[leetcrew]

> Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending.

The US spends a lot on its military, but it's only about 15% of central government spending. When you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, we (3.3%) are not that far off from European powers like France (2.3%) or the UK (1.9%) whose defense we essentially subsidize through NATO. We just have a much larger economy so that 3.3% turns out to be a really big number.

There's no obvious (to me) fiscal reason why our social services have to be so poor, so I have to assume we just suck at allocating the money (possibly intentional).

[swalsh]

I can't recreate your math, but I don't think that's important for the point.

By your numbers, there's a 1% difference. On the scale of the GDP, that is a HUGE number. I think looking at the absolute numbers matters. Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion (according to Bernie Sanders). Trump asked for an additional $116 billion dollars for defense. I don't see the logic in arguing if we can afford $600 billion, and another $116 billion, while at the same time arguing $75 billion is impossible and would bankrupt the country. We're clearly making priorities.

[leetcrew]

the 15% turned out to be a lowball, it's more like 17% if you use the 2015 numbers from wikipedia[0]. I got the %GDP numbers from wikipedia as well[1].

> Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion.

this I find hard to believe. the US government estimated that ~20 million students would be enrolled in college/university in fall 2017. assuming enrollment would not increase if college were free, that $75 billion works out to about $3750 per student. this substantially undercuts even in-state tuition at the average community college, which already receives significant funding from the government.

although I pushed back on that particular claim by Sanders, I still maintain that we have an allocation problem, not a money problem. according to 2012 data[2] the US government spends almost exactly the same percentage of its GDP on education as the UK, and we are in the high range of money spent per student in primary and secondary education[3].

i'm no expert, but this doesn't look like the kind of thing where you can just throw money at it and expect it to work. we should figure out how to use the money we already have to produce more similar outcomes to those in Western Europe.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp