What's really wild is $2M is around the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, Patriot missiles can cost almost double that. The Excalibur GPS guided round costs roughly as much as a nice Mercedes and during a conflict hundreds or thousands can be fired.
I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.
I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
$24 billion in American taxpayer money went to Israel in 2024, or about $65M/day. That's 32 equivalent of those. Each and every day. And this is what enables burying/killing a wide ranging, unknowable number (60k-200k?) of humans, half of whom were children, by systematic aerial bombardment using 2000 lbs. unguided Mk. 84's into urban areas and terrestrial structural demolitions, forced concentration/ethnic cleansing, and engineered famine by siege. Not all Israelis and Americans are okay with this, but protesting so far hasn't made much difference.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
-- Smedley Butler, a United States Marine Corps Major General and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
But then, if you were in Gaza right now and consider how many buildings/lives might have been saved by the existence of a whole bunch of air-to-air or ground-to-air missiles to trash bombers with, you start to wonder if having these things for the moment you need them might not make a lot of sense. Similar story for Ukraine.
The only thing the missile has to do is be cheaper than the bomber it’ll destroy. To be cheaper than the infrastructure that can’t be bombed into dust because the bomber was destroyed by the missile. Taken in that light they suddenly seem pretty cheap.
It’s not all the numbers that are unknown, but so many are still buried beneath rubble that the scope of death isn’t clear. The numbers that are known are depressing enough.
That's a misconception about military aid. That money is flowing straight back to US defense companies. It's not actually costing the US; it's profiting from this. And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt. Nobody is getting taxed "extra" to pay for all this.
If you strip away all the moralism and suffering, the conflicts (plural) in the middle east and increasingly Ukraine are all about keeping the defense industry and the economy going. Same with Ukraine. Same with just about any other conflict where countries like the US supply the weapons.
This is the US devoting resources to do one thing, build things go bang abroad, instead of doing other things like building/renewing infrastructure or providing services to citizens. So, that is a cost. The question is what are the benefits. In Ukraine I can see that, in Israel it’s got a lot more messy.
Do you think the labor and resources that went into creating that materiel would vanish if it wasn't created? Like a missile is magic and conjures engineers and metal into existence just to fulfil its creation?
Oh and in fact leaves a little left over, the "profit", because thankyou for giving it some schools to obliterate?
What would we do if we weren't blowing people to bits huh, building theme parks or something instead - oh the waste! Think of the ~slaughter~... ahem, I mean the "economy"!
the profit was made by defense contractors when it was built. and flows as wages to the workers in GA / VA / wherever building it.
what happens after it's made is a function of utility. lotta waste, but if a 2 million missile can trash 4 million in buildings, cars, and humans, then it is still a win, even if there is no profit.
Nonsense. If the US instead just ordered $24B of military equipment and gave it to Israel would you still be calling it 'not a donation'? The two are equivalent.
Doesn't change the end result, but it paints a moral dimension on those who actively profit from the deaths of imprisoned civilians. The money goes into the pockets of the owners of mostly American defense contractors' owners, arms leave for conflict zones, and mostly civilians where Gaza is concerned get made homeless, injured, or flee for tent cities, only to be pushed around again.
Conflating Ukraine with Gaza is genocide-denial gaslighting.
Regardless of "truth" or whatever your opinion or my opinion is, in terms of PR Israel seems not to be able to influence the outcome in their favour. I want to be totally impartial and neutral - if that were only possible - and think about why that is so.
It is not a matter of opinion, it is widely documented that Israel is blocking any external aid or journalists in Gaza.
And yes, at least it gives some hope that there is still widespread outcry against the atrocities they are committing. Maybe we still have a sliver of humanity left in us amongst all the individualism and profiteering.
(except Germany of course, where protests against the war crimes committed by Israel are routinely dismantled. Two wrongs don't make a right Germany.)
Good fences make good neighbors. Maybe they should try to have our state more distanced from theirs. People might be more friendly if they feel they have some say in the situation.
The federal government alone spends $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare. That's enough to buy almost a million Tomahawk missiles every year. The total production will be around 9,000 missiles over 46 years, or less than 200 per year. We do not meaningfully choose between paying for healthcare domestically and blowing up foreigners. Even overthrowing Iraq's government and trying to make it a democracy only cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.
We don't, our healthcare outcomes are consistently worse.
If that's in contradiction to us buying more healthcare, then we must admit that some of that healthcare isn't productive, it's rent seeking. IMO, this is what I actually see in the US, so it all adds up.
There certainly is rent seeking, but you also have a wealthy market where people are free to pay for treatments that have low returns.
As an example, rich people getting lots of testing done increases spending, but it's driven by their wealth as much as it is by doctors enthusiastic to increase revenues. And if they are healthy, it isn't going to provide them much value.
Couple this with the attempts to centrally plan capacity and you get a cost spiral.
It’s not “rent seeking” necessarily. That’s just one kind of inefficiency. There’s also overly defensive medical practice. For example, my five year old boy had a run-in with a table and got a black eye. Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.
In a sanely administered system, you wouldn’t send every five year old that ran into some furniture to get a CAT scan. You’d just accept the infinitesimal risk of some hidden injury that couldn’t be caught with physical contact examination but could be caught with a CAT scan.
In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.
The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.
For example, Americans eat a truly disgusting amount of food compared to europeans. I’m a relatively low resource consumption asian, and even I was always hungry when we visited Paris because the portion sizes were so small.
> Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.
Because it has the X-ray equipment, they have make a return on investment on it, and that's why they end up doing useless tests. Those are even harmful by the way, as X-rays are ionizing reaction, and useless CT scans are actually responsible for a non-negligible fraction of cancer in the US.
The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your son.
> In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.
This is wrong. If we're sharing anecdotes let me tell you about my 97yo grand dad who's been admitted thrice in ER this year in France, and received what would have amounted to almost $100k of medical bills in the US. (He's OK now, but at this age you never fully recover to your previous state, so every trip to the hospital is a step down).
> The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.
This is true, it explains a good fraction of the life expectancy difference, but it's irrelevant to the fact that the US pays twice are much for similar healthcare.
> The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your
But because the risk/benefit isn’t as good, they don’t have as much of this expensive equipment. The U.S. has about 40 MRI machines per million people, versus 10 for Canada or Denmark or 20 for Spain.
Yes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion.
Also, your numbers are cherry-picked: Japan has more MRI machines per capita for instance, and Germany or even Greece aren't far behind the US.
> Yes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion.
