this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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politics

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top 27 comments
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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 62 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Giving $500/month to help the life of a needy American: i sleep

Spending $100,000/day to make a non-American's life miserable: real shit

[–] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You got the meme backwards.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I did, oops. The original (in opposite order) would be how Republican deficit hawks would think how wasteful each would be.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 71 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That's 100K per person and per day.

Also, thank you Reuters for stepping up and covering some of this. I give you shit for being privately owned by a Canadian billionaire, but you're probably the least biased out of all of the majors. Maybe cuz trump tried to take your country? Nevermind, I don't care why.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 34 points 2 days ago

OH OKAY, but my idea to replace ALL roads with high speed rail is "too expensive" and "ridiculous" and "you've gone over the public comment period, please stop before we have you arrested"

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 26 points 2 days ago

So? We ELIMINATED my Child's Education and my VA BENEFITS and my SOCIAL SECURITY and the FCC and the FTC so we CAN Afford this!

[–] SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

That 30,000 person capacity camp they're building there will cost 3 billion a day to run. What a nightmarish dystopian grift

[–] RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

at this rate Trump is going to double the deficit

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How are they managing to spend that much for imprisonment? Are they actual expenses or is someone pocketing most of it?

[–] Bouzou@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

10,000% it's govt contractors marking things up 50x

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

Yes of course it is a giant scam. That was the entire point. But it's not just one person. The military industrial complex has many moving parts.

What's an "actual" expense, anyway. Money is being spent on things and services. It's probably not being burned in a campfire.

[–] thefartographer@lemm.ee 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Guarantee you they're waiting for enough general pushback on the financial costs so that they can suggest gas chambers as a compromise

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Work camps come first, gas chambers come when the labor camps are unprofitable.

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

[–] Archangel1313@lemm.ee 10 points 2 days ago

And this is why you can't have your social security anymore.

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I found this image from the American Holocaust Memorial Museum site discussing the cost of housing prisoners in the concentration camps:

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1140586

If my math is correct, it looks like they actually made around 197.30 RM for every prisoner that lived and worked for 9 months. Modern nazis suck at this whole mass incarceration thing.

[–] Carmakazi@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Openly using prisoners as slave labor (more flagrantly and abusively than is already normal practice) is part of a later phase. They don't have the political capital for it yet. They don't care about the waste, it's our money they're squandering, not theirs.

[–] JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

It's not like the money is being burned, it's lining pockets every step of the supply chain.

The system disgusts me.

[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Rikers: "Those are rookie numbers"

[–] mdd@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No way Rikers Island (NYC jail) costs that much to run. Possibly if you add the cost of paying settlements.

[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

According to this NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/nyregion/rikers-island-receiver-nyc.html), NYC is spending more than half a million dollars per inmate annually. Ex.: "there is roughly one uniformed officer for each inmate at Rikers, according to city data — an unlimited sick leave policy"

EDIT: oh shit! I just noticed that it says "daily" (!!). My bad, you're right.

[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

Not efficient nor cost savings.

So efficient…

[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Temporary pain to own the libs, hoss

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

"Efficient"

[–] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Mmm kickbacks!

[–] knighthawk0811@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

it's important that some govt contractor gets a big piece of that money