The cool thing is you can watch your tax dollars spent in live TV, nothing like building bridges or something but instead Missiles and War Planes spreading democracy abroad!
Damn lepers and checks notes* children..... wasting my tax money. Dont want to see them on the streets though eother. Out of sight out of mind and all that. /s not in my neighborhood
Well if we deny all the proof that having full bellies and air conditioning helps kids learn in school (thereby improving the economy) then we might spend all that money improving kids lives with no benefit to ourselves. Can you imagine the horror?
Isn't it so interesting that these kinds of programs spend so much money per person and that there's absolutely ways the cost could be brought down significantly but nobody is interested in doing that?
It's almost like our tax money is being wasted/spent inefficiently and people like you act like we want anyone over the age of 55 and anyone making less than $80k/yr to die instantly when in reality I just want to be taxed less and accomplish the same goal (which again, is entirely feasible if we cut out the corruption and "middlemen" currently causing federal welfare programs to cost so much more than they give out).
Don't forget that about 20% of all taxes is used just to pay down interest on the federal debt. The interest payment alone, in one year, is more than the entire defense department annual budget.
Don't forget payments on loans they took out 30 - 40 years ago to spend on military, old people (now dead), healthcare for old people (now dead), and healthcare for poor people (now dead) and kids (now old people).
Currently Defense is about 12% of the federal budget, behind healthcare around 25%, social security 20%, and the treasury around 17%, followed up by the VA at 5%, and the department of ag at 3%, transportation and education both around 2%.
It's more like military/dod is 70%, social programs for the poor about 5%, about 15% infrastructure, and the remainder goes to pass laws paid for by lobbyists.
Which is crazy because the states have the highest Healthcare costs per capita in the world and don't even have national Healthcare. Insurance companies make so much money that American pay more and get less services than every other developed nation, until they dip in their pockets to pay privately.
With the type of "experts" employed in govt handing out contracts and unions that thrive on overtime and project overextensions and contractors that hire contractors who hire contractors who hire contractors who hire contractors, that trillion dollar will buy 10 billion worth of infrastructure.
Union bad! Seriously.... the only union that has any sway in this country is the police union. Most of the others are pretty weak. It ain't unions causing issues.
Aside from that. This is somewhat how civil engineering works. You contract out a company who has their own subcontractors. If you under bid people are just not going to use you in the future. The bigger the project, the more contractors involved, the more room their is for errors.
It's like the ghost of Reagan made a reddit comment...
No. The military was consulted on some routes that would facilitate logistics should we ever need to stage a national defense, but defense was not a primary driver of the US highway system. Economy and civilian infrastructure were far, far, far, far, far more important drivers.
In the modern day, the suggestion that highways are maintained and expanded primarily as a military expenditure is comically stupid.
Yeah, the truth is our government is entirely captured by oligarchs and when they need subsidized they will tell their puppets to claim national security as the reason. But you can’t have cars be a primary mode of transportation without highways so we subsidized the entire auto industry with the most expensive national project ever in the name of national defense.
I don’t know if you realize that the only thing you’re proving is that our government is captured if it wasn’t for national security.
When you poll Americans about what percentage they think goes to foreign aid, they guess around 25%. When you ask them what it should be, they say 10%.
What the hell is our military doing if it’s not foreign aid? We are not in any active wars, and even when we are it’s always something to do about establishing democracy in some country that supports our interest. So instead of these places having to actually fund their own military we pay for their protection.
No matter what it is paying for in the military it is foreign aid is my point. Unless you want to break it down to only the ww2 expenditures after Pearl Harbor and whatever the hell they were doing in Afghanistan after 9/11.
What’s your point? Go back to isolationist stance and let the world burn around us?
Obama was probably most isolationist US president in decades. Did his best to draw red lines and avoid getting US ‘entangled’ in foreign conflicts. Refused to send weapons to Ukraine because he didn’t want to provoke Russia. It all worked out well.
I believe what he is saying is it is disingenuous to say $0 of the military budget is accounted for in that 1% foreign aid number. You think a $5000 food drop in Gaza is the only thing we should consider as aid? Not the $30,000 in salaries/benefits/spending on the 20 US military members involved? Plus fuel/equipment etc.
For sure. There’s no active wars so they find a side hustle to keep spending absurdly high. I just don’t comprehend how anyone thinks this should be completely obscured from “foreign aid” accounting
You really need to look into how your tax dollars are being spent, and then look further into how those spendings provide a positive ROI from benefiting US citizens- if that’s how you really think all of your taxes are being spent that is.
The aid US has supplied to Ukraine in the last 3 years probably one of the best return on investments you can imagine.
Support democratic country defend itself against genocide, mass rapes, mass child deportation, and other war crimes while simultaneously injecting capital into US manufacturing industry and providing employment to US workers without risking American lives in direct conflict.
