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A comment on Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S. Parent comment

Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by greesil on Monday January 07, 2019 @12:13PM (#18847186)
I agree that we don't get a good return on the taxes we pay. But, defense spending is about 1/6 of the federal budget at around 3% of GDP. For comparison medicare/medicaid combined is about 5% of GDP. Apparently France spends 4% of GDP on healthcare total, not just for old people. I think the biggest problem with our system is not necessarily that defense spending is so high, but that our healthcare system is so inefficient.
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by megaman8 on Monday January 07, 2019 @12:15PM (#18847221)
much of the defense spending is hidden in other areas: like Dept of energy, dept of veteran affairs, homeland security, etc. So it's a lot bigger than it looks.
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by tannerwj on Monday January 07, 2019 @12:53PM (#18847792)
Where could I see numbers on this?
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by skh on Monday January 07, 2019 @01:04PM (#18847949)
Isn’t the CIA, NSA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard (which is not part of the Pentagon), etc. all part of national defense? You can look up the public portion of their budgets online. The VA should be counted too since it’s a cost of national defense.
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by muzz on Monday January 07, 2019 @01:35PM (#18848369)
Also things like interest on the amount of debt used to fight wars
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by greesil on Monday January 07, 2019 @06:43PM (#18851492)
Probably dwarfed by borrowing required for the tax cut now.
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Re:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S by jazzyk on Monday January 07, 2019 @03:12PM (#18849482)
Your conclusion is correct, your numbers are not - the spending gap is much higher (which supports your point even better)

US spending is over 18%, almost double the cost in France. Even the oh-so-expensive Switzerland spends ~12% of its GDP on healthcare.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-spending/u-s-healt...

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