We spend about 3.5% of GDP on defense [1], and coincidentally about 3.5% on R&D [2]. People tend to wildly overestimate how large the modern US defense budget is. It's only around 13% of federal spending [3]!
We’d probably be living like the Jetsons if the Middle East was stable, China wasn't so aggressive in the South China Sea, and Russia didn't have some illusion of being able to restore the Soviet Union.
We’d probably be living like the Jetsons if we would make a serious attempt to curb (effective) tax evasion and profit offshoring to reduce inequality.
(ie: make returns on labor converge to - or at least track - returns on capital)
> curb (effective) tax evasion and profit offshoring to reduce inequality.
that assumes cooperation on a global scale between competing tax jurisdictions, which in my book is infinitely harder to achieve than net power via fusion
This is laughable, an ideological trope with little bearing on reality. Governments spend and also waste far more money than is not only hidden from tax obligations but also more money than is also collected through tax receipts of all kinds (all that sweet, sweet deficit spending at work). And they do indeed waste vast amounts of it, on military plans, boondoggles that go nowhere, bullshit drug wars, bloated bureaucracies that perpetuate themselves to never solve the problems behind their original purpose and so forth, but the blame for no Jetsons future is really with people hiding a fraction outside what's already taxed and keeping it from more of that same public spending waste?
If governments wanted to spend on long-term tech and energy investments, they most definitely could find the funds to do so from among their existing budgets. These budgets are in many cases at record levels anyhow. However they don't because, well, see wasteful spending causes listed above, none of which go away since they benefit so many entrenched institutional interests...
Money hidden by tax evasion is in any case not dead capital. It gets moved around, invested, reinvested, and through different means, channeled to the kinds of things that legitimate investments funds and VCs also spend their money on (presumably as a good thing, since you're not also blaming them for no Jetsons future).
Money hidden by tax evasion is the deadest of all money. It literally doesn't get moved around, invested or reinvested, because that would trigger taxable events and get the IRS after your ass.
You're flatly wrong and should read more about how tax evasion works. I assure you that if someone manages to skim an extra X millions of dollars away from the tax man, they certainly won't let it sit dead and being eaten by inflation after that effort and expense. They might as well have simply paid taxes on it otherwise.
Through an assortment of vehicles and mechanisms, that money does indeed get shifted, moved and invested in all sorts of sophisticated and fully diverse ways, just like assets that were legitimately declared. I mean, what do you think they keep it in? Giant vaults as stacks of cash, like Scrooge McDuck? Absurd, the kinds of childish ideas about tax evasion that appear here.
Ah, where do I begin? Southernplaces7, your argument reads like the greatest hits of neoliberal thought circa 1980. Sure, governments can be wasteful—cue the obligatory mention of military overspending and bureaucratic bloat—but that doesn’t negate the crux of my point: tax evasion and profit offshoring are significant drags on economic equality.
You suggest that hidden capital is always put to good use. But let’s be real, the majority of it ends up in the average urban Joe's much beloved real estate speculation, yachts, and financial instruments that do little to spur genuine economic growth or innovation. It’s like hiding your vegetables under the mashed potatoes and claiming you’ve eaten them. It’s still there, but it’s not nourishing anyone.
Or, while it's lovely to think that the hidden wealth of the ultra-rich is busily working away like Santa's elves to create a better future, the reality is starkly different.
And about that Jetsons future: it’s not about just having the funds. It’s about allocating them efficiently and equitably. When capital returns far outstrip labor returns because the wealthy can hide their money and avoid taxes, we create an unbalanced system where innovation and societal progress are stunted. It’s not just about waste, it’s about skewed incentives.
Effective tax policy isn’t about bleeding the rich dry; it’s about ensuring that those who benefit the most from the system contribute proportionately to its upkeep and progress.
And governments aren’t perfect, but they’re the only game in town for large-scale investments in public goods—think infrastructure, education, healthcare, and yes, tech innovation and green transition. So, before we go all in on the "government waste" narrative, let’s remember that the (current) alternative is a plutocracy where the rich get richer and the rest of us get crumbs. No Jetsons future in that, rather much more like the Flintstones.