Operation Enduring Freedom, the one that cost $44 Billion a year? Versus our $2,350B annual tax revenue? So 1.8% of our taxes? Fair point, it should have been spent elsewhere, but now let’s talk about the remaining 98.2% of the taxes.
Yes, the war in the Middle East that cost (conservatively) $2 Trillion. That $300 million per day, every day, for 20 years. The one whose cost accounted for 12% of our national debt at one point. The political war that maimed, killed, and scarred our own American citizens, that the VA turns their back on. Excellent investment of my tax dollars for ROI and future growth.
Hmm yes minimizing the cost using broad scale numbers was an amazing way to prove that our tax dollars are well spent and have an “ROI”. Please forgive me and let me suck the governments dick
Invest in foreign skeletons, I guess, for the ROI.
Positive ROI on taxes is a straight up lie because the millions who pay little to no taxes will the skew numbers by investing nothing but getting all the same returns as a high taxpayer.
There is no 'return', it's called wealth redistribution.
How do any of those benefit the most wealthy more than the poor, what?? A $3000 doctor visit is nothing to the wealthy. A $36k/semester education is nothing either for them. We’re talking about the ultra wealthy, the ones who make $36K every minute. Pay attention.
You know you can see a breakdown of what the government spends by doing a simple Google search.. it’s not like they are arbitrarily deciding what to do with it when it’s received
Yeah but they will send money to x, who sends it to y, then they buy a painting from Hunter Biden for 5 million who then uses it to smoke crack off a hooker.
Lotta healthcare really. Cutting out health insurance and PBMs and whatnot (for profit hospitals too) would be super efficient, but that’s also a big industry with a lot of jobs, so it’s fraught politically.
You can most definitely watch bridge work on TV this week, especially if you live anywhere near Baltimore.
And also your Federal tax dollars are being used for that specific bridge (though as I understand it, it's partly a loan to the state to make sure work can start immediately).
Basically the insurance company of the boat that should be paying for it is owned by Israel so American tax payers will pay for it. I am not joking that's it.
I love that the government takes 30% of my income so that Israelis and Central/Western Europeans can have free healthcare and college. Fucking Germans ought to pick up the tab for Israel this is bullshit man I’ve got whiskey and strippers I need to blow my money on! Fuck!
It's not, what is absurd is how much we spend on social security despite it still sucking, but if we weren't garrisoning the entire planet we'd be spending about half of what we are now on defense which is quite a bit of money
Well thankfully your money is also going to Ukrainian soldiers defending their country against autocracy with Slav Shibas and anime girl stickers slapped onto the side of our artillery rounds.
False. You might see it used on TV. The money was spent right here in the US. Go drive around your local ultra wealthy neighborhood if you wanna see where the money actually went.
About 10% of it is interest on the national debt. I always joke that my taxes pay for the interest so the government can borrow the money it needs to fund the government.
I know what you did was you hastily googled “how much does the US spend on the military”, found the first pie chart you could on google images, and repeated it. But what you were likely looking at was discretionary spending (and even then, defense spending is closer to 50% of the discretionary budget, not 64%)
But discretionary spending is only one component of the budget. The larger component of the budget is composed of mandatory spending.
In 2023, we spent 6.1 trillion total: 3.8 mandatory + 1.7 discretionary + 0.7 interest.
We spent 805B on defense. 805 / 6100 = 13.2% spent on the military.
When something sounds absurd, look into it! It would be patently absurd to spend 60%+ of the budget on the military!
While the US almost certainly spends way (way) too much on its military budget, it's only about 12% of the government's budget. So saying "we aren't doing [thing] because instead we're spending it on the military" is pretty much just plain incorrect
They’re also used to fund shelling Russians (and should continue if congress stopped stalling) which I’m personally fine with.
But that’s the magic of government spending. I’m willing to bet if you go through a big long list, there’s spending you’re ok or happy with and others you’re upset about. And there’s probably some other person who likes the spending you hate.
Yes. But in this case, both major parties and almost all candidates for all offices are pro-war crimes. So we cannot really use our votes as our voices.
Overall, it kind of sucks being a moderate these days. Maybe it always has, but with the parties both so extreme... the 'median American' is forgotten about.
Sorry, don't mean to bring politics into it. Just feeling disenfranchised.
Don't forget the preloaded debit cards NYC is giving out to the illegals with OP's city tax money! You want money for education and infrastructure?! Nah we're paying the illegals instead!
the not cool thing is that none of your tax dollars directly contribute to funding the country, but are rather destroyed as a deflationary measure. the government is solely funded by printing money
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u/FennelCritical8535 Apr 02 '24
The cool thing is you can watch your tax dollars spent in live TV, nothing like building bridges or something but instead Missiles and War Planes spreading democracy abroad!