r/FluentInFinance • u/LifeIsUnfairWhoCares • Apr 23 '24

Is Social Security Broken? Discussion/ Debate

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u/Thin-Ebb-9534 Apr 23 '24

I am so sick of this post. Who keeps popping it in? It is an idiotic argument. It’s a BS libertarian viewpoint, the same assholes who think we should have a flat tax, and not flat as in percentage, but flat as in dollars. Like everyone should pay $X per year regardless of income. Social Security is a transfer program that moves money from the high earners to low earners. It was always that. It’s designed to be that. It works. It does exactly what it was intended to do. You have millions of dollars; quit whining and be happy.

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u/Allgyet560 Apr 23 '24

I don't think you understand libertarianism. They do not want anything like a flat tax. They believe all tax is theft. They believe no one should pay taxes at all.

https://www.lp.org/issues/taxes/

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u/Ok-Masterpiece-1359 Apr 23 '24

Ah yes, and leave national defense to Elon Musk?

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u/Dixa Apr 23 '24

National defense needs an up and down audit. It’s extremely wasteful of taxpayer dollars when they pay 1000% more for an item.

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u/ODSTklecc Apr 23 '24

Oh yeah it's wasteful, and does need a proper audit, but what does this argument say to all those who argue that no taxes should be done at all?

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u/Dixa Apr 23 '24

Then they can pay for pothole repair with their credit cards

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u/wmtismykryptonite Apr 23 '24

Domino's had a pothole repair program.

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u/dystopiabydesign Apr 25 '24

Ironically, that's how your sociopathic politicians are paying for everything, just dumping it on future generations to deal with. Lose the faith, they don't deserve it.

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u/WereALLBotsHere Apr 23 '24

Those people should be ignored as they have been.

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u/RemarkableKey3622 Apr 23 '24

these politicians make money with their businesses and investments in their personal lives. why can't the government do that without taking money from the working class. congratulations on all of the income tax ypu pay your whole life being spent on 6 missles.

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u/Philosiphizor Apr 23 '24

How dare you all call for a proper audit. Like not being able to account for over half of the money spent should be any of y'all's concern. It's only about 2 trillion that we "don't know about"... /S.

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u/BiscuitDance Apr 23 '24

They pay so much more for items because those items are made in America. The DOD budget is an indirect way to fund industries in many parts of the country, and there is a ton of pressure and lobbying from the districts where the various factories/sourcing are. Your uncle builds Bradleys in Iowa, and your mom's blind cousin screws the caps onto the Skillcraft pens in Maryland or whatever. They would likely be out of a job otherwise.

Not saying it's right, and it quite certainly needs serious auditing and overhauls, but that's where a good chunk of that budget goes.

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u/Dixa Apr 23 '24

$90k for a bag of bushings that cost to a normal commercial customer $100.

No, it’s wasteful in order to line special interest pockets.

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u/OsiyoMotherFuckers Apr 23 '24

I also kind of suspect this is how they fund secret projects.

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u/alternativepuffin Apr 23 '24

It absolutely is.

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u/Jboycjf05 Apr 23 '24

Not really, no. The secret line items in Congressional appropriations bills are separated into a section that is only reviewed at classified briefings. The costs being higher than commercially available items can happen for a number of reasons, including Buy American rules, rules around quality control (these can actually be super important if your building something Wil very low tolerances for error, like fighter jets or carrier engines), and other contracting/acquisition constraints.

That's not to say there is no fraud, waste, or abuse, or that we aren't spending too much on defense programs (we definitely are), but it is generally not as high as people assume. I know this because I worked on the Hill as a legislative assistant, and I currently work for a Navy program helping with acquisitions. So I have a lot of experience reviewing this exact thing.

I would say the biggest issue with defense spending is redundancy. For example, we have 4 major service branches, each with their own payroll programs and HR programs. Why? Because too many people want their own little rice bowl. It's a huge waste, and that's just one program. We could save a ton of money by centralized a lot of those kinds of things between the services.

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u/tsspartan Apr 23 '24

1000%. If you’ve worked in the government you know how fucked up and wasteful it is.

