[tedggh]

They also came to realize building, operating and maintaining a military force is extremely expensive. Free healthcare, 7 weeks of vacation, 36 hr work weeks, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, etc etc is all great when you don’t have the financial burden of protecting your home.

[victorbjorklund]

USA has said they will not support Europe in a military conflict so now you can slash your military and fire all those soldiers and have free health care etc. No? Sounds like ”protecting” Europe wasn’t what stood in the way of free healthcare, vacation, etc.

[trollbridge]

Nearly half (about 47%) of healthcare in the U.S. is government-paid, although via a variety of different programs. The USA also has quite lavish benefits in a variety of other ways.

Of course, that is mostly paid for via massive amounts of debt, not from savings of military spending. But government spending on healthcare is more than twice (2.5 to 3 times) that of military spending. So slashing military spending to zero would just mean the amount of government-provided healthcare spending could go from 47% to 56% or so. (Not taking into account that a lot of "military spending" is actually healthcare spending!)

[tanaros]

Total EU defense spending is around $450M USD. The US defense budget, prior to 2027, is about $950M USD. Are you saying the US could have all those social policies for $500M USD?

[avidiax]

The US could have those benefits for free.

Single payer would be drastically cheaper than the current system.

The other benefits are just policies that slightly reduce GDP per capita based on a first order analysis.

We are able to afford so many other subsidies, so unclear why housing would be different.

[rescbr]

The US could simply give away $1 M per resident, removing the need for social policies and it would still come out cheaper.

[ImJamal]

The US has around 340 million people. Giving a million dollars to each one would be 340 trillion dollars.

[econ]

That sounds like a great idea.

It would devalue the dollar a bit but you can print new price tags.

Just create a new similar shit coin

[sokoloff]

Where does this ~$350 trillion dollars come from?!

[jbverschoor]

Exactly where all the dollars came from :D

[kasey_junk]

You aren’t counting the VA in your spending. That’s another 450 billion.