[NHQ]

That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so doubly wasteful.

Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200 is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation.

[JeremyNT]

I believe this is implied in the parent's post.

We fund the military industrial complex to such a ludicrous degree that $200m can just disappear on bullshit contracts to cronies that go nowhere, and politicians don't bat an eye.

Nobody with power cares about the debt. They just keep borrowing money and handing it to the defense industry. This is one of only a handful of issues on which there is bipartisan agreement.

[NHQ]

Yes, the real government is the one in agreement, and the "handful of issues" account for almost all of the spending. Their disagreements, in budget terms and in reality, are cheap and pretentious theatrics.

But I doubt the politicians "don't bat an eye" at 200M, for they know that money is going straight out of the economy and into private coffers.

The government budgeters are not naive to the economics of military spending. The cope about pennies on the tax dollar is naive about both economics and what the government is really doing.

This idea that government is incapable, dumb, and prone to mismanagement is a harmful rationalization, and simply not true. If anything, this thinking excuses the government to act that way, and then there is no way of knowing if they are purposefully mismanaging or doing so because incapable.

[nchmy]

what reality are you living in, friend? Mismanagement and grift has been the way of the government - and particularly the military - forever.

No one here is excusing anything, but rather just stating how things are. And if you think that those with the power actually give any consideration to us, let alone think "hey, they dont care, carry on!", then you've truly lost the plot

[nilamo]

Is all of that truely "waste", if it is being paid toward onshore companies? The money doesn't disappear, it gets redistributed to American companies.

[Loudergood]

Broken Window Fallacy.

We could be spending it on things with a much higher return.

[nilamo]

We're also talking about a governmental body. Generating the highest returns possible is a non-goal, and disregarding potentially useful things simply because they aren't the best possible use of funds is an easy way to just never do anything.

[NHQ]

The best possible use of funds would be "useful things", and these would produce benefits for people. "Nonproductive" indicates not producing these benefits. Government doing nothing is better than government "potentially" doing things that have no clear benefit or that are definitely nonproductive (like military spending).

[nilamo]

I disagree that government doing nothing is better than keeping money flowing. Or, I disagree that money should be removed from the populace via taxation, if that funding doesn't have any path back to the populace. Government doing nothing is a net negative to the entire country, and is worse (imo) than doing "nonproductive" spending. A nonproductive spend is still spend that keeps people employed, families fed, researchers researching, etc.

I don't believe that you guys all believe the military industrial complex should start sitting on cash and collecting interest, even though that's what you're saying. The obvious solution is "they don't need that much money", but that's unrelated to how they spend the money they do have.

[fennecbutt]

Executives and shareholders* not you and I.

[nchmy]

What in the Ayn Rand are you talking about?

Are you really unable to distinguish the difference in value between, say, funding infrastructure maintenance - or 1000 other things - and just filling some crony's pockets?

[tonyhart7]

US literally have 1 trillion military budget, if you think 200 mil its a waste for prototyping a next gen weapon then I would have a bad news for you

[hansvm]

It's something like $3 straight out of my pocket, and it's going to be a flop. That trillion dollar military budget has a lot of semi-unavoidable costs (pensions, salaries, etc), but it has a lot of bullshit like this too.

Your argument feels something like the heap paradox [0], "the budget is big, so this thing doesn't matter." The budget is made of things this size though, and all it takes to fix it is to start taking grains of sand out of the pile instead of stacking the pile higher.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

[tonyhart7]

200 million is 0.02 percent of 1 trillion.

does 30 cent matters to you??? because its not 3 dollar as a comparison but 30 cent is

[hansvm]

> 30 cent is

Not everyone pays the same amount in taxes.

> does 30 cents (or the actual value, $3) matter?

Not hugely, but the other point is still important. If somebody takes $3 out of my back pocket a few times each hour it adds up, and when the net effect is nearly guaranteed to be a transfer of funds to OpenAI with no benefit to the taxpayer (likely a negative benefit given our usual stance on letting monopolies run amuck) I'm especially salty about it.

[NHQ]

The entire Trillion is wasted. The entire trillion could be used for public benefit, or simply never "taxed" in the first place.

Very few people would willingly pay for military spending if for example when they buy food they are prompted with the option "do you want to give 30 cents to the military industrial complex?" And that "very few people" would not in sum render 1 Trillion.

[imtringued]

The cost of the Indian space program is roughly $1 per Indian. You're getting nothing for a third of the per capita cost of ISRO.

[tonyhart7]

Indian space program don't have armed forces that cover 80% entire planet

[potato3732842]

The nickels and dimes add the F up. Stop acting like they don't.

Save perhaps the most extreme "I spend 70% of my six figure income on rent because I want to live alone somewhere trendy" of household budgets this is true for literally everything from the smallest business in the smalles of small towns to the federal government.

[tonyhart7]

200 million is 0.02 percent of 1 trillion.

if you don't mind having 1 trillion military then you are not mind for 200 mill contract

[potato3732842]

Now add up all the other 2/20/200mil nickels and dimes across the DOD and what do you get?

The budget isn't all aircraft carriers and stealth bombers.

Maybe this is a good buy, maybe it's a bad buy. I don't know and I have no way of ever knowing. Just because the budget is big and the money is other peoples does not mean decision makers can be wishy washy about a hundred or two mil here and there. Everyone needs to care all the time. People like you and who share your "it's all pennies in the grand scheme" thought process at scale is the problem and why we're even having this discussion.

[tonyhart7]

My point is if you worry about waste taxpayer money, you would not have 1 trillion budget in the first place

this is not on top of the list of "waste" things to worry about there are 20+ another reason and you pick this budget size its a weird hill to die on

[potato3732842]

That attitude is exactly how we got to a 1-trilling military budget in the first place.

[chgs]

You don’t know. You don’t have the time or knowledge to know.

You delegate that to people whose job it is to know.

But you keep delegating it to people who want to spend more.