thatâs not really saying a lot, at all, because you arenât going to buy a car every year, even if you would by one every once in a while.
Also, keep in mind, when the US Government Spends money, it gets a large portion of it back, through the revenue that is generated when the projects are completed, but also the taxes of the people getting paid, or the companies earned.
Last I checked, an Aircraft carrier doesnât pay taxes, but a parent who can finally get a job because her kid is in pre school, he/she does.
So, 1.5 trillion is not only a tiny fraction of what we should spend, but unlike tax breaks, much, if not all the money will come back to the US government in both extra revenue generated directly by the projects and of course the taxes of people that benefit from the project, either directly or in directly.
And once you fact that in, requesting funding equal to what we pay for our military seems like a pretty reasonable idea.
Timex
4603
No man, itâs ELEVEN aircraft carriers. Every year. Those are ships that are designed to operate for 50 years.
Thatâs the point, man. 1.5 Trillion dollars is a huge amount of money.
You realize this is true of military spending too, right?
Itâs much less true if you think about it.
When you build a machine for war, it really doesnât generate much in the return in investment. Sure, you pay for the material and wages of the people that created, but after that, unless you are turning to piracy or some sort of raiding, the thing just sits there.
When you put money into daycare programs, you pay not only for the building and wages of the people working there, but you free up a mother or father to go to work, which generates wealth for the community (hopefully) but they also pay their taxes. You get double the return in both the direct employment and taxes, while when you pay the military war machine, you might be at best paying the military personnel, or the contractor, but the trickle-down is much more shallow.
Soldiers donât really produce much wealth for the nation (well, maybe the British Empire) than even you basic store clerk. The soldier can spend his/her wages and pay taxes, but the store clerk generates wealth through their labor, in addition to spending his/her wages and paying taxes.
One thing to keep in mind is the high levels of unemployment are currently being pushed by the fact that our country has some of the worst systems of child care in the developed world, so it would be nice to see us do something about that.
Alstein
4605
Spending given to the poor is usually the most efficient form of government spending, due to monetary velocity. Itâs the expenditues the Conservadems are fine with that tend to be less efficient, (and Republican stuff tends to be negative value)
Timex
4606
Consider that military spending doesnât simply build war machines.
Consider, for instance, that a lot of military spending goes into research and development, and then that technology goes on to create entire industries. Like the internet, which you are using right now. Or GPS, which is in basically everything and enables all kinds of other commercial software and hardware applications.
Where do you think all that money the military is spending goes? You think theyâre buying 750 billion dollars in bullets? The DoD accounts for about half of all the research and development funded by the government.
Now do it with cups of coffee!
I donât really know what youâre trying to argue. Yes, $150B per year is a lot of money, and yes, itâs just a fraction of what we spend on defense without a second thought. Both those things are true! Now what?
Hereâs how it is spent:
Of all that money, 86% is spent on people and bullets and stuff. Now, what have we proven?
Alstein
4608
Republicans have gotten angry at that last 14%, because plenty of it was going towards climate change.
Timex
4609
The argument is actually what you just stated here. That simply because it is a fraction of the overall defense spending, that does not make it an insignificant number that should fall beneath scrutiny.
If the military said that they wanted to build 11 aircraft carriers every year for ten years, one would think that we would question that spending, regardless of the fact that it only constituted âa fraction of their current spendingâ.
So we cannot use the fact that these various social spending bills are only a fraction of defense spending as a means to handwave away scrutiny about whether they are appropriate.
And bear in mind here, Iâm not actually arguing against such spending (well, I probably would against something crazy like 8 trillion dollars).
Separately from that, I was pointing out that some of the greatest technological innovations of the past century have come from DoD research programs (generally, funded by the government and conducted by private industry through grants from places like DARPA). Really, itâs just an aside to put things into context when folks seem to think that all of the military funding is going to buy bombs for dropping on babies.
The sad thing is that as the military faces funding cuts in the near future (which seems likely), itâll almost certainly be the case that we cut the research programs that have significant long term economic return, while preserving the manufacturing of outdated hardware.
Of course we can. The argument is that we approve massive military budgets every single year almost by acclamation. There is virtually no scrutiny into the process as there isnât an ounce of political will to question those expenditures in any substantial way. What little pushback does happen is always a sort of puppet theater about waste and mismanagement or some particular vehicle or weapon system; which pushback targets a tiny fraction of the overall budget.
There is nothing like the scrutiny that goes into social spending bills, because the political climate is such that this sort of scrutiny is rewarded, even though the actual numbers â aside from social security and Medicare â are comparatively small. And thereâs nothing wrong with an argument that points out the disparity in thinking that makes this so.
Canuck
4611
I read an article today where it talked about Sinema being all pissed because the vote has been put off until the end of October and talking about a betrayal of trust or something like that. I donât get it. Whatâs to be upset about? If it needs more time then give it more time. Iâm very concerned that nothing will end up happening thanks to her. Manchin has his price but I get the impression that Sinema just wants to see the world burn. Either that or sheâs been bought by Republican big-money interests.
Banzai
4612
Well, she doesnât want to increase taxes on the wealthy, or allow medicare to negotiate for better drug prices, so who knows what the root cause might be.
Sinema is right to be upset. Pelosi promised the Problems Solvers Caucus (e.g. moderate Democrats, plus some mostly sane Republicans) That if the reconciliation bill wasnât done by the end of Sept. That she would have a vote on the infrastructure bill. That didnât happen.
Itâs not just Manchin and Sinema that have a problem with 3.5 trillion dollar bill, plenty of house moderates do also.
