The US could have both a large military and decent universal health care. We choose to have an economically exploitive healthcare system and retirement with the politicians we elect.

It would cost the US less as a society to have universal healthcare rather than the horror we have now.

The US has the world's largest entitlement and social welfare programs, including its vast Social Security program (which is not actually paid for in full by its recipients, it's heavily subsidized, ie a welfare transfer) or eg its $120 billion EBT food program. And that's just at the federal level, the US has another gigantic government complex at the state level.

Most US government spending, $10 trillion (federal + state + local), goes to social welfare programs and entitlements.

That $10 trillion is larger than the entire economies of Japan + Germany combined.

The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, by far. It hasn't given up anything.

The poorest 1/4 of the US population gets entirely free healthcare, and it's the most expensive free healthcare that you'll find anywhere on the planet. Another quarter of the US population receives directly subsidized healthcare.

Over-spending on the US military is a $200-$250 billion problem. The US spends $4+ trillion on healthcare every year.

Practically every full-time employee (32 hours or more per week) in the US gets paid time off. Your average retail store employee - working at CVS, Walgreens, Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc - earning ~$13-$17 / hour typically accrues 10-14 days of PTO per year (one can certainly argue it should be more; pretending it doesn't exist, or using "by law" to devalue its existence, is absurd).

Don't forget them lucky 1/2 percenters who get free healthcare, food, residence, and leisure time! I'm talking about the incarcerated 1.7m in the Land of the Free.

Close, but it's actually a bit over 700/100k, so >0.7% of the population.

Yeah this isn’t a money problem it’s an inefficiency problem at this rate. There are systemic problems here (of the systems engineering kind not the racial justice kind).

I think the US could afford both proper health care/social security and the current military, but of course they would have to try it first to see if it works...

I think it's possible too, and I'm sure the military can/always is trying to cut money corners where it can so as to keep within budget, but I'm sure it all comes down to some massive cut in the military likely requiring us to decommit from some massive objective we currently are ahead on. Making sure we have enough presence to keep the South China Sea open, have enough equipment to give to countries we are allied with who have large enemies (see Ukraine, Taiwan), hold on to allies in strategic regions (see Israel - though I don't agree with what they do with equipment), be prepared for self defense or "necessary wars", be prepared to deploy to Europe because they underspend, maintain the nuclear arsenal so there's no catastrophe there, etc etc. No one wants to be the president who cut the budget so we lost in that field.

> I'm sure the military can/always is trying to cut money corners where it can

I doubt it. When the budget is billions of largely unaudited dollars and a senate that will approve any budget increases what reason is there to save money? I can’t imagine the nepotism found in military contracts are saving the military money when these companies gaining the contracts want as much tax-payer money as possible.

The US pays about 5x per health service used compared to the OECD. Every reduction in spend would result in massive job losses in overhead that keep our house of cards from collapsing.

I was about to say it could fully defund the military and still not fully tackle healthcare and poverty problems. Especially if interest rates on government debt starts going up.

The reality is our debt servicing (interest) will outpace our military spending soon.