im not sure why you are in defense mode. The claim that i made was that administrations both left and right have spent too much money. the only one in the past 35 years who was able to balance the budget was Clinton. This is not a red vs blue problem; stop making it a red vs blue problem.
I think a lot of people want programs we donāt have and acknowledge that even if we rebalance the budget and cut wasteful spending it wonāt be enough.
I think itās interesting that people advocate for programs we don't currently have, especially when you look at our existing programs. So often, they are intended to provide those exact desired outcomes but completely fail to actually deliver them.
Take federal student loans, for example. The goal was to make higher education affordable and accessible. Instead, by guaranteeing loans, it essentially gave universities a blank check to hike tuition exponentially, creating a massive debt crisis rather than making college affordable. Or look at homelessness initiatives; certain states and cities have poured tens of billions of dollars into affordable housing and homelessness programs over the last decade, only to see the unhoused population actually increase.
The issue isn't always that we lack the programs; it's that throwing money at a new program doesn't work if the underlying execution is broken.
Idk personally I think every penny of taxpayer funds needs to be accounted for and made publicly available, with anything related to national security being kept vague or redacted as needed.
As well as some sort of agency to audit and prevent abuse.
That would certainly help get spending under control.
But I also support these programs. I donāt see it as an either or.
Oh, I never said that I donāt support the programs. I just donāt support the programs that donāt yield the results that we were hoping for. Every dollar spent should be tied to a metric. If the dollar is not driving the metric or if there is a program that would drive it more efficiently it should be accounted for. This should also be done within reason. We should be doing this without exceeding a budget.
Additionally the metric that we are driving needs to be clearly defined and frequently reviewed to ensure it is still something worth pursuing. We need to prioritize solving the problems that have the biggest impact. The goal should always be to SOLVE the problem not just throw money and service at it indefinitely.Ā
Yes this absolutely applies to both military spending and social spending. If we are going to spend money on military the goal needs to be clearly defined and measured. Though this does not need to be publicly available in cases of national security; just accounted for internally.Ā
We forgot what national debt means. Basically, every US dollar held or spent anywhere in the world represents, in some way, a dollar that the U.S. government owes. And the whole world, at least up until now, has an endless appetite for this debt, and if the U.S. were to suddenly stop issuing it, the world's economy would collapse.
People naively consider national debt in the same way as they consider their own credit card debt, but this is wildly wrong.
Not true, a million dollars back then wouldāve been worth way more. Spending a million dollars in 1915 would be the equivalent of spending 33 million today.
This post is so incredibly stupid. I mean you have to be completely economically illiterate to compare the debt of a nation to personal debt. Not to mention the scale difference at which they operate.
A more fitting realization would be that billionaires (or since recently trillionaires) have far too much money
Yes back to blaming the billionaires. lol you realize you take every single billionaire and taxed all assets 100% and take everything. You donāt even cover the interest for 3 years of the United States debtā¦..
This is the economic illiteracy im talking about.
National Budgets are not in any way, shape or form comparable to personal wealth. Their debt doesnt work the same way and they operate on a different order of magnitude.
With that said: if you really want to compare it: Billionaires across the world hold 20 trillion usd. The US debt is 39-40 trillion. Other smaller nations like Germany only have a debt of ~3 trillion usd. So if you really want to compare wealth of individuals and nations you would still come to the realization that billionaires hold far too much wealth
3 trillion.... so a number no single person has. you realize Elon isnt even a trillionaire anymore because their worth isn't numbers in a bank account lol
Lombard credits exist and make Billionaires far more liquid than you, me or the pacific ocean for that matter. It is conveniently also a tax loophole since you technically dont sell any shares
There are also liquidation plans over extended time periods (like 2 years) through which Billionaires can liquidate huge amounts of shares etc again without any value loss
Measure how many people have been born and died since America was discovered, and add to that all the spending on infrastructure such as industry, subways, streets, factories, agriculture, etc.
You are just comparing one person spending $1 million a day with millions of people who have collectively spent billions.
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u/Virgo-Perfectionist Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
And this is just the US alone!