re: #248 HappyWarrior

I swear. Sometimes I become a Socialist when I look at how little we spend on our people versus the military.

This is just not true. Nearly 2/3s of the federal budget is mandated spending on domestic programs. Medicare, medicaid, social security, federal pensions, unemployment insurance, some SNAP etc. Discretionary spending is split pretty evenly between domestic and military.

The question we need to ask is why we get such shit ROI. The US government spends more per capita on health care(not just for those covered, but per capita) than any other OECD country and yet doesn’t cover everyone and gets worse healthcare outcomes. Medicare needs to be allowed to negotiate prices, period.

We spend more per student on education in k-12 than anyone but Norway and are still middle of the pack in educational outcomes. I have no idea what the solution is here, but it seems to me it goes beyond just spending more.