Who would you rather have another $100 million dollars - the US government or Bill Gates? One has a track record of creating incredible products, the other is a literal dumpster fire, blowing $100bil ain’t nothing to the government.
I don't really subscribe to this idea that the US Government burns money as a rule. I'm sure there's many places that could be streamlined or made more efficient. But to blanket state that the US government as a whole is wasteful garbage seems naive, considering the immense scale and breadth of functions they carry out. The US Government employs 2.5 million people (3.8 million if you include the US Army, for which spending actually represents 61% [!] of the current US Budget) – the scale is personally hard for me to grok, at least. One thing that changed my mind about government spending is to look at the budget of a government program or facet of a program you're personally familiar with, and at least in my experience, it blows my mind what they can accomplish with what they're allocated.
For example, the entire yearly operating budget of Big Bend, a national park bigger than the state of Rhode Island, is only $7 million, including employee salaries, maintenance and restoration, emergency services, special programming, on-site research, and educational outreach – and it brought in around more than $27 million in visitor spending last year. From a money-making standpoint (which I don't think is the purpose of a government so much as to serve the public interest), that represents an extremely good return on investment – not to mention all the positive externalities of such a venture.
I believe you are incorrect about the US Army’s percent of the federal budget. Total defense spending (all branches) represents around 15% of the budget.
Ah, great catch! I’m admittedly nowhere near an expert in this regard. I was looking at the US Discretionary spending budget, and mistakenly thought that was representative of the total budget
You make some good points, but there are areas where costs are outrageous... namely healthcare, education, pensions, and the military.
Our pension system in the US is not funded in a way that is sustainable for the long term. Obviously, it was started by FDR on the assumption that we could just fund existing retirees who hadn't paid in because there's always more young people than old people. But that assumption is no longer true. And the federal level is where things are actually looking quite rosy. State and municipal pension systems are, in some areas, on the brink of insolvency. I expect some states, in the coming years, to ask the feds for a bailout.
Most huge military technology purchases seem to have little justification at this moment... the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter are obvious examples. The number of military bases is astounding, but the return on investment for those isn't clear... particularly in regions where there are literally dozens of them. Huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons that can destroy the world multiple times over, which after some point doesn't seem to add any deterrent effect.
Healthcare spending, even just from government programs alone, is high relative to other nations, and yet we don't even have universal health coverage. Very little is spent on useful preventative medicine, and enormous amounts are spent on last minute emergency procedures and end-of-life care. When we are able to make a difference, we don't, and precisely when little or nothing can be done, then we take out all stops and try our best to do something. Italy has the 2nd-longest lived population in the world, despite spending far less on healthcare. They aren't known for having a world-class healthcare system, because the truth is that they don't. What they have is world-class healthy lifestyle.
Education spending, empirically speaking, seems to have little correlation with outcomes. Since 1970, adjusted for inflation per-student spending has roughly tripled, with some variation from state-to-state. But despite the overall large increases in funding, there are constant cries that not enough is being spent. But if we compare to world-class nations like Finland, who spend very little, we are left with a puzzle. If they are able to provide better education for cheaper, then obviously funding is not the deciding factor.
Parks are trivial and have a great cost-benefit ratio compared to those big 4 areas of waste.
The notion that the government wastes more money than the private sector is a persistent myth with little evidence to back it up. Private capital wastes enormous amounts of money on failed ventures, inflated salaries, and profit-taking, and is every bit as wasteful as any over-budget government project.
My favorite argument in defense of billionaires is space. Governments made basically no progress in outer space, and then a few billionaires decide they want to go the stars, and suddenly everything happens again. And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal - they have private sector acumen.
You let the billionaires have their money because letting free people control that much capital is far superior to the government.
And those billionaires did it with a fraction of the funds that the government could marshal...
Did what? The billionaires haven't even put a single person in orbit yet, something the government did within a few years of starting a space program. The US government went on to put humans on the moon (a feat yet to be equaled even by any other government, much less a billionaire), operate a reusable spacecraft for 30 years, and build an enormous space station in orbit and operate that for 20 years.
Free people do control government capital in a functioning democracy that has not been captured by billionaires.
"Governments made basically no progress in outer space"
Is a completely ridiculous thing to say. Governments explored every planet in the solar system and discovered thousands more in the galaxy, sent humans to the moon, and have kept humans in orbit continuously for 30 years. The US governement is about to send the first helicopter to Mars. Some of their contractors have been doing a good job of innovating lately too, great!
What are you talking about? Space travel is literally the worst possible argument on this front.
>Governments made basically no progress in outer space
Governments made ALL progress in space, ever. Space travel only exists at all because governments poured unbelievable amounts of money, resources, and people into researching and developing it over decades. These billionaires' efforts are starting on top of that. If they had to start from scratch it would be impossible. Government space programs petered out not because of a lack of "acument" or some other nonsense, but because public support for these programs ebbed as the impetus (the Cold War) went away.
You really couldn't think of a worse example that completely undercuts your point.
Sure, but all-things-being-equal -- whatever that means in this scenario -- how long would it take an fictional Elon Musk to get to where the actual Elon Musk is today? Where would you see government propping him up in the process? The only reason government got us to the point it did in space exploration is because, for a brief-brief-brief period of time Elon Musk types were running the government. Now it is sycophantic cronies. It seems like having captial directed towards enlightened visionaries/beneficent dictators is preferable.
The Japanese space agency landed a robot on an asteroid, the European space agency landed a probe on a comet.
Meanwhile people like Elon Musk are mostly interested in vanity and commercial projects. Sure, there are worse ways to spend your money as a billionaire than being a space tourist, but let's not pretend he's bringing much progress.
His venture successfully built reuseable rockets that could lower the cost of spaceflight significantly. This would allow more people to do more things in space. Which could accelerate technological advancement in the space sector.
This is something no one else have been able to do up until recently. I would at least consider that as a notable progress.
EDIT: /s ... if it sonehow wasn't clear. Nonetheless, the fact remains that JFK is the only person whose vision has led us "to the stars", and it was the US government that achieved the vision he put out.
Not products, but his philanthropy is second-to-none. Measuring his investments towards preventing malaria alone he has probably done more to save lives than any other single individual in history. Which sounds silly, but is the reality of the situation.
He's donated 5 percent of his wealth. Him and buffet are top of the billionaire giving pile at 3 and 5 %. that means 95% of their wealth is still tied up in service of further wealth extraction.
Exactly. I'm not about to defend rent-seeking billionaires, but I trust them more than government--the entity which literally kills millions of people. I'd rather economic mass went into making Lambos and penthouses for billionaires than warheads and aircraft carriers to murder more people.