I used Canada as a data point because it’s common to compare the U.S.’s healthcare system to Canada, because the countries are otherwise pretty similar. Japan and Greece have very different populations.
That’s the story anyway. They’ll be paid either as Cost Plus or on a Firm Fixed Price. Neither of which incentivize the supplier to give the USG a better deal.
they spend 1.9T on healthcare because the largest F500 companies in the US are healthcare companies and they have utter regulatory and legislative control, and will never, ever drop prices.
European countries pay far less and have as good or better overall outcomes.
Which in practice likely means that the C-suite and top people will be 4% richer, there will be 5% more unnecessary administrators, there will be 2% more line workers and the experience will be 1% better at the same or worse price point for all of us.
I'm not defending spending the $$ on bombing brown people, but it's hard to overstate how divorced spending is from outcomes in US healthcare. It's as bad or worse than colleges.
The U.S. didn't even get the oil! The Chinese got the oil. The whole thing was because George W. Bush's heart was bigger than his brain: he thought the U.S. could create a functioning democracy from the Iraqi population.
Iraq's current government is still siginficantly better than Saddam's regime, depsite being currupt and somewhat dysfunctional (and things have improved over the years in case you dig up an article from a decade ago about ISIS).
It's a parliamentary democracy with free elections and independent media. It's also chaotic, corrupt, and violent. It's much worse than Sweden or Switzerland but better than many other Arab countries.
As i mentioned in another post, if you measure success as creating a strong, prosperous, independent, viable democracy - then Iraq was an utter failure and so was Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. Which begs the question why does the US pursue the same failed policies over and over again. It turns out we were asking the wrong questions in 2005. If you measure success from the purview of the Yinon plan to establish Israeli hegemony over the entire middle-east then everything aforementioned - including all the death, terrorism, suffering, sectarian and religious strife, massacres and genocides, refugees crises, the rise of ISIS, the recent Al Qaeeda takeover of Syria - everything, was a resounding success.
Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in '98. Bush took over and then launched a ridiculously false campaign about WMDs stockpiled in Iraq. We never found a single one. It's extraordinarily naive and ignorant of basic facts to think Bush invaded Iraq out of the kindness of his heart and to support a true democracy, especially given Bush signed the extremely undemocratic, unconstitutional Patriot Act domestically right after 911 (a bill Biden claims to have originally written... noticing a pattern?)
Let's back up even further. We were "liberating" Iraq from Saddam's government, right? After we tried teaching him a lesson in the Gulf War?
Except declassified circumstantial evidence suggests that Saddam rose to power after a collaborative period between US and Egyptian intelligence agencies including a failed assassination of Qasim, and that he maintained alleged continued contact with US agencies through the 60's. But at some point the US decided it did not like Hussein's objectives and turned on him just like we'd intervened in Qasim's Iraqi government.
This is literally just US military interventionism and you should not proscribe good intent when history shows us otherwise.
edit : I forgot to mention that as of 2024, the US still controlled all oil revenue transactions in Iraq.
- thecradle.co/articles-id/27007
>George W. Bush's heart was bigger than his brain: he thought the U.S. could create a functioning democracy from the Iraqi population.
George Bush probably knew what he was doing in Iraq because his VP, Dick Cheney could have told him way back in 1994[1] what would happen if we overthrew Saddam :
> "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
> It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
> The other thing was casualties [...] was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."
"Spreading freedom and democracy" was just another propaganda spin like the "WMDs". The question still remains, why did America spend thousands of lives (tens of thousands, if one counts contracters, veteran suicides, chronic conditions, etc. ) and 2 trillion dollars and counting to overthrow Saddam. Why did they continue to make the same "mistake" in Syria, Libya, Yemen , Sudan, Somalia and Iran[2] causing millions of deaths, millions of refugees, spreading death and destruction across the entire region. By 2025 the picture has become a lot clearer as only theory continues to stand the test of time - that America invaded and intervened to overthrow and destabilize the entire region to clear a path for Israel to invade and expand into "Greater Israel"[3] and become the regional hegemon. How any of this actually serves America's strategic interest is an untenable case to make at which point one will have to consider the notion that when it comes to Israeli-American relations, the tail wags the dog.
The social cultural analysis people really left us hanging when it came to finding out what is it with middle eastern culture that makes it unable to build working states and socities. Anti imperialist and anti colonial babblepprotecting the status quo of a patriarchaical, imperialist and colonisl culture that just gets constantly defeated because its handicapped by itself. Like a doctor declaring your disease a lovely character trait instead of helping. The o so solidaric allies are the worst enemies you can get. Chances are when your ideology is bad at managing economies, it's even worser at managing societies .
Its a special kind of evil to deny billions of people hope and participation in the worlds society so one can get high on ones own ideological supply. Bush at least tried . In this he and whatever the Israelis do to prevent the region blowing itself up is the lesser evil.
> The social cultural analysis people really left us hanging when it came to finding out what is it with middle eastern culture that makes it unable to build working states and socities
Nobody said that. Iraq under Saddam and Syria under Assad were working states and societies. The trouble is with bottom up democracy, and that’s a shortcoming of virtually every non-european society. Singapore for example is wealthy, but is already having trouble after its benevolent quasi-authoritarian ruler died.
> Its a special kind of evil to deny billions of people hope and participation in the worlds society so one can get high on ones own ideological supply
To the contrary, it’s cruel to push democracy on societies that aren’t capable of sustaining them.
One of the justifications for 9/11 was that US troops were in Saudi Arabia. US troops were put in Saudi Arabia after Iraq went into Kuwait. Part of the reason for going into Iraq was to be able to remove these troops.
The US, by all evidence, spends more on its non-universal, gap-prone, healthcare system than any reasonable (single-payer, government-provided, or mostly private insurance with universal guarantee) universal healthcare system would cost; the US spends ludicrously more than any other country per capita, and much more than most universal systems on a per GDP basis (heck, the government side of the US system alone costs a greater share of GDP than some universal systems, and more per capita than basically any of them, even without counting the larger private side.)
The US doesn't deny local citizens healthcare so that some people far away can be blown up. If anything, it limits its ability to blow people up far away with all the extra money it is spending locally to prevent people from getting healthcare.
But the US has lots of money, so it still finds quite a bit for blowing people up far away.
The US has a critical case of NIH syndrome. Nothing any other country in the world does can possibly work here regardless of how much evidence because the US is a special snowflake of a country that has black people and rural areas and no other country in the world could possibly comprehend our struggles.
