<story><title>The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/cdc-coronavirus-containment-redfield</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Militaries are reliant on domestic production and labor. (Paying Chinese solider costs the government a fraction as much as an American soldier.) So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 2x to 4x.&lt;p&gt;Also, the US is particularly inefficient at capital spending. It costs us a billion dollars to build a mile of subway, and costs countries like France a fraction of that. So that weighs further in favor of discounting our spending in that comparison.</text></item><item><author>chmod775</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think spending more on military than the next 10 countries combined can be described as &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; in any way.&lt;p&gt;The highest spender are the US, with $732.0 billion, followed by China with $261.0 billion, then India and Russia with $71.1 and $65.1 billion respectively.</text></item><item><author>ransom1538</author><text>I love this &amp;quot;half of annual discretionary spending&amp;quot;.  It is designed to confuse the fact that military spending is only %15. [1]&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kff.org&amp;#x2F;medicare&amp;#x2F;issue-brief&amp;#x2F;the-facts-on-medicare-spending-and-financing&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kff.org&amp;#x2F;medicare&amp;#x2F;issue-brief&amp;#x2F;the-facts-on-medica...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>icegreentea2</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;d make a stronger argument by instead of making a military or other things argument, and just make a &amp;#x27;fund other things more&amp;#x27; argument.&lt;p&gt;The reason I think you should stay away from pointing fingers, especially at a relatively divisive issue like military or especially aircraft carrier funding is because then you shift a question of &amp;quot;should American be world leading in commercial air travel regulation, pandemic prevention and control, and medical development&amp;quot; to a far more complex one of what America&amp;#x27;s role in the world should be.&lt;p&gt;The combined CDC, FDA and FAA budget is something like 35 billion dollars a year. Overall DOD budget is is nearly 700 billion, making up nearly half of annual discretionary spending (roughly 1.5 trillion). You could literally double the funding of those three agencies and barely budge the overall calculus of the budget.&lt;p&gt;Edit&amp;#x2F;Add-on: I think the whole sub-thread under my comment (my bad =&amp;#x2F; - I get the irony...) is an example of the types of distractions that might be avoidable if you don&amp;#x27;t scope military spending into discussions.</text></item><item><author>vikramkr</author><text>Over the past few years a series of American agencies have lost their reputation and world standing. The FAA with the 737 max, the CDC with the test, the FDA with testing regulation and hydroxychloroquine. Its important to have institutions that work, but we&amp;#x27;ve spent years deliberately gutting them and undervaluing them. All that money spent on the military and homeland security, and in the end we were caught utterly unprepared for the greatest national security threat of the past few decades. Even though we have more aircraft carriers than makes sense to have, we&amp;#x27;d rather build another one than invest in crucial infrastructure such as strong regulatory agencies and science infrastructure. And we get to pay the price of those misplaced priorities as we barrel towards 200,000 dead. Hopefully this serves as a sort of wakeup call.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CydeWeys</author><text>The majority of DoD&amp;#x27;s budget is not salaries. Only the salaries should be scaled in this way.&lt;p&gt;E.g. many other countries are buying our F-35s at the same price we are. Other countries simply can&amp;#x27;t get equally effective jet fighters, aircraft carriers, etc., at a third to a quarter of the price.</text></comment>
<story><title>The CDC lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, then the agency disappeared</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/cdc-coronavirus-containment-redfield</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Militaries are reliant on domestic production and labor. (Paying Chinese solider costs the government a fraction as much as an American soldier.) So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 2x to 4x.&lt;p&gt;Also, the US is particularly inefficient at capital spending. It costs us a billion dollars to build a mile of subway, and costs countries like France a fraction of that. So that weighs further in favor of discounting our spending in that comparison.</text></item><item><author>chmod775</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think spending more on military than the next 10 countries combined can be described as &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; in any way.&lt;p&gt;The highest spender are the US, with $732.0 billion, followed by China with $261.0 billion, then India and Russia with $71.1 and $65.1 billion respectively.</text></item><item><author>ransom1538</author><text>I love this &amp;quot;half of annual discretionary spending&amp;quot;.  It is designed to confuse the fact that military spending is only %15. [1]&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kff.org&amp;#x2F;medicare&amp;#x2F;issue-brief&amp;#x2F;the-facts-on-medicare-spending-and-financing&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kff.org&amp;#x2F;medicare&amp;#x2F;issue-brief&amp;#x2F;the-facts-on-medica...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>icegreentea2</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;d make a stronger argument by instead of making a military or other things argument, and just make a &amp;#x27;fund other things more&amp;#x27; argument.&lt;p&gt;The reason I think you should stay away from pointing fingers, especially at a relatively divisive issue like military or especially aircraft carrier funding is because then you shift a question of &amp;quot;should American be world leading in commercial air travel regulation, pandemic prevention and control, and medical development&amp;quot; to a far more complex one of what America&amp;#x27;s role in the world should be.&lt;p&gt;The combined CDC, FDA and FAA budget is something like 35 billion dollars a year. Overall DOD budget is is nearly 700 billion, making up nearly half of annual discretionary spending (roughly 1.5 trillion). You could literally double the funding of those three agencies and barely budge the overall calculus of the budget.&lt;p&gt;Edit&amp;#x2F;Add-on: I think the whole sub-thread under my comment (my bad =&amp;#x2F; - I get the irony...) is an example of the types of distractions that might be avoidable if you don&amp;#x27;t scope military spending into discussions.</text></item><item><author>vikramkr</author><text>Over the past few years a series of American agencies have lost their reputation and world standing. The FAA with the 737 max, the CDC with the test, the FDA with testing regulation and hydroxychloroquine. Its important to have institutions that work, but we&amp;#x27;ve spent years deliberately gutting them and undervaluing them. All that money spent on the military and homeland security, and in the end we were caught utterly unprepared for the greatest national security threat of the past few decades. Even though we have more aircraft carriers than makes sense to have, we&amp;#x27;d rather build another one than invest in crucial infrastructure such as strong regulatory agencies and science infrastructure. And we get to pay the price of those misplaced priorities as we barrel towards 200,000 dead. Hopefully this serves as a sort of wakeup call.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fauigerzigerk</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 3x or 4x.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where did you get those numbers from? According to the OECD the renminbi PPP rate is 4.198 whereas the the current exchange rate is 7. That&amp;#x27;s 1.67x not 3x.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;conversion&amp;#x2F;purchasing-power-parities-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>