Your arguments completely miss my main point. Before I get to it briefly, bear in mind that i'm not opposed to tax collection or government spending on public works, social services and etc. I generally, with certain conditions, reservations and strong criticisms do support the modern liberal social democratic state as something close to the pinnacle of socioeconomic development so far.
On the other hand using the word "neoliberal" reveals little more than a cheap, all too human love of simplistic, idiotic ideological labels with little substance. Go ahead and define whatever the hell a neoliberal is. Name a few examples and exactly how their administrations were in any marked way different from any other modern western state. Here's a hint of the silliness inherent in that, via example: Under the Bush years, the fundamental structure of government and its obligatory spending was little different from how it was under any number of leaders previous to or following that time. Let's look beyond cheap labels and at the actual structure of how governments, markets, taxes and social systems work.
As for my main point: It's simply this (and related to what I just mentioned above) in the modern world, speaking particularly in the context of the developed countries, government budgets and tax receipts from economic activity are so enormous as they stand that losses from tax evasion are far more of a boogeyman than a reality as a meaningful hindrance to resources. The average budget of the average western developed country has so many avenues for allocating funds that using lost tax revenue from evasion as an excuse for why it doesn't do so for a better future is absurd.
The numbers simply don't back it up. To take the U.S. as an example, it's estimated that losses due to illegal tax dodging were something over 600 billion in 2021. Those are losses to both state and federal tax revenues. In the same year, the federal budget alone was over 6.8 trillion. If you add in state budgets, the number gets an extra 3.8 trillion added to it. That makes the total over 10 trillion in government spending. 680 billion is a lot, no doubt, but as an excuse for why government "doesn't have enough money" for better things, it's a pallid excuse.
A significant portion of the defense spend is STEM. It takes a lot of engineering to build a bomb. It takes a lot of math to create/break encryption....
That just makes things worse. Imagine if most people working on nuclear reactors in the navy instead spent the time building and maintaining civilian equipment. The kind of people designing and building the F-22 etc where capable of more long term useful activities etc.
The US could be safe spending 1% of its GDP on defense and largely importing foreign weapon system designs for local manufacturing. There’s clearly a lower limit, but half of current spending is perfectly reasonable starting point before decisions get tricky.
Is there really that much overlap or are the budgets just so insanely high you end up with accidental overlap? Seat belts are a perfect example where the military and non military application was quite different on day one. But, military had the budget so John Stapp made the argument around how many pilots died driving in their civilian lives. Definitely a huge public benefit, but from what amounted to military funding of civilian research.
Packet switching saw first implementation outside the US including some key ideas like a router. We ended up with the ARPANET > Internet story everyone is familiar with more as an accident of history and a dash of propaganda rather than something that required US military participation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPL_network
Teflon is another one people bring up as coming from the military but was invented accidentally outside the military long before its use in the Manhattan Project.
> largely importing foreign weapon system designs for local manufacturing.
I'm pretty sure they legally can't "largely import foreign weapon designs". The Berry and Kissel amendments, not to mention ITAR and a few other regulations, put a strong incentive on in-sourcing when at all possible. The only exceptions are for things that are really hard to get domestically.
Which foreign systems? If US would’ve withdrew from cold war, half of Europe would be learning cyrylic now, and there would be few countries to import tech from. Not to mention engineers from the eastern block working for the opposite side.
This premise means that the extra dollars would be spent in a way that would justify your comment. Schools in Texas, Florida, et al would probably just replace those liberal texts with much more censored versions. They'd probably find a way to build bigger football stadiums or those other sportsball programs. New uniforms and things too. Then it'd probably pay for perks for principles and sporting directors, but sadly, there wouldn't be enough to increase the base pay of actual teachers. I'm sure there's other ways to spend that money and not a bit of it improves our advance towards the Jetsons' world.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locat... [3] https://federalbudgetinpictures.com/where-does-all-the-money...