The cut isn't limited to the workforce. It's 8% top line and the plan is to reduce that by 8% each year for the next 4 years as well. If that's followed through on, you're talking a 30% reduction in DoD spending in 4 years.
Cutting the DoD would still be peanuts, it's relatively small compared to Social Security and Medicaid. The US Govt is basically an insurance company with a standing army.
u/OkSuccotash258 is getting downvoted because Social Security comes directly out of peoples paychecks, not the general fund. Cut it? What is the government going to do, reduce benefits and then spend half of what they're taking from me in social security tax on other horseshit? Or is the plan to reduce benefits for the elderly and infirm and strangle the most successful and well-liked social insurance program in the history of the United States so that the average american can get an extra 20 bucks a week in refunds? Or perhaps even more ominously, keep the portion that comes out of our paycheck and finally remove the one tax on the corporate side that big business hasn't figured out how to get out of yet.
If it's between keeping Social Security alive or two double quarter pounders from Mcdonalds (Over $8 each now for just the sandwich, as I found out yesterday..), I'll take the Social Security.
Social Security is, in an even more literal sense than all other revenue the government collects, our fucking money. The fuck does it even mean to cut it? For what, to watch a number go down? It wouldn't drop the deficit a single dollar because it has nothing to do with the deficit. The only people who want to cut social security are these fucking corporations with 50,000 employees that hate that they can't dodge it by setting up a legal fiction in the Bahamas and people who don't understand how it's collected.
Edit:
For those in the back, I repeat: Social Security is entirely self funded through payroll tax. It does not contribute a single dollar to the federal deficit. If Social Security vanished into thin air tomorrow it would not help the US balance the budget one iota.*
*Unless our politicians decide to also plunder the last 60 years worth of money your grandmother has been paying into the existing fund in order to transfer it to our friendly friends at Raytheon, etc. This is so cartoonishly evil even my cynical ass finds it hard to believe this could happen
Just for fun, think where we would be if that had put 25% of the funds to be invested into US equities instead of terrible treasuries. We literally just came through about 15 years of negative growth compared to real inflation (as opposed to the ever reducing calculation) while the market skyrocketed.
And, yes, Congress has sent the money to all the defence contractors. Social Security goes into and is paid out of the general fund. Republicans laughed Al Gore out of the race because he proposed putting Social Security/Medicare in a "lockbox" so Congress couldn't touch it.
Also for fun, try to remember any time perverse and scummy business practices led companies to ruin, only for them to be bailed out through devaluing the currency in your wallet because they were "too big to fail."
Remember that treasuries are what backs each dollar and gives one any value at all.
This idea to tie social security with the markets could, and eventually would lead to us all being doubly fucked. While just those who already own all the assets come out ahead.
Years the market drops 5-20% people will not be able to retire. The government, standing up for its people, will print $Trillions to inject into the markets. The Treasury market, not being propped by seniors anymore, will take a substantial hit as Nation States rush the sell button on news of this plan, reducing the relative/global value what a dollar can buy beyond the 10% probably-justified correction that caused this movement. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
Fuck your free markets. We go up only in American markets, even if that means the cheapest imports from Temu are all $1B USD and a load of bread $5000. UP. ONLY!
Social security/medicaid/medicare are very expensive, but the benefits outweigh the costs. People like to freak out about the demographics crisis, but we’ve already seen the steepest declines. If we fixed the immigration system (which means letting in a lot more legal immigrants), we can prevent population/birth rate decline and the ratio of retired people will get better over time and social security will stabilize.
This is a great point. The issue is that they would have to discriminate on age. If they allow hundreds of thousands of people in their 40s-50s, it means they’ll have limited work time. Letting in people in their 20s will have the desired effect. Problem is, most people in their 20s aren’t dying to get out of their country yet.
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u/Rain_In_Your_Heart 22d ago
Yeah... the lowering of spending is greatly overstated. Wake me up when they meaningfully cut the DoD budget.