I believe less than a quarter of the defense budget is for salaries and compensations.

All spending everywhere is essentially “salaries and compensation”. It’s not like you get to the end of the supply chain and suddenly are paying God. Money always goes to people.

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lukas099 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't agree. If I dig a hole in my yard and find a huge chunk of gold, when I sell it very little of what I charge will be for my labor.

Also, even if you're right, the "salaries and compensation" of anyone outside the U.S. are effectively NOT that, since the thing in question is whether defense spending is mostly a jobs program.

	▲	9rx 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> when I sell it very little of what I charge will be for my labor. That's debatable. Without the labor input the product doesn't exist as far as the market knows. However, if you want to discount the labor portion, which is an equally valid take, it remains that what was said was “salaries and compensation”. Any compensation you receive for giving up the gold in your possession was already recognized. As said earlier, the exchanged value doesn't go to God, it goes to people. > since the thing in question is whether defense spending is mostly a jobs program. You can certainly play a game of semantics here, but generally "job" in this type of context refers to any kind of economic role, not necessarily direct labor. "It is my job to provide gold to the world" doesn't imply that you are the one doing the actual extraction. The significance of "job programs" is in offering opportunity to derive an income, not to give opportunity to strain muscles.
	▲	Workaccount2 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>when I sell it very little of what I charge will be for my labor. No, almost all of it would cover your labor. What you are describing is winning the lottery, which isn't really useful since it is a rounding error of possible scenarios. A "Having a career is meaningless because you can just win the lotto instead" kind of scenario. In reality you would be digging for ages in your yard to find a nugget of gold. If you went to a place with gold to dig, you would be a gold miner, and no, it's not easy money, go ask them.

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frankbreetz 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Profit would fall into an entirely different category then "salaries and compensation"

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abtinf 6 days ago | parent [-]

Certainly. So would materials expenses and theft and insurance and so forth.

But the confusion is that somehow, money not spent on “salaries and compensation” doesn’t go to people. All of it goes to people.

Defense spending isn’t buying “defense”, it’s buying time and effort for people to focus on and produce defense related things. This is the root of the original post that defense spending is a jobs program.

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ffsm8 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> All of it goes to people

That's just straight up false.

It goes to legal entities, some of which are people.

Companies aren't people mate, and neither are investment funds.

The money might still be managed by people, but that cannot be called salary, even if you're stretching the definition.

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abtinf 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

For the sake of argument, let’s assume everything you said is true.

Would you agree if I reworded my statement to “ultimately, all money eventually flows to people, whether for their labor or due to their ownership of the entities receiving the money”?

	▲	ffsm8 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ownership is a legal concept, you could even call it fictional. So yes, all transactions can be linked be back to individuals, if you ignore all details and make some gigantic leaps of faith... But what's the insight? Are we just doing philosophy like in ancient Greece?

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lukas099 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But companies are owned by people. As are funds.

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frankbreetz 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

yes, but "salaries and compensation" are people doing work, and profit gets paid to shareholders. Most people would agree that the bulk of taxpayer dollars should go to working people and not shareholders, these are two entirely different categories. All of it goes to people, is such a reduction. We could just cut a check to Elon Musk and claim "All of goes to people". It is important to establish the difference, between paying people for labor and giving people money in the form of profit.

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6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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monkeyelite 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But when you get to the end of the supply chain the US gov has very little control of who is getting that money.

It’s not an obvious stimulus for US citizens, and in fact taking resources that would benefit other US ventures.

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estearum 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, really at rock bottom all payments go into land rent.

	▲	lukas099 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds interesting but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that. Would you care to elaborate?

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Workaccount2 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is only for people in the DoD.

Almost nothing that the DoD uses is made by the DoD. It's pretty much all 3rd party contractors, and those contractors handle paying their employees.

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Yokolos 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-d...

22%. But operations also includes civilian salaries and procurement naturally includes the labor required to produce what was procured. I would assume that R&D also includes research grants and salaries.

	▲	OrvalWintermute 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		the current number is around 12.5% of the federal budget (2025 Administration budget, discretionary & non-discretionary).

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Aurornis 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The companies that build and supply things for the military have to pay salaries and compensation, too.

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gruez 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Presumably that's only for DoD employees and people serving in the armed forces? It doesn't include defense contractor salaries.

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micromacrofoot 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

they're not burning the money, it all goes into someone's pocket