There's apparently at one least cruise missile variant that basically mounts a sword on the warhead with a thin fairing. It's apparently used for killing a single target
You're thinking of the AGM-114R-9X "Flying Ginsu", which is a variant of the short-range AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missile. It's not a cruise missile.
With the amount of money printing going on, it is really insincere for them to create that false dichotomy anyway. It was never about which one out of the two we could afford.
The federal bank performed quantitative easing between 2008 and 2014 as well, during the last economic crisis, but no one complained about "money printing" then. Inflation over the last few years has been a largely global phenomenon, which most economists attribute to supply chain disruptions, increased demand, and rising energy costs.
The "supply chain disruptions" explanation was always complete garbage. When there's a supply chain disruption, the price goes up and then comes back down when the disruption ends. It's very easy to see that the money supply barely increased from 2008-2014 and jumped massively during covid. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
I now think that we've been lied to big time: One thing Covid was good for was to provide a cover story for massive inflation that was likely coming no matter what. I'm not saying it was released for that reason (and yes, I do think it was deliberately released) but governments worldwide certainly took full advantage of the chaos and uncertainty to pull off all kinds of devious projects that they had on the back burner. Look at how effective Covid was at ending the democracy movement in Hong Kong, for example. Massive overhang of inflation? No problem!
Those QE periods were minuscule in how much they printed compared to this last phase we have entered. The rise in M2 money supply is out of this world.
It can't happen as long as the US dollar is the world reserve currency - every other country will inflate almost as much as the US, keeping the demand in US dollars.
And the USA will never lose that status as long as it keeps importing things from so many other countries. Oops!
Unfortunately, terror finds it's ways regardless of what the attacked country does or doesn't do.
Can you explain for example why the Yemenis are closing the shipping passage near Yemen?
Isn’t this answer easily findable? It’s a clear response to the aggressive US/IL foreign policy in the area. Here’s an excerpt from an article in late ‘23 -
“The Houthis […] say they are targeting Israel-based ships or vessels headed to Israel. They are attacking ships as they cross the strait of Bab el-Mandeb, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
The Red Sea hostilities are part of a pattern of Middle East attacks from Iranian-backed groups against the U.S. and Israel in response to the Israel-Hamas war.”
“ Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”
It's in part because the military doesn't buy stuff from China.
The companies that make the parts for those missiles (not just the mega corp whose badge is on it) are likely only in business because they make the parts for it, and employ 20-200 people with decent pay and full benefits in Corn County, Midwest to do it.
On the surface it looks like enormous waste, it still might be, but understand that the defense budget is primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing.
This is why it never gets cut, but anyone red or blue. It employs way to many people and in way to many places without much good work. Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.
I live 500yd from one of those companies in the one of the richest and bluest states in the nation. They make buttons and knobs and switches for .mil stuff.
It isn't solely a "welfare for hicks" program like HN likes to portray though I'm sure the dollars go farther in other states.
I mean, there is also the strategic benefit of not having your capacity to wage war in the stranglehold of a potential adversary. Not to say that politicians won't vote for graft that helps their districts, but there is a legitimate argument for employing only Americans in wartime industries.
But yes, that's a big source of the expense. Even on the IT side of things, the government (especially the military) pays sometimes up to 50% more for FedRAMP versions of SaaS products that have their servers based in the US and which are only administered by US citizens.
> Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.
but only if it's for their doners or major corporate constituents. they're not proposing WPA public works or getting the average man out working on solar panels
“primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing”
Not just a jobs program, but it is strategically important to national security to retain the ability to manufacture military hardware (or at least along with allies)
It’s unfortunate that means to maximize taxpayer value we have to actually use or sell all those weapons, potentially by initiating or participating in conflicts we otherwise might not have.
I mean it definitely has to be monumental waste. Look at the cost of launching rockets prior to SpaceX versus the cost now which is really a pittance by comparison.
They also arbitrarily reduce numbers and raise unit costs by regulations because weapons bad, though they are dropped asymmetrically on living people anyway. The US isn't incentivizing weapons correctly for them to improve in cost performance.
We're shocked they cost $2 million dollars because until recently they didn't, and it's not because of inflation, it's because private equity has bought up most of the industry, consolidated it, and jacked up prices.
If you are going to blow something up, using these GPS guided smart missiles is actually much cheaper than previous generations of explosive ordinances.
1. You can only use one missile to hit a target. In pre-gps era we would would dozens or hundreds of rounds to ensure one of them destroys the target.
2. You can fire from a safe distance. Using artillery or dropping bombs from an airplane involves physically getting closer to the target. This introduces much more complexity that adds to the overall cost.
3. There is significantly less collateral damage when using a single missile for a target compared to bombing the general direction of the target.
4. We take significantly less risk of casualties when using these missiles.
GPS guidance isn't effective against adversaries with even the most basic electronic warfare capability. Ukraine mostly stopped using those systems years ago due to Russian jamming / spoofing. But other precision guidance mechanisms remain at least somewhat effective.
Modern and historic cruise missiles mostly use dead reckoning navigational tactics and check these against terrain maps in software.
This is why they famously flew them over Iran when they bombed Iran in '91. The software wasn't yet good enough to be sufficiently assured there wouldn't be some error/drift over the fairly featureless desert resulting in some small fraction of the missiles getting confused and landing in the middle of nowhere Saudi Arabia or something.
Except that because of all those things, the government is more likely to use it so the "it's cheaper!" argument doesn't hold water.
The comparison is not between "do it without smart bombs and drones" vs "do it with smart bombs and drones" and the former costing more.
The comparison is between "if we didn't have the smart bombs and drones, we wouldn't have done anything because whatever it was wouldn't have been worth the cost in money and American lives" versus "we spent a million dollars blowing up some stuff because we could do it on the cheap and with no risk."
On a broader scale the US's involvemnt in the foreign affairs of other nations skyrocketed when we went from having volunteer armed forces to a "professional" armed forces. Ike predicted as much in his rant about the military-industrial complex.
Except WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam were all very costly and direct engagements. US involvement in foreign affairs skyrocketed because WW1/WW2 destroyed Europe and created a power vacuum that we were eager to fill. If we didn't have these smart bombs we would just be involved in fewer but more bloody global conflicts.
> I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Isn't military spending and the corruption of the government military industrial complex one of the oldest gripes in the American public forum? People sure are outraged about it, or were[1] -- has that become passe now?
[1] "The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement." -- Eisenhower 1953
I think if Ike was shown that the military industrial complex had prevented the occurrence of WWIII for nearly 80 years while maintaining economic growth and quality of life for US citizens, he would have withdrawn his reservations. He, above all, knew the alternatives.
