>Do we cut back on the military industrial complex?

The US spends $676 billion on defense, almost the exact same amount on Medicare, $1 trillion on Social Security, and $409 billion on Medicaid. Social welfare spending is a much, much larger portion of the US budget than military spending. Here are the numbers straight from the Congressional Budget Office https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-04/56324-CBO-2019-budg...

Are there any numbers on how much of the non-defense discretionary spending of 661 billion is actually related to the military spending? It lists "veteran's benefits" under that for example. Same for "Other", which lists "military retirement" and again "some veteran's benefits" for example. That sounds like defense spending to me.

Yes, and so?

Did that Trillion not come from people contributing? You know it did.

And still, we can and should totally question our current spend.

To answer the second sentence, no, I don't know that. Boomers are taking out 5 times as many benefits as they paid in, it is absolutely not paid for (many Boomers believe otherwise!)

Let's say for a moment that is true. ( and we can ignore under payment of benefits, like the social security tax cap being at a hundred some thousand dollars.)

How does that impact the discussion? Do we think we need another problem by not actually paying those benefits?

Secondly, back to the first question, so?

What's our priority?

Right now that priority is not healthy people, able to show up for work, existing reasonably.

Does that make the best sense? I don't think so.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. I am personally pro-a larger welfare state- I wanted to specifically engage with one wrong thing you said, that the US somehow spends more on the military than social welfare. In fact, this is a common misconception- the United States spends several multiples more on social welfare than its military. In fact, the US spends about as much just on healthcare for the elderly as it does its entire military budget. This is simply a statement of fact, not meant to be an anti-social welfare political statement from me

I didn't actually say that. What I did say is we should have a priority discussion ahead of us, and that maybe we should cut back on the military industrial complex, as one aspect of that discussion.

The other thing I did was walkthrough a little bit about what those priorities might look like. There's several ways to solve this problem.

And we do have a problem when roughly half the labor force makes roughly 30k a year.

> Universal healthcare, say Medicare for All style, does not have to mean higher taxes.

How would that be? It seems like it certainly would to me. Maybe by less than employees plus employers currently pay in aggregate healthcare costs, but I can't imagine a way where the government pays for Medicare-for-all and taxes don't go up.

Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?

I suspect that was a misstatement - I haven't seen a proposal that avoids higher taxes without a large debt being written against something else (i.e. redirecting funding from the military). It is, however, accurate to say that personal out-of-pocket expenses wouldn't increase for most individuals. The cost per patient for government funded healthcare is expected to significantly undercut private costs per patient due to some efficiencies of scale and removal of some pretty big market friction points - so less money would end up being extracted from the economy to pay for an equivalent level of care.

In short - you can buy a banana for a dime or give the government a nickle and get a "free" banana.

Medicare just forces providers to take less money than insurance companies, it's efficient in some sense, but it's not operational efficiency.

I'm super glad my mom has Medicare! But she isn't benefitting from it being efficient, she's benefitting from it setting the rate it pays and requiring providers to accept it.

To clarify a bit these market insights don't just come from comparisons to medicare but by comparing patient care costs to similarly developed nations and trying to account for factors like the obesity epidemic - the US just pays a lot more for a patient to get treatment than similar countries.

Well, if you and or your employer are not paying premiums, and the overall spend is less (this is a well supported CBO finding), most of us will be better off.

Totally agreed. Saying that most of us will be better off even though our taxes will go up is significantly more accurate.

What is a premium but a private tax?

One is an optional payment to a private company to purchase a specific service.

The other is a compulsory payment to a government entity as a result of earning income.

Lol, optional?

The rest of the developed world would very strongly disagree.

The penalty for not making that payment can be death, is likely financial ruin.

For many people, that optional payment is enough to buy a home.

Ask around about "optional"

Then we can set that aside and recognize net, liquid income will go up for most everyone.

> Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?

All in the US more or less pays roughly 2x or more what some other countries pay for equivalent healthcare, so there is nominally room to extend coverage while keeping costs flat in theory. In practice, it's complicated. Also 'roughly' and 'more or less' have some wiggle room for systemic differences, but it's about right.

You would be able to cut out an entire for profit insurance industry, I would also think people would be more inclined to go to see a doctor before a minor issue turns into a major one than they are now.