That isn't really an argument to simply say people who don't agree with you aren't sane.

Can you give an example of austerity working?

Do you remember something that happened in 2018? A budget perhaps passed by the fans of austerity that blew up the deficit harder than anything else?

No, that doesn't follow. The alternative (and to me obviously correct answer) is that "austerity" is a trick and the only alternative to growing deficit spending is higher taxes. Precisely because it's not a transient problem, random unprincipled cuts cannot solve it; there's no baseline healthy budget that we can get back to if we just trim some excess.

Please explain how cutting science and medical research helps the country.

While you're at it, I'm also curious how you think cutting profitable departments (such as CPFB) or white-collar law enforcement helps anyone other than the president's friends.

Public research is just government subsidies to corporations, which acquire IP for pennies on the dollar for their own profits while leaving taxpayers with the chaff. It’s a net loss for the public good who has to pay twice.

There is a very long and expensive path from basic research IP to a profitable drug. Private pharma companies already bear the risk of the drug development pipeline, which has a very low probability of success and takes many years. Adding fundamental research to that pipeline would make these companies a riskier investment.

This article is about NASA, and the existence of a large and successful pharmaceutical company industry proves that when there is a public good to be achieved, there is private funding for the research.

The OP asked for an answer, and the fallacy I’m trying to point out is this assumption that “all” research is generally worthwhile. And I don’t mean just that there are exceptions, but swaths of topics and institutions and researchers and methods that aren’t really adding anything of value. Some areas, like aerospace, have been the focus of intense research for a long long time. This is to the point where SpaceX has been able to walk in and build a space program from scratch. I don’t mean to minimize their hard work, but it just shows that we’re not in the 1930s anymore. It makes sense that you should occasionally adjust your priorities from time to time based on your needs.

Apologies for the tangents away from NASA - I was just replying to one of the parent comments that mentioned medical research

I don't think all research is worthwhile; I think grant proposals should get shot down if the lab/idea isn't up to snuff.

I'm happy for companies to do R&D! There's lot of examples over the years (Bell labs, Google, etc). I just don't think it makes sense in high risk situations with long reward lag times.

No one said that all research is of value. The problem with basic research is that you don't know whether it will be of value untill you do the research. All research is potentially of value. The risk of such research is why the government has historically supported it and why so many world-changing ideas come out of gov research programs.

Private investment is risk-averse: they will support reliable short term gains over dubious long term breakthroughs. That's fine, but history has shown it's not the best way.

> government subsidies

No, public research is an investment. The job of the government is to spend money on things that help the country's people. That includes roads, the military, and science.

Research is public funded because it creates public good. Most basic research is not profitable which is why it is in the publics best interests to subsidize it rather than rely in the whims of corporations.

Even then ROI for taxpayers is staggeringly huge in the long run. Calling it a "net-loss" is ... well. It is flat-earth level thinking.

Do you have an ideal version of the US government? Just wondering what you think should be cut vs kept.

Instead of cutting cancer research or Nasa, maybe tax the rich? Wild idea, I know.

Tariffs are a tax on luxury consumption so he's doing that too.

And once again people are mad and trying to cut off their nose to spite their face.

It’s true that one can design tariffs to target luxury consumption specifically, and that’s been done in the past.

That’s not what is being done by this admin, however. AI-generated tariff rates on 2-letter ISO country codes are not targeted in any meaningful sense.

Tariffs are a tax on the poor.

Blanket tarrifs can't be avoided. Even limited to "luxuries", which they're not, will still include necessities for a modern productive society.

Hobbling the workforce is not a plan for success. It is robbery by the oligarch class.

The way I think about it is this: the bureaucracy of the federal government has accumulated so much tech debt over the years that a rewrite is in order. What that means is that we get rid of everything not immediately essential, then slowly rebuild to meet our needs.

This isn’t the same as a full revolution, where you rewrite the entire government, not just the bureaucracy (I.e. get rid of Congress, Supreme Court, executive branch and replace them with something new).

The government is not software, so not sure what you mean by "tech debt" here. Maybe you're conflating the complexity of our laws with the amount of bureaucracy we have.

If the problem you your thinking is the amount of bureaucracy, what's your specific complaint? It costs too much? Nothing gets done? There's wasteful spending?

What do you think the federal government should be responsible for? I assume only national defense?