this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Have you looked at the defense budget by any chance? Have you seen the $880 billion with a big fat "B"? That's almost a trillion a year. A billion is one thousand million. A trillion is one thousand billion. The defense budget is almost one thousand billion. Do you know how imaginary this number is? And it only costs $79Billion a year(1% of the defense budget lol) to provide free education for our people so we can have a more educated society.
I mean, sure. I'd support that, and I think most Democrats in Congress probably would, at least on some level. There are some assumptions in that model that are a little oversimplified (it's extrapolating based on in-state public school tuition and doesn't account for the huge explosion in demand that would come with it being free), but yeah, I don't think you'd find that much resistance amongst Congressional Democrats.
Good luck getting it by Republicans who are convinced that universities are just woke brainwashing factories though.
I'm not really sure what the relevance of this is though. My assertion was that non-military spending is a thing that exists. 87% of all spending, actually.
Where is that 87% being spent? I'm genuinely curious? The country is literally turning into a 3rd world shithole. People struggle left and right. 70%+ of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Healthcare system is a joke. School system is a worse joke. Infrastructure is shit. Homelessness is rampant. Where is the spending? I'm confused. Not trying to argue here, just genuinely looking for answers.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
This site from the Treasury has great info, but some highlights:
22%: Social Security
14%: Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services spending (health research, the FDA, FEMA, the CDC, temporary welfare for needy families, foster care, other stuff
14%: Medicare
At this point, we've already hit half of the federal just on social security and health spending.
13%: National defense
13%: General welfare. This is things like SNAP, WIC, SSI, the earned income tax credit, some housing assistance programs, and other welfare programs.
11%: Interest payments on debt.
5%: Veterans Benefits
The remainder is divided a million different ways, but those are the largest categories. Social security and healthcare are by far the biggest expenses, and those costs are also expected to grow faster than the revenue that funds them, which is eventually going to cause a big problem that neither party has any interest in addressing. It should absolutely be noted that that healthcare spending is disgustingly inefficient due to the disaster that is our healthcare system, and it could be much much more efficient. But basically, a huge chunk of the money goes towards retirees. It's probably a total coincidence that those are the ones that vote the most too.
I've been slightly loose with the categorizations there in order to not get bogged down in some irrelevant classification details between spending functions and government departments, but the general picture is accurate.
Truly, truly appreciate it. The healthcare spending is vague to me. Where is the money going given how shit our healthcare system is (if we can even call it that. It's just a fucking giant money grab for the shareholders). Where does the money go where we have shit like this. You see, shit like in this video makes my fucking blood boil. I've sworn not to watch shit like this because I get into a spiral of depression and I'd start bottling up so much hate for humanity, but this video popped up in my feed and I watched it. I shouldn't have. Again, I ~~approve~~ appreciate the info.
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