I don't think so. He was not against military or peace through force, quite the opposite. The warning was about corruption and undue influence that corporations have on matters of weapons and wars.
It didn't really take off until WW2--Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex in his last days in office, but chickened out of of military-industrial-congressional complex at the last minute apparently.
There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution. That's why the Marines (part of the Navy) were all over the place supporting US business interests, but not draining the public purse too heavily (look up Smedly Butler for a good read)
> There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution.
This isn’t true. Firstly it isn’t against the Constitution to maintain a standing Army. What the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 is “The Congress shall have Power To ...raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years...”
The people drafting the Constitution knew that a standing army could be abused by a tyrant, but having served in the Continental Army also knew how vital a standing Army was to maintain peace. That’s why they designed it so Congress controls the purse strings and authorises military spending only for 2 years at a time. The executive may give the orders, but there’s a time limit on the Army he can give orders to.
And the second part - the US has had a standing Army since 1796. You remember Robert E Lee resigning from the Army to join the Confederacy? If there was no standing Army, what did he resign from?
But even leaving aside these two historical facts, think about it logically. Throughout history military advantage has always been with the better trained, more experienced troops. Even if you rely on conscripts in a war, they need to be trained and led by professionals. Saying a standing army shouldn’t exist is like firing all your firefighters and saying you’ll start hiring when someone reports a fire.
> Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much
The only place in the entire world where fire trucks cost that much is North America, and it’s not because there’s anything inherently special about trucks made there.
> I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
Would those costs still be obscene if you were in a conflict where you’d want to use a significant number of them? Right now they’re expensive because they’re essentially just sitting around.
Speaking of Javelin missiles, mentioned upthread. In 2022, when the war in Ukraine erupted, the small stock of Javelins which the NATO countries were able to provide was spent in like first several months. After that, $300 drones carrying a $1000 armor-piercing round started to dominate the battlefield, leading to terrible losses in Russian armor, especially the newest and most expensive tanks. Similarly, having lost a number of advanced and expensive aircraft, and watching advanced and expensive cruise missiles mostly shot down during airstrikes, Russian forces turned to expendable drones imported from Iran (!) and expendable rockets imported from North Korea (!!).
In other terms, Protoss-type technology works well when you have a large advantage and need to deal a decisive blow; an example would be B-2s bombing the Iran nuclear facilities. But when you're in a protracted conflict against a capable adversary, Zerg-type technology, cheap, flimsy, and truly massively produced, seems to be indispensable.
It’s interesting to see both kinds of drones in Ukraine as well. Ukrainian drones are built for €300 or so and they’re staggeringly effective. “Western” drones as made by Helsing and other companies cost several thousand. While they may have more features, it’s not clear that they’re doing 10x more damage than the Ukrainian ones.
Ukraine plans to buy 4.5 drones in 2025. They’re definitely going with volume over software features. Further they’re allowing frontline drone regiments to earn “points” based on kills and using the points to buy their own drones instead of allocating them top down. The regiments appear to be favouring the cheap drones over expensive ones like the Helsing HF-1.
What’s interesting is that European governments are probably going to end up buying tens of thousands of the expensive drones because the laundry list of features, rather than investing in true mass production like the Ukrainians have. Going the Protoss way, rather than Zerg.
€300 drones are anti-personal ones. They unable to penetrate tank armor except when tank is abandoned and sits open. Drones in current generation are 10x more expensive even when produced in Ukraine.
This is largely incorrect. The USA has supplied Javelins steadily throughout the war, including 2022. Eg, the 1000 announced at the start of June that year [1]. Moreover they were far from Ukraine's only ATGMs in 2022. You're ignoring NLAWs and Stugna-P which certainly weren't 'spent in the first several months'. BGM-71 TOWs were supplied from the middle of the year.
The war in 2022 was primarily an artillery war. Drones were in use, but the dominance you describe came later.
No economy of scale. The cost to build one car is ~$100 million. The cost to build the second one is ~$20K. The only reason you can buy a car for $40K is because they build millions of them to spread the initial investment. The military buys missiles in units of 100s and there are no other buyers, so the cost per missile is massive.
Those contracts are put out for competitive bids. Profit margins for defense contractors aren't very high. The prices are driven by a combination of strict requirements, lack of economies of scale, and legal compliance with government mandated processes.
Consolidation of defense prime contractors was inevitable due to budgetary realities and the escalating complexity of major programs. It's unlikely that keeping a bunch of small, weak companies around would have produced better results for the military or taxpayers.
If the defense contractors figured they could get away with those costs, at higher volume? Hell, yes.
If the U.S. still had it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) production facilities - as, historically, every A List nation has had - to provide honest competition? Hell, no.
Unlikely. The complexity of major defense programs has increased by orders of magnitude since WWII. Running a small-arms ammunition factory is one thing, but the notion of the government acting as it's own prime contactor for something like the Tomahawk program is just absurd and totally impractical.
> ... notion of the government acting as it's own prime contactor for something like the Tomahawk program is just absurd and totally impractical.
The small-arms ammo was just their MVP for 1777. By the late 1950's, the government was building stuff like this in it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) shipyard:
I'm thinking that a Tomahawk has rather fewer parts, from fewer subcontractors, than a >60,000-ton aircraft carrier. And doesn't take multiple years of continuous work to build, either.
Nah. The complete Tomahawk weapons system is far more complex than a WWII era aircraft carrier. Beyond the missile itself there's an "iceberg" under the surface. The software alone is huge and requires major ongoing work from several defense contractors covering multiple embedded systems, mission planning, telemetry, launch platform integration (multiple different classes of surface ships and submarines, plus now ground launchers again), testing, etc. Plus customized builds for each of the export customers. You probably have no idea what actually goes into making this all work with an extremely high level of reliability.
Axiom: While, in the past, gov't organizations were quite capable of performing the largest, most complex, and most critical technological tasks that society faced, things are somehow Different Now - and only non-gov't organizations (very preferably for-profit corporations) are now capable of such things.
But what is actually Different Now is this: Our ruling classes de facto decided to reduce the gov't's core competency in a part of national security - because outsourcing those capabilities to for-profit org's was far more lucrative for them, and the nation seemed secure enough that they didn't much care about the downsides.
Humans are very responsive to their social environments, and its structure and unwritten rules. Setting the "Non-corporate" bit on the org that a human works for does not magically reduce what they are capable of. Linus Torvalds actually is the creator and BDFL of Linux. Even though he is an individual human - not a corporation, nor a secret front for one. The mathematicians who completed the classification of finite simple groups ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simpl... ) over decades and centuries completed that massive task while generally working individually or in small groups, for wide array of colleges and universities.
