Just to add emphasis on how much we could cut from the military:
The US is ranked #1 globally in military spending, and we spend more than all of the countries ranked #2-#8 (China, Russia, Germany, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine) COMBINED.
Which means we either have way more shit than we need to protect ourselves, or, we're being incredibly wasteful and need to reassess that spending.
I was expecting someone to put the numbers down. Thank you. I can never retain that part.
My personal take, as a non military expert, is that the US has too many branches, with conflicting interests, and not enough coordination and joint command, geared towards force projection and occupation, instead of a highly coordinated, intertwined, cohesive military set for threat deterrence and strategic defense operations.
In my understanding, that was the goal of NATO: having a very large number of countries combined to pool resources, know-how, means of production and, in a dire event, human resources. No country was supposed to drain it's coffers to be capable to hold off threats.
I think a huge chunk of the US budget goes to the pay, pension, healthcare for the military personnel. I guess that's a downside of having a huge military that is not conscripted, one that you have to actually pay. Also they have to pay them well and offer stuff like healthcare, pensions etc, to lure in people.
I have no doubt on that and that is agood thing. Those people put their lives up and risk death and injury; they deserve being taken care of.
But how much in comparison goes to funding projects that never return any results or gets diverted towards other less legitimate ends? Just the list of failed weapon systems R&D with monumental unjustifiable expenditure is huge. Plus the investment in overcomplicated weaponry with tens or hundreds of millions of cost per unit, that are found lacking when put to test by the people that will be using it routinely.
And having a volunteer army is a plus. Conscription is not something good to have. The european countries considering it are gettiing serious backlash. People want peace, not have their family die in futile wars brought about by hubris of incompetent politians.
Failed weapon system R&D costs are kind of one time thing. With military pensions and health care costs the US is paying like 700 billion $ every year. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay that, I'm saying perhaps they should downsize a tiny bit. Maybe stop getting into wars all the time.
The thing is, for a country that attacks others, like the US, volunteer army is of course the way to go. You couldn't do what the US is doing with a conscription army. For countries that have a military for defensive purposes, like the Finnish Defense Forces, conscription is a good thing (and for Finland, you can check the support for conscription, the majority support it and are happy to keep it).
The countries that are getting backlash from bringing conscription back are places like Germany, where people are a bit weird about that, for understandable reasons, sort of. But it does seem like they think that they might slip back into nazism at any point if they are careful, which is a bit weird if you ask me.
Anyway, Germany is not bringing conscription back because they want to go abroad and fight futile wars, they are planning on doing that because the security situation in Europe has changed, thanks mainly to russia attacking Ukraine and doing annoying hybrid warfare stuff, and also a bit because the US is being unstable, unpredictable and unreliable ally.
We've had our little forays into bringing back conscription a few years back and the sentiment was not great. Bad, to be sincere. Conscripts are viewed as essentially cannon fodder; very bad pay, poor conditions and because they have to be there, they can be abused at will. The numbers of conscious objections sky rocketed until it was replaced with voluntary service. And we want volunteer, professional, military personel. Better to have one volunteer than ten unwilling, roughly translated, is a common saying.
Back to the US.
Their weapons programs run for years and several dozens at the same time, across the four branches. It is a lot of money being spent, on a yearly basis.
You are, of course, correct that they should stop getting themselves into wars and instead keep themselves busy with internal affairs. But regardless all of the expenditure with health care and pensions, I remember reading somewhere that a great majority of the homeless population are military veterans, many of which struggle with mental conditions. Doesn't seem they are spending what they should, how they should. We can also risk a fair degree of corruption, with some confidence.
Meanwhile, in Europe, conscription is not the way forward. Volunteer forces, well trained, well equiped, ready and capable for the kind of modern warfare the Ukrained x Russia is producing is the future. We won't be seeing trench or open field combat as it was in the past. We'll have operators controlling remote weapons systems for far away.
I mean with Portugal, I remember reading a book about conscripts being used to defend colonies and putting down rebellions of locals in Africa and such. For that sort of bullshit I agree, conscription is not the way to go. But for purely defensive purposes, I do not see anything bad about conscription. But thats me with my Finnish background, we havent gone to other lands trying to conquer places. We've fought mostly defensive wars, in which the survival of the nation was at stake. The only time we went on a offensive, was to get back areas we lost a few years before. So obviously there is a difference in thinking there and I completely understand the reluctance of places, that used their military to go out and about, to have conscription back. So perhaps the way to do it is to make the laws so that it would be illegal to use conscripts in a non-defensive operations. Like, if Portugal wants to take part in bombing some militants in a ex-colony, that has to be done by volunteers etc. Even russia does (or pretends to do) it like that, I don't know if they changed it yet, but at least it used to be so that conscripts were not allowed to be sent outside russian borders.
