Genuinely curious what the golden goose refers to here?

There's a lot of money in gambling. Nobody seems to want do anything that might depress the economy, even if it means the death of democracy.

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topgrain2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

See also: the healthcare system, and the military.

We pump spectacular amounts of money (~10% of GDP in the former case based on diffing high-end-of-normal healthcare costs for peer states with ours, and who knows how much in the latter but probably around the same) into white collar and blue collar (respectively) jobs programs and wage-supplementation that buy us basically nothing. A ton worse than a proper jobs program building public infrastructure (the CCC or something) or dumping that money into doctor training or whatever. Extremely poor ROI, but we can't touch them or GDP craters (nominally only—these aren't producing much in the first place, the P part of GDP, of course, which is probably part of why the US doesn't feel as rich as it looks on paper)

	▲	Spooky23 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The military thing is a much bigger flywheel. A lot of technology really comes out of military research or is supported in key ways by military projects. Healthcare was similar until the wage stagnation really started impacting the ability to deliver service. It went from 9% of GDP in 1970 to 19% today, supported by payroll that has risen way under inflation. About 20% of the US economy is killing people, 20% healing people, and the rest is everything else.