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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

It's in part because the military doesn't buy stuff from China.

The companies that make the parts for those missiles (not just the mega corp whose badge is on it) are likely only in business because they make the parts for it, and employ 20-200 people with decent pay and full benefits in Corn County, Midwest to do it.

On the surface it looks like enormous waste, it still might be, but understand that the defense budget is primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing.

This is why it never gets cut, but anyone red or blue. It employs way to many people and in way to many places without much good work. Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.

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I live 500yd from one of those companies in the one of the richest and bluest states in the nation. They make buttons and knobs and switches for .mil stuff.

It isn't solely a "welfare for hicks" program like HN likes to portray though I'm sure the dollars go farther in other states.

I mean, there is also the strategic benefit of not having your capacity to wage war in the stranglehold of a potential adversary. Not to say that politicians won't vote for graft that helps their districts, but there is a legitimate argument for employing only Americans in wartime industries.

But yes, that's a big source of the expense. Even on the IT side of things, the government (especially the military) pays sometimes up to 50% more for FedRAMP versions of SaaS products that have their servers based in the US and which are only administered by US citizens.

> Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.

but only if it's for their doners or major corporate constituents. they're not proposing WPA public works or getting the average man out working on solar panels

“primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing”

Not just a jobs program, but it is strategically important to national security to retain the ability to manufacture military hardware (or at least along with allies)

It’s unfortunate that means to maximize taxpayer value we have to actually use or sell all those weapons, potentially by initiating or participating in conflicts we otherwise might not have.

I mean it definitely has to be monumental waste. Look at the cost of launching rockets prior to SpaceX versus the cost now which is really a pittance by comparison.

Not that I want to see anybody build bombs

They also arbitrarily reduce numbers and raise unit costs by regulations because weapons bad, though they are dropped asymmetrically on living people anyway. The US isn't incentivizing weapons correctly for them to improve in cost performance.

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