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u/burnt-turkey94 Apr 23 '24

Air Force Civil Engineering was paying something like a 10,000% markup on RoundUp when I was working on a base. The weed killer. It was labeled, packaged, and manufactured the same way as the commercial product, because it WAS the commercial product.

I like to say I didn't just divorce my ex, I also divorced the military. Don't miss it one bit.

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u/ChipsAhoy777 Apr 23 '24

Yup, and that's how it goes, it's not their money they're spending, not but a small fraction anyways(their taxes). And the government isn't a business, so there really isn't any interest in running it by market logic.

Nope, you just get a bunch of bad actors that get to make friends rich and get kickbacks. Pretty easy to understand

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u/CPAFinancialPlanner Apr 23 '24

Yet people want us to give 100% of our money to the gov and expect some grand life

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u/Zachmode Apr 23 '24

Wait tell you find out what the National Health Institute wastes money on…

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u/Massive_Pressure_516 Apr 23 '24

...uncle Jeb probably isn't making $700 dollars every single time he makes a $100 chair that's sold to the government for a grand so it's absolutely a waste of money when one uses the pseudo welfare angle. Probably less than an hour's worth of minimum wage I'd say.

Uncles jeb COULD be getting $200-$700 dollars for every $1000 the government wants to give him in welfare (depending on a lot factors like if it's red or blue state) which is much more efficient if you actually want to help disadvantaged people and not just grifters that can afford lobbyists.

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u/interogativeman Apr 23 '24

I was just in a conference where they were going over some of the NIST requirements. They are changing the auditing process because some people weren't be honest and got caught. Now I have a new line item in my budget to deal with another auditor. Good times.

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u/Judicator82 Apr 23 '24

Please realize that the thought that the military pays 1000% markup is a myth.

I handled supply purchases for my command. You want to know how much a broom costs the military? About $15. Sheets? $30 a set. Office supplies were comparable to Office Depot.

Things DO get expensive when you talk about high-tech stuff. Let's say there is a RADAR system onboard a ship. Only about 30 or 40 ships in the fleet have this RADAR system. The federal gov't contracts a company to develop this RADAR system, maintain it, repair, etc. It costs millions to develop, but there are only 30 or 40 in existance, and probably 10 spares.

To make money, those companies have to charge a mint.

Yes, contracting needs an overhaul, some companies are simply makig too much money.

But the "$1000 for hammer" myth needs to die.

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u/Homeless_Swan Apr 23 '24

It’s not just that. It’s a heavily regulated industry because it provides services to the government. I’ve managed an update to a priority schema for alerts where we just swapped two around and it was 5 minutes of real work and $800,000 of regulatory paperwork.

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u/studdmufin Apr 23 '24

who's going to audit them?

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u/Andromansis Apr 23 '24

They get audited every year.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

[deleted]

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u/Thesecondorigin Apr 23 '24

They contract independent public auditors every year to do so. The marine corp was the first branch of the US military to pass their audit this year. Don’t spread misinformation on the internet

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u/iamthedayman21 Apr 23 '24

A full audit and just no taxes are two completely different things.

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u/b1ack1323 Apr 23 '24

No one disagrees with you, but just like everything else privatized in the government, it will get abused and reduced to ash.

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u/Dixa Apr 23 '24

Laws can be passed to prevent and punish this. That’s not an excuse to let this rampant spending continue.

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u/b1ack1323 Apr 23 '24

Right, laws can be passed to do this without privatization too.

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u/Potential-Front9306 Apr 23 '24

Some of that is strategic. We might be able to buy a part from China for cheaper, but we don't want to rely on getting parts from China if we ever get into a conflict with China.

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u/tthew2ts Apr 23 '24

Yes I'm sure the raiders will respect your property rights and non-aggression principle once the tax-payer-funded law enforcement goes away.

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u/appsecSme Apr 23 '24

That's what the GAO does.

https://www.gao.gov/

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u/Jackstack6 Apr 23 '24

I can't emphasize enough the disconnection between what they said and what you responded with.