How many employees and dollars would Boeing be able to save if they could transition the certification resources to the FAA?

It would also make it easier for new competitors to enter the market since they would need to build/create one less structure.

And it could make flying safer since the regulator would see that Company A does X, and Company B should too.

Safe practices shouldn’t be a company secret, they should be viral.

Why not charge those that want to certify something? While this may create bad incentives ("make'em fail so we get a second fee"), I have no doubt this can be designed around with some thought.

I think the problem is what to do with these people if there is nothing to certify. Or how to ramp up with when suddenly there is a lot to certify. Companies know what they are planning so they adjust verification headcount early. A government agency won't have that information so capacity planning will be very difficult.

Why from the military specifically? There are other budget items where we spend more.

I just looked up the 2018 federal budget for examples:

Department of Defense : $574 billion

Department of Veteran Affairs :$78.9 billion

Department of Education : $68.2 billion

Department of Health and Human Services :$65.1 billion

Environmental Protection Agency: $5.7 billion

Does this not seem off to you?

In perspective: https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016

The things you've listed are only around 25% of the budget. You're engaged in some serious cherry picking.

I didn't want to format the entire list, sorry.

Here's some things you "overlooked"

Mandatory spending: $2.841 trillion (this includes the following)

Social Security: $1.102 trillion

Medicare: $679 billion

Medicaid: $418 billion

The military budget isn't a whipping boy to just cut into every time you need money for something else. It's a priority for a lot of people in the US, whether you agree with them or not. If something like increasing the FAA budget is actually important, the metric to go by should be, "am I willing to cut social security and healthcare to pay for this?" Because that's what the government is actually spending money on, and that's where it would have to come from.

The US military budget is consistently called out because the United States spends more on it than all other countries in the entire world, combined. Those you list are less called out because the they're supposed to be directly funded by line item taxes. There's an explicit social security and medicare tax.

Serving the people does not have to cost service to the people. Serving the people does not have to be a zero sum game, when we could instead take from the excesses of violence against others to serve the people.

While the US does spend a lot, it does not spend more than "all other countries in the entire world, combined." Total reported military spending is $1.8 trillion, with the understanding that there are some countries (China) that are very likely massively under reporting their military expenditures.

Looking at the raw numbers is ingenuous as well. As a percentage of GDP or government spending, the US doesn't even break the top 15 in the world on military spending.

Also, the US spends more on healthcare and social security than any other country. Why are you giving those careful white glove treatment?

> Also, the US spends more on healthcare and social security than any other country. Why are you giving those careful white glove treatment?

The US is one of the most populous countries with any sort of widespread social welfare program. Those programs scale in cost with population size. There's no reason for military spending to also scale in the same way with population size. You aren't comparing the same things, so stop pretending you are.

You've somewhat missed the point I was trying to make. Let me try to walk you through it in in a different way:

* The original argument is that the US military spending is abnormally high, when considered as a raw dollar amount.

However:

* The US military spending is not actually abnormally high when considered as a percentage of GDP or Government budget.

* There's hypocrisy in only considering the military in raw dollar amounts, but considering health care and social security as a percentage or per capita expense.

* If you also consider social security and healthcare by their raw dollar amounts, you also end up with absurd levels of spending.

* You should be pinning spending for health care, social security, and military to the same per capita or GDP metrics, and only then be objecting to them if they're abnormally high.

* It's unethical to pick and choose what spending you personally object to, and then cherry-pick the method you judge that specific spending by to support your personal decision.

Please edit your answer to clarify why the money has to come from social security and healthcare.

You can't just choose to cut only the parts of the US budget you personally dislike. That's not how a budgeting in a democracy works. If you want a budget increase in one area, then that money has to come from all other parts of the budget. If 60% of the government spending is on social security and healthcare, then that suggests 60% of the spending in increasing the FAA budget is going to be coming from social security and health care.