And back to US, what I meant is that once a weapons program is done, its done. Of course they go on for years, even decades, but sometimes they don't. I wasn't really arguing that they are not a waste of money, most of them are, mostly, a waste of money. But once they end, they end. Paying pensions and stuff only ends when the person dies. But of course, people live longer than weapons R&D programs, some R&D programs live longer than people. But I think we agree that both are a huge cost and both are kind of unnecessary in different ways. Weapons programs are unnecessary because most of them are completely useless or dead ends, paying soldiers is unnecessary because the US doesn't have to go and start bombing Iran, they choose to do so and it costs a stupid amount for a long time.
And a final point on the conscription, I'm not saying that its good. I'm saying it MIGHT be necessary. At least in some capacity. Maybe having a purely defensive force is the way to go, like I said, make it illegal for the government to send soldiers to fight, unless they were attacked first. But of course the politicians will find a way around that. Its a complicated subject and I tend to not get into it too much, because I don't live in these other countries, I don't know the history, I don't know the culture. All I know is that our defensive conscription model works for us and it works extremely well for us and nobody wants to get rid of it. But like I said, I completely understand that other places are a bit suspicious about it and I won't blame them.
Keep in mind that the US military is a giant welfare program. Sure, it's a lot of money, but a lot of that money is keeping the last vestiges of manufacturing alive in bumfuck nowhere, Middle America, where they still weld tanks together.
You've gotta raise revenues. We've tried cutting our way out of this, and it just doesn't work. Thinking of "how do we reduce government spending" is fundamentally the wrong mentality; we should reduce overall spending by increasing government revenues and expenditures. If we implemented socialized healthcare, as a nation we'd save in excess of $1T even though as a state we'd spend considerably more than we do currently.
Not just trump, it'll give Republicans a scapegoat for all the policies they pass. Trump is just a symptom of the Epstein billionaire class corruption
Edit: instead of spending a trillion to give Americans $5000 each, they should spend a trillion dollars in funding for gathering the billionaire class for prosecution and criminal trials for crimes against humanity
Honestly, cuts alone wouldn't do it. You could cut all defense spending, fire the Department of Defense in its entirety, and the Federal Government would still run a deficit. Include all non-mandatory civilian spending as well and you'll barely be above water.
The best things to do would be to increase revenue and enact policies which will allow for savings in existing Medicare programs like allowing for drug price negotiation. There is nowhere near the level of waste in the Federal Government that a lot of politicians claim in how existing programs work.
Oh cuts? Cut off the oligarchy, push socialist policies like free dental and health care, make colleges free, re-initiate DEI programs and support, force landlords/housing associations to have a limited amount of owned homes, build more affordable homes, nationalize rail and standardize public transit and bike infrastructure, wealth cap via wealth tax, remove all barriers of immigration and emigration, support international trade, eliminate monopolies and fine them for every community they’ve affected (the money fires to local businesses and new local stores) make slap/useless law suits illegal, ban use of baseless AI, fix redrawn gerrymandered maps, tear down borders between usa, Canada and Mexico and allow free and open travel, work with Canada and Mexico with peace not segregation, de-criminalize non violent crimes, release non violent prisoners, make prisons learning/re-habitation facilities with support - not torture facilities, mandate pentagon a full and thorough Audit (including classified projects, only need to know the amount of money not what the project is), stop any and all proxy wars, heavily regulate businesses, standardize worker unions, and ensure news and news like channels are speaking true and non biased information.
That overall saves money from other spending and won’t fix the balance immediately, but will over time stabilize the economy. However good luck getting any of that situated in usa
Nothing. It'd be funny if it wasn't sad. The math isn't mathing, the debt repayment is so high it'll never be paid off normally
Plus you have private debt, which has also grown to an untenable level
There's only three ways out of this historically. First, a jubilee... We just say fuck it, all debts are forgiven and we move forward. Second is a revolution where the new government doesn't acknowledge the past debt
Finally, we have the option that's actually going to happen, hyperinflation. Through devaluation of the currency, most debt will shrink until we get back to a manageable level and hopefully things stabilize
But dropping prices as well? Yeah, that's just not happening. We could drop the prices of necessities through government intervention, but we're going to have to take the socialism pill for that (which might happen, it's looking appealing to more and more Americans these days)
But there's no world where we both balance the budget and drop prices. Just a few years ago, we could've raised taxes and took a hatchet to defense spending and slowly worked it off while keeping inflation at a high but manageable level to whittle it down... But at this point, the debt is just too large
Nationalize the companies owned by the oiligarch(s) in question, maybe? I've no idea either but it seems like there has to be some option other than "throw up our hands and admit defeat".
