Comment by ta8645
2 days ago
Obviously this administration has no interest in the homeless, but I'm personally a little tired of all the ivory tower elites getting upset that their intellectual play toys are in jeopardy, when millions of people struggle for food and healthcare.
And this isn't a matter of "you can do two things at once"; we should provide for our own people _before_ we worry about cosmic inflation.
It's worth keeping in mind that the budget for scientific funding in developed nations is typically ~1-2% of the total budget. Most of that money usually goes to medical research (as it should), which directly improves the quality of life for millions of people. The remainder goes into R&D which drives progress, yielding benefits across many different industries. Slashing the science budget and investing that money in homelessness instead would probably not fix homelessness in HCOL areas (issues are structural) and would end up being a major net negative for the rest of society.
The Big Beautiful Bill will add $4.5 trillion to the deficit in the next decade. If we hadn't passed it, we could have continued learning about cosmic inflation _and_ helped millions of people regarding food and healthcare and still saved trillions in the process. Of course, America would never do that, but our current issue is no longer "we should be helping people instead of doing unnecessary spending." Now we're squarely in "let's starve everyone of resources and give it all to the 1%."
The BBB will add $4.5T (this is the largest estimate) in addition to the $15T-$20T that would have happened without the BBB
The debt would have been about $52T+, now it will be $56T+, if projections are accurate.
While I do not agree with the BBB for many reasons, and I do agree that it increases the debt, it is not the primary driver of the debt.
The largest driver of our debt is our "health" system. We spend $5T a year on our "health" system, which is twice the amount per capita that western European nations spend, and we have outcomes that are, across the board, worse.
We spend $2.5T more per year than we "should" be spending on "health", which is by far the largest waste of our resources.
If we would "simply" find a way to spend as much as western Europe does (even keeping our poorer outcomes), we would save $25T over the next 10 years. Our entire national debt could be eliminated in 20 years by doing this, even with the BBB.
Yes, it is a matter of that you can do two things at once. There is nothibg preventing the US from doing both other than that the current government is actively opposed to both funding research and helping the homeless.
i agree ideologically, but the cuts are all coming from one ideological group of people bent on omnicidal domination of the planet. to them, healthcare and food for poor people is literally as unimportant as space exploration (unless it benefits the revolving-door relationship). we who oppose this should not cede ground on anything because those who propose this will not, either.