I’m no big fan of DOGE but our fiscal trajectory is utterly unsustainable, much more nation destroying than the particular cuts being mentioned here. I hate that it is now a republican talking point, but we do need a focus on raising revenue and reducing expense — and there is no easy ‘fraud’ win on expense, most of these are on real things that big coalitions of people want but we cannot afford without a large increase in revenue-as-%-GDP (ie. middle & working class tax increases), inflation (effective middle & working class tax increases), or a technological productivity boom.
Reducing defense spending by a fractional amount will have more of an impact than completely eliminating science spending altogether. The Iran tally is up to what, $11b now after a single week?
Defense is 12% of federal spending, not 52%. Definitely a bigger impact & waste than science budgets, I agree - but even cutting 100% of it would not close our hole. As I said, I’m no big fan of DOGE — but the problem is a real one despite the common tendency to put fingers in our ears or propose non-solutions, whether of the ‘tax the rich’, ‘cut DEI spending’, or ‘end all military expenditures’ variety. Not a single one of those or combination gets us there. We have to make real hard choices.
Those numbers still scale whether you're talking about total or discretionary spending, which means science/grants are an even smaller fraction of the 3%.
Why start cutting from the smallest piece of the pie? My point is that defense spending is already outsized and increasing while we cut science spending. Instead of increasing it, why not cut it and provide 100x the savings before cutting science spending? Doesn't seem like such a hard choice.
Sure, I think we should significantly scale back on defense. I hope you also support cutting social security & medicare as well though -- and also tax increases. Otherwise, we're cooked.
Going to be hard to cut into these, and the middle/working class is shrinking as wealth concentrates and wealth inequality expands. Perhaps if there weren't so many middlemen taking slices w/o providing value...
The fuckwit in the video is personally responsible for crushing the productivity boom. Higher education is, or at least was, one of America's chief export industries.
But why would be megacorp and billionaire tax increases off the table? You didn't even mention it... And before someone points out that they pay - yes they pay _something_ then get tax cuts or legal loopholes and in the end they don't really pay.