Well that's your opinion. But so far we haven't seen any evidence that governments are able to build complex software as well as private industry. So I think we'll stick with the current approach.
Amusingly, a decent part of the cost is to produce parts in different congressional districts as bribes for the votes. It's not that the parts are really needed for national defense (because we'd want them built in the best place) but that they're needed for national defense funding approval.
Ruzzians launched 10000+ missiles. Some estimate they are spending roughly $900m per day on the war. 1250+ days. Can only imagine how they could enhance their old underdeveloped infrastructure with all that money. But instead they are terrorizing their neighbors.
I found it surprising that regular, dumb 155mm artillery rounds cost 4-5k apiece. Imagine the kind of drones you can build for that much in Ukraine. No wonder drone warfare is taking off so fast.
Tomahawk missiles have a ton of tech and software inside, can fly for 1000 miles, and are also basically a jobs program for Americans in many different states.
Length of time from end of WWI (the war to end all wars, remember) to start of WWII (the next war) was 20 years and 9 months. To quote the late Tom Lehrer, “we taught them a lesson in 1918 and they’ve hardly bothered us since then”.
Length of time from the end of WWII (ending with two ideological opponents, victors who saw the fruits of victory, a ramped up industrial base focused on armaments and a devastated landscape of Europe and Asia to fight on) to WWIII is 79 years, 10 months and counting. No one reading this site has experienced a World War (and if you did, I’d like to shake your hand). Whatever keeps that counter ticking over have been, and are, dollars well-spent.
A bit like keeping your hand raised to keep elephants away from your US house (well, it’s worked so far). But the alternative is just…unacceptable.
another perspective is that WW1 hasn't ended, and ww2 was actually WW1. Even now, if you look at the Ukrainian conflict from an economic perspective, it's a continuation of the same conflicts of ww1
Not quite. WW1, and its continuation WW2, was a fight between Germanic states on one side vs. Britain and France on the other side. The fight ended (it really ended!!!) when two powerful outsiders (US and USSR) invaded and split the European continent.
What is happening now in the Ukraine is a result of a gross miscalculation without any grounding in reality (no, NATO was not going to attack Russia). The war in the Ukraine is not a leftover from WW2.
Fire and rescue appliances are a bit of a problematic thing to buy as they never go very far and are retired with low mileages.
In my Australian State, South Australia, this a huge contrast with police who buy new from the manufacturer, get a three or maybe five year service contract from the manufacturer and then sell them when the warranty expires and they've done around 100,000 km (60,000 miles). So no servicing worries and they get some tax benefits so it works for them.
Ambulances have less mileage and my guess is retire after 10 years. Ambulances are very standardised so can swap metro and country vehicles to get value from the asset. There was a "twin life" ambulance (http://www.old-ambulance.com/Twin-Life.htm) that had a long life rear bit on a light truck chassis so swap out the motor bit two or three times every 200,000kms, but these days vans are used. There was much sadness in the ambulance fleet buying community when Ford discontinued the F150 type chassis in Australia.
But your average (fire/rescue) appliance in the city or country has low mileage. In the city plenty of use but never have to drive far. In the country not much use but do drive further but end up the same a very old vehicle without much mileage on the clock. Trailers can be even older 50 or 60 years before retirement. Another issue with a fire appliance is they carry water which is heavy, three tonnes is a pretty common load. And have other readers have mentioned a monopoly on manufacture wouldn't help.
I have heard that the problem with ex-emergency services vehicles is they tend to have low distance on the odometer but drastically higher engine hours, particularly idle hours. That is, they may sit with the engine idling for hours at a time to maintain power to the lights, radios, and other vehicle systems, and are generally closer in wear and tear to a vehicle with several times the mileage.
Another problem I have heard of is that while the actual mileage may be low, the miles that are driven tend to be much "harder", in the sense that an emergency services vehicle may be accelerating and stopping rapidly, and generally being thrashed without regard for the vehicle, leading to increased wear on the engine and transmission.
It reminds me of the saying attributed to Jeremy Clarkson, about the fastest car in the world being a rental.
Yes, trucks typically are running with the generator constantly on scene. Also many pumps are run on a PTO system where the transmission is put into a pump gear, further wearing on it since pumps can be run a lot on scene.
Our community has three large fire trucks, and one is sent out for every 911 call, even though the vast majority of calls are for medical emergencies, not something requiring a fire truck (which always arrives quickly, but a subsequent ambulance on call is what inevitably hauls a patient to the hospital). I've never understood why the fire department doesn't acquire and dispatch small vehicles for all those medical calls instead of a giant fire truck. Seems like that would help hold down costs.
> I've never understood why the fire department doesn't acquire and dispatch small vehicles for all those medical calls instead of a giant fire truck.
Staffing.
Almost every call requires more than two people and ambulances are typically only staffed with two people.
If there is a second call (fire, rescue, or anything that requires the larger apparatus) while the fire engine is out assisting the EMS crew and the crew has taken a smaller vehicle, they have to drive back to the station, get on the engine, and then respond to the second call. This is not uncommon-- for my department I'd say it's routine.
In smaller volunteer departments like mine, there aren't enough people to go around.
In larger paid career departments, the cost of the extra personnel needed to staff smaller vehicles very quickly exceeds the cost of the wear and tear on the larger apparatus. You have to account for more than just their salaries, but also insurance, training costs, any equipment issued, and retirement contributions.
There's also the matter of equipment. Larger apparatus carry tools and equipment that smaller vehicles can't or don't.
Many jurisdictions do have a mix of resources where EMS crews can get the additional resources they need on a call without an engine or truck responding, and it does work for the most part. Most jurisdictions can't afford that.
It seems common in Europe to not send fire apparatus, but I'm willing to bet they deal with many fewer bariatric patients so most calls don't need six guys.
Valid question, and I hear it all the time. Most of the time it's due to preparedness and staffing. By having those 4 people on a fully equipped engine, if something big (structure fire, vehicle extrication, rescue) happens, they can jump in and go with a vehicle full of tools. (provided the ambulance crew can take over).
Otherwise if they're in a car, they'd have to drive back through traffic to the station, move their gear to the new vehicle, and drive back to the scene. It can cost valuable time. Fire engines carry a surprisingly large amount of tools and equipment for a variety of purposes.
That being said, many larger departments are trying out "cars" (usually an SUV) with two people and a med bag to go to medical calls. While the engine/truck and crew stay at the station. This is fairly expensive with the new vehicle, equipment and extra staffing. However it is being done now with success in urban areas.
