The US is $36 trillion in debt with that debt growing at an accelerating rate. This is happening at the time that our technological (let alone economic) edge over most of the rest of the world is fading to completely gone, and our own growth rate is starting to decline. To many, this does not seem to have the makings of a sustainable state of affairs.
And not only that but a lot of the spending we engage is a mixture of minimally beneficial and/or outright corrupt. For instance at one point the Air Force was paying $10,000 for toilet seats. It's only after that received extensive publicity that they swapped over to simply 3D printing the seats, probably for a few bucks per seat. [1] There's about a 99.999% chance that the supplier for those $10,000 toilet seats had a rather low degree of personal separation from the person signing off on paying $10,000 for them. And now imagine how much you could save if you started wiping this nonsense out of the entire government.
Government spending, however, is accounted as part of GDP and other economic metrics. Each one of those toilet seats sent the GDP up, improved the economics of the company delivering them, and even created some jobs. So getting rid of this nonsense will obviously 'hurt' the economy in the short-run, but in turn you get a sustainable system, dramatically reduce spending, and create a more competitive economy. When it's even possible to sell toilet seats for $10,000 (easily replaceable by 3D printing), who cares about the private market? To say nothing of the fact that merit/competitiveness is obviously completely nonexistent or farcical for many government contracts.
And not only that but a lot of the spending we engage is a mixture of minimally beneficial and/or outright corrupt. For instance at one point the Air Force was paying $10,000 for toilet seats. It's only after that received extensive publicity that they swapped over to simply 3D printing the seats, probably for a few bucks per seat. [1] There's about a 99.999% chance that the supplier for those $10,000 toilet seats had a rather low degree of personal separation from the person signing off on paying $10,000 for them. And now imagine how much you could save if you started wiping this nonsense out of the entire government.
Government spending, however, is accounted as part of GDP and other economic metrics. Each one of those toilet seats sent the GDP up, improved the economics of the company delivering them, and even created some jobs. So getting rid of this nonsense will obviously 'hurt' the economy in the short-run, but in turn you get a sustainable system, dramatically reduce spending, and create a more competitive economy. When it's even possible to sell toilet seats for $10,000 (easily replaceable by 3D printing), who cares about the private market? To say nothing of the fact that merit/competitiveness is obviously completely nonexistent or farcical for many government contracts.
[1] - https://www.military.com/defensetech/2018/07/11/air-force-no...