The US military sucks about $1T a year, but twice that is spent on the most expensive healthcare system in the world.
Also, Boomers are sucking more out of social security, and healthcare than they ever paid in.
All could be paid for if they stopped taxing "income" and started taxing net worth. But that would mean taxing boomers, which is not allowed. If they stopped income tax the economy would boom with trillions in spending, not hoarding.
one day before "9 11" the defense secretary admitted the military couldn't account for 2.1 trillion, or something like that. So maybe that would be a good place to start. Also not starting abusive wars that are also very expensive. The US could also tell some debtors to just fuck off, which would break the cycle of depending on borrowed money.
33 Comments
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 50 pts · 1d
Cut back on the military budget and tax everyone with more than 120 millions (random number) in assets hard.
You can't get money circulating in the economy if it gets pooled in the hands of a selected few.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1d
Just to add emphasis on how much we could cut from the military:
The US is ranked #1 globally in military spending, and we spend more than all of the countries ranked #2-#8 (China, Russia, Germany, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine) COMBINED.
Which means we either have way more shit than we need to protect ourselves, or, we're being incredibly wasteful and need to reassess that spending.
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 1d
I was expecting someone to put the numbers down. Thank you. I can never retain that part.
My personal take, as a non military expert, is that the US has too many branches, with conflicting interests, and not enough coordination and joint command, geared towards force projection and occupation, instead of a highly coordinated, intertwined, cohesive military set for threat deterrence and strategic defense operations.
In my understanding, that was the goal of NATO: having a very large number of countries combined to pool resources, know-how, means of production and, in a dire event, human resources. No country was supposed to drain it's coffers to be capable to hold off threats.
BeelzebubEiNukuKoskaan@piefed.social · 2 pts · 21h
I think a huge chunk of the US budget goes to the pay, pension, healthcare for the military personnel. I guess that's a downside of having a huge military that is not conscripted, one that you have to actually pay. Also they have to pay them well and offer stuff like healthcare, pensions etc, to lure in people.
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 20h
I have no doubt on that and that is agood thing. Those people put their lives up and risk death and injury; they deserve being taken care of.
But how much in comparison goes to funding projects that never return any results or gets diverted towards other less legitimate ends? Just the list of failed weapon systems R&D with monumental unjustifiable expenditure is huge. Plus the investment in overcomplicated weaponry with tens or hundreds of millions of cost per unit, that are found lacking when put to test by the people that will be using it routinely.
And having a volunteer army is a plus. Conscription is not something good to have. The european countries considering it are gettiing serious backlash. People want peace, not have their family die in futile wars brought about by hubris of incompetent politians.
BeelzebubEiNukuKoskaan@piefed.social · 1 pts · 20h
Failed weapon system R&D costs are kind of one time thing. With military pensions and health care costs the US is paying like 700 billion $ every year. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay that, I'm saying perhaps they should downsize a tiny bit. Maybe stop getting into wars all the time.
The thing is, for a country that attacks others, like the US, volunteer army is of course the way to go. You couldn't do what the US is doing with a conscription army. For countries that have a military for defensive purposes, like the Finnish Defense Forces, conscription is a good thing (and for Finland, you can check the support for conscription, the majority support it and are happy to keep it).
The countries that are getting backlash from bringing conscription back are places like Germany, where people are a bit weird about that, for understandable reasons, sort of. But it does seem like they think that they might slip back into nazism at any point if they are careful, which is a bit weird if you ask me.
Anyway, Germany is not bringing conscription back because they want to go abroad and fight futile wars, they are planning on doing that because the security situation in Europe has changed, thanks mainly to russia attacking Ukraine and doing annoying hybrid warfare stuff, and also a bit because the US is being unstable, unpredictable and unreliable ally.
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 20h
Hello from Portugal!
