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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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The "spending" isn't nearly so much the issue as "what its being spent on".
We've got billions of dollars flowing into the media market so that Libs-of-TikTok and TurningPointUSA dorks can churn out reaction videos at an industrial scale. Meanwhile, we're privatizing PBS/NPR and downsizing all the journalist departments at the national news agencies, because its more important to generate profit for stakeholders than to do the thing these organizations ostensibly exist to do.
The material that's being produced - consumer ready mass media - is being degraded thanks to the sheer volume of money that's redirected from large publicly accountable news organs to independent vanity projects with ultra-wealthy sugar daddies.
You can play the same game with the education system, the energy grid, mass transit, fucking groceries. The very price of an egg is dictated by whether or not some fuckwads at Tyson want to pocket a fatter dividend by downsizing the department that monitors for bird flu outbreaks.
What money is spent on matters quite a lot. Spending $300 a week on groceries, and $2000 a month on rent or a mortgage is a lot different than paying $2000 for a new watch, and $300 for new shoes just because they're designer. But I do agree with your point. There's a lot of money changing hands behind the scenes to the detriment of poor people as well. My comments weren't a disparagement of or dismissal of this problem, it just didn't acknowledge that because I see a lot of people who want to blame a chosen few individuals, ignore a chosen few individuals who are just as problematic for the same reasons, and never come close to recognising that the system is rigged or understanding that the system is extremely broken.