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Comment by perardi | Hacker News Reader

I am willing to agree on this one. There is a clear weariness in US for giving military even more money. I am seeing something similar in the old country and that is despite Russian aggression aimed at Ukraine.

Is there really? There’s some grumbling online, and the recent debt ceiling fight did involve a cap on spending. But they still increased spending, and it’s entirely possible and probable that cap is going to get uncapped in a supplemental, as Republican and Democrats in the Senate are still quite into spending on this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mcconnell-says-mil...

The US populace may get grumbly about spending on Ukraine, although realistically most people are just bored and have tuned out that news. But I think there’s about a 0% chance we won’t still increase military spending, especially given even more posturing and escalation about Taiwan.

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You raise a valid point. There does seem to be an - not completely unexpected - disconnect between average US denizen and established powers ( in this case, an ancient senator ).

<< The US populace may get grumbly about spending on Ukraine, although realistically most people are just bored and have tuned out that news.

I chuckled, because I kinda see that. That said, that boredom will evaporate rather fast when that bored person is asked to pay even more, while given little to no support. And that ask is coming eventually.

US has been running on borrowed time for a while now. It managed to go into serious debt over Afghanistan and Iraq and still pretended it does not actually need to pay for it in terms of taxes. FED also obliged by keeping rates super low to keep the interest payments a non-issue. That is ending based on current trajectory.

As for tuning out, I think you are really onto something. I went out of my way to limit the amount of news I process.

You are vastly overestimating how much the average US citizen thinks about the military at all, except in the vaguest ways related to social signaling about their class.

We basically have a caste system for the military, so outside certain geographic regions and economic classes, military stuff happens [gestures vaguely] over there. People will posture about it, but nah, nobody will actually cut spending, as the military-industrial complex is everywhere, and “cutting military spending” actually becomes “we can’t shut down that base or stop making that engine part, because jobs”.

What will actually happen is superficial cuts to programs that don’t contribute meaningfully to the debt, but are nice culture war targets. Past that, we’ll engage in some gross race and class cuts to Medicaid. But we are not going to cut military spending, because, again, it’s a jobs program that’s protected by a vague sense of patriotic duty.

Even on the right there are arguments against military funding boondoggles. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/boondoggles-where-did...

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