Just tax billionaires and we can have all of the above and a surplus budget.
How about we tax billionaires and also not give giant gifts to defense companies every year?
unless conflicts end worldwide I want my country to maintain the highest level of military technology and local capacity to ramp up if needed. That being said I don’t want my country involved with every conflict in the world.
If the USA wouldn’t be randomly invading countries every few years, they could keep the same level of military technology while spending much less.
The Iraq war did nothing to increase the US military’s capabilities but just wasted enourmous amounts of money while killing civilians on a daily basis.
Yeah but it also gave us the Saddam Hussein outline meme.
Trillions well spent.
NCD user spotted
that’s not how technology works, stuff will get outdated if we use it or not
for sure. To boot that was done while backgrounding afganistan which was the main 9/11 thing and caused it to go on forever since it was neglected.
What’s up with Americans never mentioning Afghanistan anymore like it wasn’t the first place that got invaded after 9/11???
it is much mentioned a bunch by our right on how bad the left president did finally extricating ourselves from the thing they started (and of course lets not forget what president actually eliminated osama)
Good news, they could reduce it by 400 billion a year and still spend more than the the other 3 biggest spenders combined
As a Finn I don’t want the US to stop fully… but they have a huge amount of excess, it’s insane how much money they waste
Understandable
If it’s at the expense of everything else that could help the state of the country and quality of life, what’s the point?
if it was but those other things are happening. I think your saying its not enough but when is it enough?
Sorry I was admittedly kinda vague. No point in having the world’s best military when it’s protecting a country that has destroyed the middle class, expanded the poverty class, secured inadequate funding for social security, failed to give its children a quality education in primary school, and priced secondary education into the stratosphere despite decades of telling kids college is the only thing that will get them a better job than flipping burgers.
Are all those things literally true? No, but some of them are, and they are all headed that way. Would be great if somehow a good military wasn’t the only thing anyone was willing to fund.
Oh I get you. I often wonder at what point enough will be enough as we roll downhill.
I want my country to maintain the highest level of military technology and local capacity to ramp up if needed
There is N-word that will burn some asses: nationalize.
Watching Ukraine absolutely stonewall Russia using cold era tech has been incredible. Imagine what modern equipment could do. I can’t wait to see what happens when they get f-16s, which were developed in the mid 70s by the way.
The last time US was involved in a war that even remotely had something to do with US was WWII. Before that it was probably civil war.
Yeah, because that for sure will stop other world powers from arming themselves and attacking others.
And to answer upcoming question: why we should care not others instead of ourselves. No one attacks us militarily (we are attacked via hubris warfare with disinformation such as this though) because we are armed.
Why would being ten times larger than the next ten militaries in the world combined instead of the next twenty make us likely to be attacked?
Because then you would say why 10 and not 5 and so on. The social spending currently is still much much bigger than the money spent for social services anyway (4.1 trillion + 910 billion in non defense spending which covers mentioned education housing etc): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget
Cutting military spending won’t increase social spending. The GOP is for cutting spending no matter what do they can cut taxes from corporations which what they did with latest tax bill.
Look at corporate income taxes, that should be increased.
I’m really amazed that people on Lemmy are actually cheering for massive, bloated military budgets.
Oh so after showing how ridiculous your post is and defense budget is a drop in what already is being spent on social programs now you are changing goal posts?
This post has always been about bloated defense budgets and all I have been talking about is bloated defense budgets. I didn’t move any goal posts. That is a lie.
not give giant gifts to defense companies
There is N-word that will burn some asses on lemmy.world: nationalize.
defense companies
You mean mercenaries and arms dealers. The only thing they’re defending is their profits.
I can’t believe how many people on Lemmy of all places are defending massive defense budgets.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I’m not saying there’s no waste, but being against wasteful spending is a completely different thing, to me, than being against wasteful spending.
I’m completely okay with spending inordinate gobs of the tax base on defense because at this point, the US defense budget is, in effect, the premium we pay yearly for “Global Nuclear War Insurance”.
It’s as much as investment in psychological warfare as practical. That is: we lead the race by such a huge lead that nobody else even bothers to attempt to rival us. This prevents open/total war between superpowers, and also has a suppressive effect even on larger non-superpower nations.
And if you think our defense budget is inflated now, heaven help you if a near peer conflict actually would break out.
