Defense spending, again (A reply to Matt Yglesias)

By artappraiser on Fri, 04/15/2022 - 3:02pm |

What does the U.S. government prioritize?

Over the past few decades we've been spending more and more on antipoverty programs and health care, and less and less on defense, net interest on the debt, and other programs (mostly public goods like highways). pic.twitter.com/xbp3CSuLXY
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 15, 2022

URL:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/defense-spending-again?s=w

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In my opinion this is a mixed bag.

The increase in antipoverty spending is great.

The increase in health care spending mostly reflects bloated costs, as providers rip the govt off.

The decrease in spending on infrastructure is bad.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 15, 2022

And I think the decrease in defense spending made sense in the past but now probably needs to be reversed for a while.https://t.co/UGPSf6fPVU
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 15, 2022

Our most important fiscal goal should be to bring down health care prices, so that we don't keep hurling more of our government spending and our society's resources into an inefficient system.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 15, 2022

It's odd that spending on anti-poverty programs has increased since the welfare reforms of the mid-1990s.
— Kwakara91 (@kwakara91) April 15, 2022

How much of the spending is actually going to people and how much is increased means-testing and bureaucracy?
— Nick Felker, (@HandNF) April 15, 2022

Funny. Providers scream that government doesn’t pay them enough per service. So they don’t want government health care for all. They accept it for seniors because what alternative is there. But private ins pays more per procedure than gov generally.
— Josh Hunt (@Bouje99) April 15, 2022

Nursing home care & end of life care. Medicaid pays for nursing home & hospice for 2/3rds of Americans, because the elderly run out money or play various games to move assets.
— Michael Bradley (@MikeBradleyMKE) April 15, 2022

by artappraiser on Fri, 04/15/2022 - 3:09pm

just a reminder that many low income people basically now don't pay any Federal Income Tax at all; what they are paying for when "taxes" are deducted from their paycheck goes almost exclusively towards their Social Security retirement account when they retire (yes, everyone actually has an account showing what they paid) and Medicare tax for when they turn 65. Some now even get subsidies for those deductions from their paycheck when tax time rolls around in the form of Earned Income Credit and refund checks- what's really going on with that is that higher income people's taxes are helping them out with their Social Security and Medicare taxes.

The point of bringing this up is not to berate anyone about mooching, rather, it's to say: do we like what we are getting for this hidden-from-view "social spending"?

by artappraiser on Fri, 04/15/2022 - 3:22pm

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