patrick.net

I thinking about when I took the intermediate (level 2) acquisitions management course at Defense Acquisition University and the instructor at day one said that around 20% could be cut from a major acquisition program and it could still meet the Pentagon's requirements.

The Federal Reserve policies contributed to the federal debt to GDP ratio reaching the current level of 121%, whereas it was around 106% right before the COVID pandemic started.

And I read using Google Gemini AI that about $660 billion was spent on federal debt service in 2023, compared to

* $773 billion for the Pentagon
* $887 billion for Medicaid
* $302 billion for Veteran Affairs (about $151 billion of this went to VA disability and income security/pension payments)

Congressional Budget Office forecasts around $870 billion for federal debt service in 2024 which surpasses the Pentagon budget :-/

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https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/presidential-debate-how-much-debt-grow-under-biden-trump-terms

Trump added $8.4 trillion to the debt, and $4.8 trillion of that was due to non-COVID pandemic/crisis spending.

As of 21 June 2024, Biden added $4.3 trillion to the debt, and $2.2 trillion of that was due to non COVID spending.

Congressional Budget Office forecasts a $2 trillion deficit for 2024, and that $1.2 trillion (of that $2 trillion) has already been realized since end of May 2024.

The deficit was $1.7 trillion in 2023.

So Biden will add at least $5.1 trillion to the debt during his first term compared to Trump's $8.1 trillion.

But Trump was politically forced to sign bi-partisan spending bills to respond to the COVID crisis. Trump staved off a major economic depression because of all the COVID lockdowns.

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https://barsoom.substack.com/p/fear

It shouldn’t be surprising that the war on terror ended up making us chronically terrified. That’s the track record for these things. Even back in the 1990s we knew that. The war on poverty generated an obscenely inflated welfare underclass while systematically slowing economic growth, thereby generating poverty twice over. The war on drugs led to a society of drug addicts, in which every fifth person is on at least one kind of pill, and most of the rest are self-medicating in other ways. Instead of weed (legal now, in any case), we have fentanyl and meth. Victory!

When Washington declares war on something, it invariably produces more of it. This seems perverse until you realize that wars on abstractions are simply how managerial bureaucracies extend their bases of power. A war that can never be won is a war with job security. A war that gets worse the longer and harder you fight it is even better, because this generates growth.

Washington’s current wars seem to be on racism, baseline human sexual normalcy, men, and multipolarity; the latter is really just a fancy word for the growing tendency for other countries to not do what Washington tells them to because, in general, they prefer being racist to being erased, they think the butt stuff is weird, they don’t want to be castrated, and since they are not castrated, they are still capable of not liking to be told what to do. Sure enough, all of these wars, whether cultural or geopolitical, are steadily generating the very things that they’re trying to stamp out. Racism stocks have reached prices they haven’t seen in generations, thanks to sustained decade of all-out full sector push by the media, corporate, educational, and public sectors, all doing their part to push that line up, up, up. Meanwhile, the war on multipolarity seems in general to be doing a fantastic job of generating more multipolarity.

The longer Washington wages its cowardly war against Russia, China, Iran, and I guess now North Korea, the more Washington’s standing in the world is reduced. I say ‘cowardly’ of course because the war is not waged openly: formally, no war has been declared by Washington or any of its core NATO allies against any of the obvious belligerents. It’s all done through proxies which Washington pays to train and arm and die on its behalf, funding it all with a money printer whose brrrring has gotten defeaning. Or it’s done through sabotage; let’s not forget Nordstream, which kicked the legs out from under Germany’s, and therefore Europe’s economy, in perhaps the most breathtakingly cynical act of strategic sabotage against a supposed ally that one might imagine. Washington doomed Europe in order to ensure that Europe would stay attached to Washington. The whole world sees what Washington is doing of course, and is frightened lest it happen to them, but also disgusted that it happens at all; the latter emotion is becoming increasingly dominant, however, because Washington is becoming less frightening every day.

Washington could not even coordinate an orderly retreat from Afghanistan; its wunderwaffen have made little impact on the Ukrainian battlefront; even combined with its vassals, it cannot match levels of armament production that come effortlessly to its adversaries; its pier in Gaza fell apart uselessly; its mighty navy has so far been utterly powerless to stop a blockade imposed by some obscure tribe of desert Arabs. Then there’s the big fail, Washington’s attempt to nuke the Russian economy by locking it out of the SWIFT system. The Russian economy is doing fine, in fact better than fine, but SWIFT on the other hand is swiftly becoming irrelevant.

If I saw 3 out of 4 of these on TV, does that count?

Patrick says

Only $244 billion deficit? I call bullshit.

DemocratsAreTotallyFucked says

Patrick says

Only $244 billion deficit? I call bullshit.

Oh. That is just for July.

BREAKING: The US government deficit hit a massive $1.5 trillion in the first 10 months FY 2024, according to the Treasury Department.

In July alone, the US deficit spending reached a whopping $244 billion.

Total outlays came in at $5.6 trillion and total receipts were $5.6 trillion over the last 10 months.

Social Security was the largest expenditure amounting to $1.2 trillion.

Net interest was the second largest cost, exceeding health, Medicare, and national defense expenses.

Patrick says

How is Social Insurance and Retirement a source?

HeadSet says

How is Social Insurance and Retirement a source?

FICA taxes that go into paying for them.

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Look at Medicaid which is more than "National Defense"

https://www.statista.com/statistics/245348/total-medicaid-expenditure-since-1966/

It was $887 billion in 2023.

Medicaid has increased by about 6.25% annually since 2000. Explains in part why USA Today reported the one job growth engine is healthcare while the economy cools.

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DemocratsAreTotallyFucked says

BREAKING: The US government deficit hit a massive $1.5 trillion in the first 10 months FY 2024, according to the Treasury Department.

Monitor debt to GDP ratio: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

Also monitor deficit as a percentage of income/wage tax receipts and total tax receipts, as well as debt service as a percentage of total federal budget

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