Common Sense Soapbox
About this show
Short videos with a punchy, comedic tone and entertaining Socratic characters taking on trending issues and important concepts from a classical liberal perspective, written & animated by Seamus Coughlin.
cutting defense spending isn't enough to pay for social spending plans
October 26, 2021
Military spending is out of control, but how does it stack up against social security, Medicaid, and Medicare?
We're all for reducing defense spending, but it might surprise you to learn that we actually spend more on health care than the military. We even spend more just on social security than the military.
Even if we took all the money from the military, somehow confiscated all the net worth of all the billionaires in the US, managed to double the amount of money the government collects in annual income tax revenue, and found other ways to raise all the money we need to pay for the new massive social spending programs that have been proposed by Bernie Sanders and others (which is essentially impossible), the act of monetizing all of that money and getting it circulating in the economy would have another major problem.
According to FEE Sr. Fellow and Professor of Economics, Antony Davies:
"$40 trillion over 10 years is $4 trillion per year, which basically doubles the federal budget. That would mean – by Bernie’s own numbers – at best, $5 trillion deficits every year. The Fed would have to monetize the bulk of that. If the Fed simply monetized half of those deficits, we’d be looking at circa 10% annual inflation on an on-going basis."
Unfortunately... None of this works the way a lot of people want it to. So, on this episode of Common Sense Soapbox, Seamus explains why we need to cut spending in ALL areas unless we want to fall off a fiscal cliff.
CREDITS:
Written by Seamus Coughlin and Sean W. Malone
Research by Matt Hampton & Tyler Brandt
Animation By:
Seamus Coughlin
Natasha Canepa
Jaime Velasquez
Caleb Black
Amazil
Produced & Edited by Sean W. Malone
LINKS:
https://fee.org/articles/why-medicare-for-all-is-already-looking-more-expensive/
https://fee.org/articles/no-medicare-for-all-is-still-not-plausible/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-doubling-taxes-wouldnt-pay-for-medicare-for-all-1533163559
https://www.bbc.com/news/51662741
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertberger/2020/09/04/the-surprising-cost-of-bidens-free-college-tuition-plan/?sh=7692ee966f7f
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324
https://www.cato.org/commentary/dont-trust-cbos-numbers