We've had our little forays into bringing back conscription a few years back and the sentiment was not great. Bad, to be sincere. Conscripts are viewed as essentially cannon fodder; very bad pay, poor conditions and because they have to be there, they can be abused at will. The numbers of conscious objections sky rocketed until it was replaced with voluntary service. And we want volunteer, professional, military personel. Better to have one volunteer than ten unwilling, roughly translated, is a common saying.
Back to the US.
Their weapons programs run for years and several dozens at the same time, across the four branches. It is a lot of money being spent, on a yearly basis.
You are, of course, correct that they should stop getting themselves into wars and instead keep themselves busy with internal affairs. But regardless all of the expenditure with health care and pensions, I remember reading somewhere that a great majority of the homeless population are military veterans, many of which struggle with mental conditions. Doesn't seem they are spending what they should, how they should. We can also risk a fair degree of corruption, with some confidence.
Meanwhile, in Europe, conscription is not the way forward. Volunteer forces, well trained, well equiped, ready and capable for the kind of modern warfare the Ukrained x Russia is producing is the future. We won't be seeing trench or open field combat as it was in the past. We'll have operators controlling remote weapons systems for far away.
BeelzebubEiNukuKoskaan@piefed.social · 1 pts · 19h
I mean with Portugal, I remember reading a book about conscripts being used to defend colonies and putting down rebellions of locals in Africa and such. For that sort of bullshit I agree, conscription is not the way to go. But for purely defensive purposes, I do not see anything bad about conscription. But thats me with my Finnish background, we havent gone to other lands trying to conquer places. We've fought mostly defensive wars, in which the survival of the nation was at stake. The only time we went on a offensive, was to get back areas we lost a few years before. So obviously there is a difference in thinking there and I completely understand the reluctance of places, that used their military to go out and about, to have conscription back. So perhaps the way to do it is to make the laws so that it would be illegal to use conscripts in a non-defensive operations. Like, if Portugal wants to take part in bombing some militants in a ex-colony, that has to be done by volunteers etc. Even russia does (or pretends to do) it like that, I don't know if they changed it yet, but at least it used to be so that conscripts were not allowed to be sent outside russian borders.
And back to US, what I meant is that once a weapons program is done, its done. Of course they go on for years, even decades, but sometimes they don't. I wasn't really arguing that they are not a waste of money, most of them are, mostly, a waste of money. But once they end, they end. Paying pensions and stuff only ends when the person dies. But of course, people live longer than weapons R&D programs, some R&D programs live longer than people. But I think we agree that both are a huge cost and both are kind of unnecessary in different ways. Weapons programs are unnecessary because most of them are completely useless or dead ends, paying soldiers is unnecessary because the US doesn't have to go and start bombing Iran, they choose to do so and it costs a stupid amount for a long time.
And a final point on the conscription, I'm not saying that its good. I'm saying it MIGHT be necessary. At least in some capacity. Maybe having a purely defensive force is the way to go, like I said, make it illegal for the government to send soldiers to fight, unless they were attacked first. But of course the politicians will find a way around that. Its a complicated subject and I tend to not get into it too much, because I don't live in these other countries, I don't know the history, I don't know the culture. All I know is that our defensive conscription model works for us and it works extremely well for us and nobody wants to get rid of it. But like I said, I completely understand that other places are a bit suspicious about it and I won't blame them.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10h
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 9h
Well, it should be done.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2h
Best I can do is up it to $1T.
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 2h
Another log on the fire.
impairedimperator@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 8m
Keep in mind that the US military is a giant welfare program. Sure, it's a lot of money, but a lot of that money is keeping the last vestiges of manufacturing alive in bumfuck nowhere, Middle America, where they still weld tanks together.
Ariselas@piefed.ca · 27 pts · 1d
Billionares
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
They basically invested all of that money in the opposite direction for climate change.
Witchfire@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1d
Bring back pre-Raegan tax rates
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 14 pts · 1d
You've gotta raise revenues. We've tried cutting our way out of this, and it just doesn't work. Thinking of "how do we reduce government spending" is fundamentally the wrong mentality; we should reduce overall spending by increasing government revenues and expenditures. If we implemented socialized healthcare, as a nation we'd save in excess of $1T even though as a state we'd spend considerably more than we do currently.