In my country, no fire truck is called unless there's a fire. Extracting people from a mangled car isn't the job for a fire truck. All the needed tools fit in an ordinary van.
Also, going back to get the tools or change the vehicle is incredibly stupid because: 1) crews already know what they're going to be dealing with before they leave, 2) just suppose they forgot to pack the tools - we have mobile phones, you know...
>Also, going back to get the tools or change the vehicle is incredibly stupid because: 1) crews already know what they're going to be dealing with before they leave
They have precognition and can see into the future and know that a house fire is going to start while they're out at a non-fire call in your country? That's amazing! And by "amazing" I mean "bullshit". Now it's perfectly possible in your specific region of your specific country that they have sufficient resources, or face a some what different problem space given local details like types of construction etc, which lets them allocate things differently. But you shouldn't be so quick to lob around accusations of "stupid" at proven emergency response forged through hard lessons and ruthless practical local realities from your limited perspective and thinking.
>2) just suppose they forgot to pack the tools - we have mobile phones, you know...
Did you really just suggest that an extra 20-45min wait is no problem in a life/safety critical situation, or that there will necessarily be someone who can go bring it from a volunteer fire department? Or do think that there is nowhere further then a few minutes from a fire dept? Either way you are in a serious, serious bubble.
> They have precognition and can see into the future and know that a house fire is going to start while they're out at a non-fire call in your country?
Do heart attacks and car accidents usually include fires in your country? I could only find statistics for Finland [1]. It seems that fires are so rare they're put in the "rescue and other authorities" category which has a total of 5% of calls requiring intervention.
In my country I know of only 2 or 3 cases of cars that caught fire in an accident in the last 10 years and they all caught fire immediately, not after ambulance arrived. They're so rare, it's a major news story every time. And I know of no heart attacks that were followed by a fire. /s
Let's assume that somehow a fire starts after the initial crew gets there. I'm sure everyone is trained to: 1) call for the fire truck (that's separate crew, nobody has to go back and fetch it), 2) use the fire extinguisher from the van and 3) as most emergencies are in cities, use the building's fire hoses and extinguishers until 1) arrives.
> extra 20-45min wait is no problem in a life/safety critical situation
That's not what the statistics show. [2]
> Either way you are in a serious, serious bubble.
No, I don't belive I'm in a bubble. I still belive it's a very very big waste of money and resources to call a fire truck if there's no fire.
Fire/emergency stations are placed so they can get quickly anywhere in their assigned area. If they're at another call when a real fire starts, it's not statiscally probable to be closer than if they were at the base station. They could be delayed even more by the traffic jam caused by the car accident they're responding to.
So better send one of the vans to heart attacks and car accidents and keep the fire truck at the base stations for fires only.
In the UK the NHS/local health trusts actually have a few fast response cars which contain at least a paramedic but more often someone who is trained higher. Even the fire service will have a small car as part of an incident response team.
I've also seen more ambulances that are based on a transit/mini bus platform for call outs that aren't major, think old person falling over. They save the big boxy ones for more serious issues.
I think this video from the Not Just Bikes channel shows quite well the major difference in approach between fire departments in the USA vs the Netherlands (which is quite similar to many other European countries): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ
Fire engines in Europe are as well equipped as the American/Canadian ones while not depending on these massive and expensive bespoke rigs.
Time to arrival of a fully equipped ambulance to deal with emergencies?
Risk and time from dealing with a complex handover of the patient from fire truck crew care to ambulance care?
For me it seems like in the vast majority of cases optimizing for getting a fire truck on scene fast is the wrong solution. Waiting a few extra minutes for the ambulance would improve outcomes.
And it is of course possible to differentiate on calls.
A life or death situation like a cardiac arrest or someone bleeding out would select from all available units. Including the fire department, ambulances and police. But those are a tiny sliver of 911 calls.
Vote up from me, but even this isn't optimal. As opposed to fire trucks, ambulance vans can be parked almost anywhere in the city waiting for calls. They don't need to wait at their base station. They get faster to a call location than a fire truck.
In 99% of US jurisdictions, you cannot even develop land in a way that prevents an enormous firetruck from driving all around the property. Which means less density, more wasted space for road, further cementing a car-centric life.
Yes, in some places there may be more fire stations than ambulance locations. But that's not always the case. In the modern age you would think that either the ambulance or the fire truck could be routed to the destination based on the their GPS locations depending on which is closest.
But also, I don't understand why first responder ambulances don't co-locate with the fire stations (in places where there are more of the latter). If there's an emergency that is not a fire, the ambulance goes.
Most rigs in Europe (I'm in France) are Sprinter type van like an ambulance, which is the one which gets mostly called.
The other Sprinter are with tools, and or two big ladder trucks for the real fires which rarely happen.
To me they seems to have tuned their rigs to what they need most
In rural area prone to forest fire, they have big all terrain trucks with water tank (useless in cities)
As always, 1. leaving it up to the market and then 2. ignoring anti-trust enforcement. What a surprise. China's pace of QoL improvement will eat the US (and really, the West) alive.
My two cents of info as mildly informed. I am a volunteer ff/emt.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
Thanks for the first hand feedback. It is helpful. When I read your post carefully ("laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics"; "Who fixes that in a volunteer department?"), the first thing that crossed my mind is your tax revenue is just too low. You cannot have nice things with low taxes.
Another way to think about it: Are other highly developed nations seeing the same "crisis(es)" that you mention? (Think G-7 and close friends.) Hint: They do not.
We're definitely not undertaxed. A big problem is wholesale public corruption. We now pay inflated salaries for current public workers and for extremely-high retirement plans for past workers which was promised decades ago but not funded.
All this means we get taxed a lot more for ever fewer workers.
And this only scratches the surface. NFPA demanding all breakers be arc fault (add $1k+ to every home build), Seattle permitting being years backlog, governments don't have workers which know how things should be built so our construction costs are 10x other developed countries. We're living off legacy and have an ever-dropping standard of living.
it's usually both. things are not cost-effective, too many things happen at muni/county level, but of course at higher levels there's a huge backlog (due to lack of competence, due to low spend), plus the US is huge and sparse.
the "developed world" has a lot of problems with high costs (Baumol effect, extremely high standards, etc) and also the problem of low scale. China was able to roll out thousands of miles of high-speed rail at a very low relative cost, because of scale, a bit lower quality and lower standards (human rights, eminent domain, worker safety)
for example when it comes to policing the US pays comparatively less (given the rate of crime it has) even though it pays more than many other OECD countries
> Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board.
