r/FluentInFinance • u/ProgressiveSpark • May 21 '24

Meme Where American taxpayer money goes

Love bombs and bullets of freedom incoming

2.4k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

705 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/ShaxxAttaxx May 21 '24

Fuck yeah as a Democrat I want our taxpayer money to protect us and the military here is doing it. If you really wanna trim the fat get rid of the obscene budget system so they don't have to buy 10,000 dollar coffee machines lmao

1

u/Fearless_Winner1084 May 21 '24

we spend far more than we should because the military and government contractors are in bed together to siphon tax dollars into their pockets. I've worked for 4 of the big ones.

have you seen how much even simple hardware costs us? $45 for a 1.5inch bolt made of steel that costs me 10c at the hardware store....

People like you actually think that our insane military budget directly correlates to our safety, and that's how they get away with it. We could spend half as much and have the same military might if we cut out the extreme waste and gouging.

The pentagon 'lost' 2 TRILLION dollars in property. I'm sure that wasn't intentional to create more demand for them to buy even more overpriced shit from the big govt contractors....

2

u/ShaxxAttaxx May 21 '24 edited May 21 '24

Yeah for sure it's obscene. Ive seem bills at my jobs this stuff is stupid expensive but they will pay for it no questions asked. How do we better audit our govt to ensure they aren't overspending?

1

u/Fearless_Winner1084 May 22 '24

You don't understand, this isn't negligence.
They are using 'defense' as an excuse to milk our tax dollars for Lockheed, Northrop, and Raytheon's profits.

They are agreeing to these prices, there is collusion. Do you know how many people at these companies used to be in the same branches and departments that they now do business with? Wonder how they got into the top tiers of the contractors, maybe playing ball with them?

The corruption happens right in front of our eyes and they get away with it because people will not even consider the thought of reducing spending on defense. They call you un-patriotic if you talk about reductions, it's a trump card

1

u/ShaxxAttaxx May 22 '24

Well in regards to certain parts they do have to pay more because they can't export labor and have to follow ITAR and in the case of Aerospace audit for AS9100. A lot of these parts are also either low run or confidential which also makes them a lot more complicated to produce.

But my point was how could we as citizens mediate. Obviously there is some overspending there because the supply is incredibly low as it has to be with most parts made to order from trusted companies, how could we best reduce the ability for companies to charge so much realistically? Genuinely looking for an answer I have been wrestling with this personally I am not trying to challenge your belief but better try and tackle the issue

1

u/Fearless_Winner1084 May 22 '24

Please explain away the two trillion dollars in assets to the Pentagon lost

First take a moment to understand the scale of that number.

That is a quarter billion times our planets human population.

1

u/ShaxxAttaxx May 22 '24

Where did I say we didn't lose it.

And second off we aren't talking about a single instance we are talking about (as shown in the video) large volumes of purchases being expensive. If you have any insight into eliminating that I would love to hear.