Basically we pay a lot, year in and year out so that we don’t have to deal with war time spending…and of course all the death and destruction as well.
You’re free to not like that, of course, but like I said, I’m 100% good with it.
the US defense budget is, in effect, the premium we pay yearly for “Global Nuclear War Insurance”.
That’s as true as the one about billionaires being “job creators” 🙄
This prevents open/total war between superpowers, and also has a suppressive effect even on larger non-superpower nations.
More ridiculous propaganda. The US military prevents war in the same way as tornados prevent strong winds.
And if you think our defense budget is inflated now, heaven help you if a near peer conflict actually would break out
So what you’re saying is that spending as much as the 20 next countries wouldn’t be enough to fight ONE of those? Sounds awfully wasteful.
Basically we pay a lot, year in and year out so that we don’t have to deal with war time spending
Something like a single decade total HASN’T been war time for the 250 years the country has existed.
and of course all the death and destruction as well.
Except for those millions of pesky foreigners that of course have it coming 🙄
You’re free to not like that, of course, but like I said, I’m 100% good with it.
Because you’ve swallowed their lies hook, line and sinker.
Not just billionaires; corporations.
If we consider corporations people (and the Supreme Courts says we have to) then we should tax their income. That means total income, not profits because I don’t pay taxes on what’s left over after my bills, so why should corps get to?
We would have money for both if we taxed the rich.
This is the thing that really drives me nuts.
It’s not either/or. That’s the billionaires’ argument.
The USA spends twice as much on public healthcare than it does on defense.
(Medicare and Medicaid = 1.4 trillion per year, vs. defense = 700 billion per year)
The problem isn’t that tax money is being used for defense.
The problem is that healthcare prices are insane in the US, and that the government isn’t allowed to negotiate lower prices (even though they have the weight to do so).
The real problem is that US insurance/healthcare was specifically designed to tie you to an employer.
Absolutely true. In the late 40s, when other countries were setting up public healthcare, we didn’t do it because we didn’t need to since employers offered healthcare plans. So it didn’t happen for us. Now there is no political will, because employers LOVE the leverage it gives them.
DoD spending was $1.8 trillion in 2023, of which $700B was “discretionary” spending. Medicare and medicaid spending was $1.6 trillion, of which $0 was discretionary.
and that the government isn’t allowed to negotiate lower prices
I’m not even sure how it works. This sounds like any company can sell any bullshit to medicare and they have no choice, but to buy it.
I don’t live in US, that’s why I’m asking.
Dumb Russian propaganda.especially that the equipment we are sending we would have to pay to dispose.
Besides one doesn’t exclude the other and GOP wants to cut it no matter what.
Also stuff like Medicare for all would actually save money. Social security is another pool of money separate from other taxes and working people pay for it. Aren’t student loan cuts actually a good thing? What is job opportunity cuts? What are legal services cuts? At least in my school school lunches expanded and include all children regardless of income.
Edit: for those downvoting, here’s why it is dumb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget just for Medicare alone we already spending the same amount as for the defense.
Doesn’t look like Putin’s propaganda. His propaganda machine is too dumb to make something like this because of nepotism, kleptocracy and corruption.
But here’s picture from Soviet magazine after Stalin’s death about Union budget:
And here is translated version*.
*it translated libraries as sciences
An F-35 would have been better for this picture, but still a good meme.
Edit. Shit someone else said this
No, you can have all those but it would result in a rounding error for the rich
Medicare isn’t old enough to have paid for the F-16.
Wow I guess the whole point is moot.
Make another one except for corporate fat cats and the rich getting tax cuts.
I live in a first world country, so can anyone tell me what a food stamp is? I’ve heard a lot about them from TV, but I don’t understand wth it is. Is it discounts that the government pay for food, who makes them, where do people get them?
It just means that the goverment will give you money to buy food if you’re poor.
They used to be stamped paper cards, hence “Food Stamps”, but are now distributed via debit cards. The name stuck, even though current programs have different names
Sorry you’re getting down votes for just asking a question
The other comment reply got you your answer, but I’ll just add that these days, I believe “food stamps” are under the government acronyms of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and are dispersed via EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer).
Depending on which country(USSR or USA) is first for you, in the other it means food for free or ability to buy some amount of food accordingly.
Sadly truthful
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