How much power are we talking about? 10-20 years ago, sure, using the engine and alternator for power made sense. Nowadays a hybrid has a several-kWh battery and plenty of power, along with an engine and generator optimized for much better charging performance. A PHEV is even better.
I wonder why there don’t seem to be PHEV van platforms. If someone made something like a Transit or Sprinter with a 50-100 kWh battery, an engine, and an option for a serious 120/240V system so that monstrous 12V wiring could be avoided, it seems that much nicer, more efficient and longer lasting ambulances could be built, not to mention camper vans and such.
This is exactly it. I'm also a volunteer for a small town, in a department that is decently funded. We have had the same two engines since 2009. We just (within the last month) received a new engine. It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine. It's a major struggle.
Also something most folks don't know: about 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. If you're in a big city you'll have 4 paid folks on an engine (maybe 3 and 1 intern) but as soon as you venture out of the city you'll see more engines 100% staffed by volunteers. And if you don't know the difference that's a good thing!
Fire departments run on budgets that would also shock you (how low they are).
The issue is that you're expecting trucks to go out in conditions like https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IFEiwNMrZ8, particularly if your volunteer brigade operates in a rural area, and they therefore have to keep crews alive in those conditions. This puts a minimum cost on each one.
Yeah, the minimum cost isn't $2M, but it's probably pretty close to $400k a truck. Then you add on urban rescue equipment if you're not in a rural area and things start to get very expensive.
Put a pump on a trailer. The problem with this country is we're not allowed to have "decent"; we are only allowed to buy the "best" and so we just hobble along with old shit while everything's breaking down and we're paying too much for the things we do buy.
In Australia that's either an ultralight tanker, which would cost around $100k USD today but with far lower 550L capacity and a lower throughput pump than a heavy tanker, or it's a command vehicle, and its modern equivalent would cost about $60k USD but have no pump or water tank. The ultralight tankers are mostly used for getting to fires faster when they're small, dealing with inaccessible terrain, or just being an extra vehicle during blacking out etc.
The problem you're always going to run into is that your truck needs to haul around 10 tonnes of water and protect its crew. You can stick a pump on the back of a hardened ute, but then you need to leave and find water 20x more frequently plus your pump is a dinky little water pistol, or you can drive a commercial water tanker into a bushfire, but then your driver needs to be unusually brave and no longer have much to live for.
I accept that firefighters are getting ripped off, but it feels like maybe 5% to 20% of the cost could be reduced, and then you're still dealing with unaffordable equipment.
Here in rural Western Australia there's a range of official vehicles, the local (wheatbelt area) farmers have supplemented them recently with an ex military unimog purchased at auction and fitted with an 8 (ish) tonne water tank (with anti slosh baffles) and extra cab insulation.
Not sure where specifically they sourced it, one of the military surplus auction houses like:
These numbers for trucks paired with the 3+ year wait times are very real. It hits small communities the hard because they have a small tax base but still need a certain amount of trucks. You can only consolidate so much before you are to far to respond.
Another good point called out in the article are the floating costs. The manufactures do in fact increase the costs after the fact so not only do you need to order a truck years ahead of time with a budget you don’t have (borrow money) but then you have to cough up an indeterminate amount of money years later. A real sad time for first responders.
One likely significant factor is the Baumol effect. As mass-produced things get cheaper everything that requires a lot of manual labor gets relatively more and more expensive.
This is basically the Abbott baby formula shortage but for this other critical product. Instead of having a large market with more competition the US has its own special sausage.
Is this really any different to pre-covid, I could negotiate $3k off a Toyota Sienna minivan and have my pick of color tomorrow and now there is a several month to a year waiting list and I have to pay $5k to 10k over MSRP and MSRP is up 20% since 2019?
I paid MSRP but had to go to a dealer further away. The nearest one had several thousands in markup. It magically evaporated when they found out where I was going, but trust had been lost.
I doubt one has to pay more than MSRP for a Sienna in Jul 2025, but in the minivan market, there is insufficient demand to incentivize automakers to make more of equivalent quality to Toyota. And even if they do, it would take decades to match Toyota's brand reputation.
There is Toyota Siena, Honda Odyssey, Kia Carnival, and Chrysler Pacifica, and I think that is it.
Among those, the people wanting to buy a Toyota are maybe considering a Honda, but otherwise they are only going to buy a Toyota, and they will pay a premium for Toyota.
Chrysler and Kia are downmarket and not a consideration.
And minivans are not a huge market, so Toyota probably does not allocate too many resources to making more Siennas since they do not expect to sell many more at their desired price.
Many of the MAN trucks in Europe are fitted out by a supplier like Rosenbauer (mentioned in the article) who pair a standard truck chassis (MAN, Scania, Mercedes, etc) with a modular equipment layout. You'll know their iconic Panther trucks which are used at many US and Canadian airports.
The cost quickly adds up once you start adding features, and they have a lot to choose from.
We have strict regulations and standards set by the NFPA, EPA, and DOT for fire trucks. Would need to make significant modifications for it to meet standards.
It says that cost for a regular fire truck has increased from 300-500k to 1mil from 2010 to 2025. Considering house and car prices have doubled, we can chalk most of that up to purely inflation. Seems like another case of forgetting that inflation has been sky-high due to botched COVID response and what would be a good story in previous decades just, isn't.
The article makes it abundantly clear (down a ways from the top) that much of the cost increase is due to small companies being acquired by monopolists. E.g.
> Fast forward 60 years, and those businesses were contending with aging founders, depleted municipal budgets, and declining fire-truck orders. Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.... the REV Group, now one of the three leading manufacturers of fire trucks in the U.S. REV captures about a third of the country’s $3B in annual fire truck sales ...
“About a third” doesn’t sound anywhere near a monopoly to me.
This is all demand-side inflation: For any number of better and worse reasons (mostly worse), as building codes have gotten stricter and fires have become rarer, municipal spending on fire departments has exploded. Well-funded fire departments buy more expensive trucks than they probably need, just like well-funded police departments buy military-class SWAT equipment they probably don’t need.
Monopoly is a misnomer, because it implies a single seller. In reality any market with a small number of incumbents will exhibit anti-competitive behavior, which is what people usually mean when they talk about monopolies and antitrust law. With a third of the market, a single company can effectively set prices based on desired margins, rather than having to compete on price.