9point6@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
Prices will only increase, and at a rate faster than average salaries, until billionaires are removed from society
Public spending allocation is not a major cause of price rises, it's greed driving prices up
anon_8675309@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 18h
Raise corporate taxes. They’re not hiring anyway. Wealth tax. Cut military spending. Cut subsidies.
gastroglizzy@piefed.social · 11 pts · 1d
We don't need to get rid of anything. All we need is for billionaires to pay as much taxes as the rest of us.
village604@adultswim.fan · 4 pts · 22h
Cutting the military budget would help a bunch too. We don't need to spend more than the 2nd-8th top military budgets combined.
newton@piefed.social · 8 pts · 1d
Dump trump,its a beginning
crispbacon99@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 1d
Not just trump, it'll give Republicans a scapegoat for all the policies they pass. Trump is just a symptom of the Epstein billionaire class corruption
Edit: instead of spending a trillion to give Americans $5000 each, they should spend a trillion dollars in funding for gathering the billionaire class for prosecution and criminal trials for crimes against humanity
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club · 8 pts · 14h
Honestly, cuts alone wouldn't do it. You could cut all defense spending, fire the Department of Defense in its entirety, and the Federal Government would still run a deficit. Include all non-mandatory civilian spending as well and you'll barely be above water.
The best things to do would be to increase revenue and enact policies which will allow for savings in existing Medicare programs like allowing for drug price negotiation. There is nowhere near the level of waste in the Federal Government that a lot of politicians claim in how existing programs work.
GarboDog@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 7h
Oh cuts? Cut off the oligarchy, push socialist policies like free dental and health care, make colleges free, re-initiate DEI programs and support, force landlords/housing associations to have a limited amount of owned homes, build more affordable homes, nationalize rail and standardize public transit and bike infrastructure, wealth cap via wealth tax, remove all barriers of immigration and emigration, support international trade, eliminate monopolies and fine them for every community they’ve affected (the money fires to local businesses and new local stores) make slap/useless law suits illegal, ban use of baseless AI, fix redrawn gerrymandered maps, tear down borders between usa, Canada and Mexico and allow free and open travel, work with Canada and Mexico with peace not segregation, de-criminalize non violent crimes, release non violent prisoners, make prisons learning/re-habitation facilities with support - not torture facilities, mandate pentagon a full and thorough Audit (including classified projects, only need to know the amount of money not what the project is), stop any and all proxy wars, heavily regulate businesses, standardize worker unions, and ensure news and news like channels are speaking true and non biased information.
That overall saves money from other spending and won’t fix the balance immediately, but will over time stabilize the economy. However good luck getting any of that situated in usa
Bwaz@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 20h
Oil subsidies. And military spending. Those two alond would fund anything that would help people in general.
theneverfox@pawb.social · 3 pts · 9h
Nothing. It'd be funny if it wasn't sad. The math isn't mathing, the debt repayment is so high it'll never be paid off normally
Plus you have private debt, which has also grown to an untenable level
There's only three ways out of this historically. First, a jubilee... We just say fuck it, all debts are forgiven and we move forward. Second is a revolution where the new government doesn't acknowledge the past debt
Finally, we have the option that's actually going to happen, hyperinflation. Through devaluation of the currency, most debt will shrink until we get back to a manageable level and hopefully things stabilize
But dropping prices as well? Yeah, that's just not happening. We could drop the prices of necessities through government intervention, but we're going to have to take the socialism pill for that (which might happen, it's looking appealing to more and more Americans these days)
But there's no world where we both balance the budget and drop prices. Just a few years ago, we could've raised taxes and took a hatchet to defense spending and slowly worked it off while keeping inflation at a high but manageable level to whittle it down... But at this point, the debt is just too large
Typotyper@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 9h
Tax the rich!!
The top 1% pay the the lowest tax rate
theneverfox@pawb.social · 2 pts · 8h
We'd need to seize their dragon hoards across borders and existing tax law be damned at this point
Which sounds like a good idea, but practically I have no idea how that could actually be done
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 44m
Nationalize the companies owned by the oiligarch(s) in question, maybe? I've no idea either but it seems like there has to be some option other than "throw up our hands and admit defeat".
newton@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 19m
The US military sucks about $1T a year, but twice that is spent on the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Also, Boomers are sucking more out of social security, and healthcare than they ever paid in.
All could be paid for if they stopped taxing "income" and started taxing net worth. But that would mean taxing boomers, which is not allowed. If they stopped income tax the economy would boom with trillions in spending, not hoarding.
Zeppo@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 22h
one day before "9 11" the defense secretary admitted the military couldn't account for 2.1 trillion, or something like that. So maybe that would be a good place to start. Also not starting abusive wars that are also very expensive. The US could also tell some debtors to just fuck off, which would break the cycle of depending on borrowed money.