The national debt is expected to hit a record high as soon as this week, crossing a major threshold of $40 trillion. Congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins explains why that milestone is a warning sign for many economists.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    I think the US military cost about 700 billion /y? What’s the rest? Not infrastructure, from what i heard.

    • AreaSIX @lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      They’re asking for 1,5 trillion for next year. Pentagon is the biggest single mechanism in history for transferring money from the poor to the rich. That’s why all of silicon valley have gone into the weapons industry.

        • AreaSIX @lemmy.zip
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          17 hours ago

          Can you point me to a source for that figure? I’ve been trying to follow the news pretty closely, and all the reporting I’ve seen has stated that Japan spent around 85 billion dollars, with the US adding about a third or fourth of that sum. So if the trillion dollar figure you stated is correct, they absolutely have done an incredible job masking it in the media reporting.

          Japan is supposed to be the largest holder of US Treasury bonds in the world, and the total amount of the holding is regularly reported to be just above 1 trillion. I don’t really see why the US would bail Japan out to the tune of 1 trillion in order to stop japan from dumping its US holdings valued at around the same amount. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m admittedly no expert in finance so maybe I’m missing something.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      The US budget is:
      22% social security.
      15% Medicare.
      15% interest on debt.
      13% Medicaid/Obamacare.
      13% military spending.
      10% unemployment and food stamp benefits.
      6% veteran benefits including healthcare.
      6% everything else: education, infrastructure, law enforcement, national parks, NASA, etc.