Is that what they told you? You don't "pay into" social security, you _pay for_ other old people's current social security. And you certainly do not "pay into" Medicare. Also the "social fund" of Medicare and social security certainly benefit "the little guy" more than anyone else, which was the whole point I was making. Also, who is "we?" Some people would rather have that cash for themselves or invest it on their own. And technically all taxes can be called a "social fund" so I don't see hiw this point even begins. If you go to jail for not paying into a "social fund" it's tax revenue.
Genuine question: I always hear about the gigantic military spending in the U.S. I would've expected it to be on top of this list. It can't be only 7. no?
A lot of military spending is disguised (not to say maliciously) as funding to other agencies. For example, that number is probably just the Pentagon's budget, and wouldn't include things like Veterans Affairs (which is about $300 billion) or foreign aid (around $50 billion) or the Department of Homeland Security (around $50 billion) or our nuclear force ($35 billion), etc.
Even some of NASA's funding is for monitoring nukes.
The point is that it's actually kind of hard to calculate how much we spend on defense, because it's hard to know what to count, but it's certainly more than it looks like. Over $1 trillion is a safe guess.
When talking about spending, some people exclude programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income security programs from their list of spending because it doesn't need to be approved every year - it is classified as 'Mandatory Spending' and is 63% of the budget.
The remaining spending, has to be approved every year is classified as 'Discretionary Spending'. When you just look at discretionary spending, the military budget is the biggest piece. But if someone says the US spends most of its budget on military spending, it is false and deceptive.
US military spending is HUGE compared to other countries budgets. It is not that big compared to the US budget - in WW2 we spent about 45% of GDP on military stuff - if that was done today we'd have a budget of about ten trillion dollars.
Also much of what is classified as military spending could probably be moved to other categories - the VA, for example.
The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $23 billion in 2020). We're nearing $100 billion with Ukraine. $31 billion to California EDD (unemployment) fraud.
So why doesn't the US just spend that money so we can be more like X trendy country I heard about on Y blog/podcast that is a fraction of the size of the US and does "EVERYTHING" better?
Well, the case is that they have more money to spend because the US is subsidizing their military. So many of these countries are able to get away with tiny military budgets because of the US's large military budget. (all of those countries are also unrecoverably in decline)
It may not be direct subsidiaries but I'd be willing to wager a pretty penny that there are a lot of European countries that feel comfortable with spending little on defense and aren't worrying about Russia because they know the US has their back.
Not to mention keeping Taiwan from being brought under the CCP umbrella, the efforts the US Navy puts into preventing and reducing piracy. In fact most of the world that doesn't worry about imminent invasion from it's neighbors doesn't worry mostly because the US has provided almost global security by virtue of having the largest most capable military on the planet.
I won't pretend it is perfect or that we have global peace but like during Pax Romana although they were still squabbling with the Sassinids, the average person's risk of dying as a result of military conflict is very small when compared historically, especially since almost every military action in the past half century has been not between modern nation states but between guerrilla and partisan forces which results in considerably less damage in life and property than a full scale conflict between two capable actors as the Iran Iraq war proves.
The pledge - which wasn’t signed was for 2% - nobody is afraid of Russia at this point and Poland alone could very well handle any Russian army if this war is any indication.
Of what the US spends on NATO, very little goes to smaller nations. In exchange, the US has legal bases and troops deployed in other countries without fear of retaliation, do you grasp how much power the US gets to project through this? Probably not.
US keeps Taiwan because it benefits them, and because it needs the semiconductors.
Nothing is free.
When you lot decided to invade Middle East for oil yet again for the 4th or 5th time, you also triggered article 5 and foreigners died as a consequence of your own greed, your unchecked black ops, and CIA funding terrorists.
Furthermore, this “alliance” means that people are spending money on US military hardware, not anyone else’s, but this is conveniently out of the discussion every time such complaints come up.
Less than 20% of what the US spends on NATO is used to assist smaller countries, and the US only covers 16% of operational costs of NATO - which is as much Germany is covering.
Legal boots on the ground next to any front trumps any and all economic arguments.
You mostly had me until this point. Did you know there is more oil in the US than Iraq and Afghanistan combined? Do you have any data on the number of oil rigs set up during the invasion? Who gets this oil by the way? Do you know how many trillions were spent in Afghanistan and Iraq? More than it's GDP of the entire period the US was there. Please provide some source for this claim. If anything, the US would invade a country just to "stretch it's legs" and keep the machine running.
The oil in the continental US is hard to extract [1]. The oil in Middle East is trivial and cheap to extract [1,2].
There is a reason oil price is up there, because the US and Saudi Arabia have setup a cartel, aramco has iirc > 70% profit margins. The cartel ensures that the U.S. can be “competitive” on pricing, that’s it. It ensures private interests are protected.
As for who gets it and whatnot, it’s all about private interests funding politicians who ensure no crisis is lost.
The money spent there is not to Iraq or Afghanistan per se, but also to the troops. You should look into how much the US is paying for the food supplies.. we are talking thousands per meal.
Are you expecting a source better than the US treasury to appear?
An unfortunate reality of the US is that policy discussion is almost wholly disconnected from quantified reality: we’re not even arguing about facts, anymore.
If we started examining facts, the populace would become aware that the US pays more for less than other “developed” nations — largely due to corruption in healthcare, construction, and manufacturing (eg, military).
U.S. Government Spending, FY 2022 Top 10 Spending by Category
$ 1.22 T Social Security
$ 914 B Health
$ 865 B Income Security
$ 767 B National Defense
$ 755 B Medicare
$ 677 B Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services
How do you explain this data?
Source:https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...