Do you have evidence for your claim about well funded fire departments splurging on unneeded equipment? Police departments buy military surplus through federal programs that specifically encourage it [1]. It has nothing to do with how well funded they are, which is why you see that equipment show up even in smaller and poorer areas that don't have particularly well-funded police or the need for a Bradley fighting vehicle.
If there are two more companies just like that one, that's 3-thirds of the business, right?
Point is, what's to stop that from happening? In that business or any other, it's bad for many, good for a very few.
In one side-effect, the wait time for a new truck has reached up to 4 years. And the contracts are being written so that the cost can go up during that wait.
A third of the market isn’t a monopoly, but it is enough economy of scale to allow for reaping huge profits if competing against a long tail of smaller competitors.
Sorry, I tend to tune out parts of an article that make statements, and skim until I find a supporting fact. I probably skipped right past it, because there were no supporting facts.
The article makes this assertion without much proof. The buyout may or may not have caused the price hike. If anything, unified R&D would have allowed to save on costs.
The most popular new car is the RAV4, which starts at $29,500 today [1]. In 2010, a new RAV4 retailed for $21,675 [2]. Dealers were more flexible with haggling back then, but at best, that's still only a 50% increase.
That's not a great comparison due to the difference volume can make on your fixed costs. Even taking a work trim Silverado isn't great, but even from 2017 until now it's almost doubled ($27k to $44k). I'd assume it would be even worse for a low volume vehicle like a fire truck.
This is a great stat. I asked Google what is the annualised inflation rate: It says 2.77%. That is still amazingly low. A lot has happened in those years -- quantitative easing plus COVID-19. Both were once-in-a-lifetime, enormous economic events.
Your stat is too narrow and misses a lot of important factors. It's better to just use a stat that summates all of them, such as the average cost of a new car.
The average new car today costs about $48,000 [1]. The average new car in 2010 was about $24,000 [2]
Average of what? All of car models available? All actual cars available to be bought? Cars that are actually sold, not just sitting in lots like Teslas?
Following from my other post above, it is only 2.77% inflation per year. Do you really think people haven't seen pay rises of at least 2.77% per year in those 15 years? It seems hard to believe.
Standard low rate production effects. Equipment like fire trucks are full of weird, low volume things made by a few, or only one shop somewhere, built exclusively to order, with long lead times. A fire truck is simultaneously a mobile power station, a mobile high pressure water pump, a mobile communications base station, and a high performance all-terrain, all-weather vehicle. It has to do all of that without killing any firemen, so there are very high liability costs factored in. Also, every major department has a collection of hang-ups about how a fire truck is supposed to function and what it's compatible with, so there is no way to scale production.
The consolidation of suppliers for all of this is also a contributor to cost and delivery time. That problem is endemic throughout Western economies.
I'm not sure what you are getting at but this is a definition issue more than anything else. You either do or you don't include real estate in inflation and if you don't then you can't suddenly add them in later on, then you'd have to re-compute that number all the way back and then you can't really call it inflation any more without all kinds of footnotes about whether you mean inflation v1.0 or v2.0. I agree with you that it would have been better if it was part of it from day #1, if only because the cost of housing is a massive factor in the cost of living.
That's a result of an increase in demand and a very strong shortage of supply, which is related to inflation but not quite equivalent. Houses, as a store of value have substantial differences compared to the rest of the items that go into the inflation calculation, and don't get 'consumed' in the same way that say a bag of potatoes would be.
I don't necessarily agree that the price of houses shouldn't be in inflation, but it is there by proxy and the calculations do make some sense:
I recently watched a YouTube video that described how American fire trucks have gotten progressively larger over time, which may help explain some of the cost increase: https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ?si=6yTFjZQwlJz5OZkp
I was trying to find information how much a new John Deere combine costs, but too much spam... Combines are complicated machines with lots of parts that need to go together nicely. Seems mechanically similar to a fire truck.
A 2024 combine [1] is listed for $790k. And a fire truck in Sweden was priced about $700k in 2023 [2].
> REV captures about a third of the country’s $3B in annual fire truck sales, with runner-up Oshkosh reporting revenue of $767m (~26%) and Rosenbauer International at $254m (~9%).
So three companies control around 62% of the market.
That doesn't seem like too much consolidation to me. If anything, it might be too little consolidation to hit the sweet spot where the gains from economies of scale outweigh the risks of monopoly effects.
For comparison, staying in transportation, in the US 3 companies have 45% of the market share for cars [0]. 3 airlines have 62% [1]. And there are a lot more flights or cars sold than fire trucks: maybe a better comparison is passenger airplanes where three companies worldwide have 99.6% [2].
Private equity may be greedy, and would charge monopoly prices if it could, but there's nothing in the article to suggest that fire truck manufacturers have that kind of pricing power.
Also, the top chart tells you the actual answer: the price of fire trucks tracks pretty well with inflation.
Fire trucks are up 860% since 1973, as measured by one Illinois municipality. But everything else is up 620% [0], so that explains 3/4 of the price rise. Nobody thinks manufacturing in the US has got cheaper in real terms over the last fifty years.
By the way the owners of AIP also happen to mostly be suppliers of materials for building these vehicles. They have a double incentive to abuse their monopoly position.
Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
> Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
The real cost of the American fire truck is in the roads it forces to be extra wide. It’s those trucks that make it necessary to have oversized neighborhood streets. Most countries don’t need that.
In Europe, you’ll see small, peaceful neighborhoods where people naturally drive slower on narrower roads. More greenspace. Less asphalt. They have small fire trucks that can navigate those streets just fine.
There’s really no reason they need to be so massive. It's a choice.
Perhaps they have more of them per sq.km/dwelling, or build houses and make wiring to less crappy standards. The choice of bigger, heavier trucks is not because of shortage of smaller chassis or excess money, they fit more stuff.
Yes, private equity needs to be shut down because, I don't know, some American city refuses to do maintenance on their trucks or something. Surely private equity is to blame.
The solution to cities not doing maintenance for whatever reason is not to gather all the companies together that provided a service under a single banner and then allow them to price gouge. Especially not when that service is required for the fire dept.
In my city the maintenance is done by the fire department, not in the US though.
Also fire truck repair is much more amenable to competition (the article points out how fragmented and competitive the market for the trucks themselves already is), this is just truck maintenance there are small to large shops for this around the entire US. Especially since the trucks themselves likely are generic and not fire specific.
This is entirely on the city, blaming some other boogeyman for this is absurd. Sure, you hate private equity, but they aren't some menacing ghost causing everything bad in the world.
One one hand all the complaints about regulation and regulatory capture in here are 200% valid.
On the other hand JFC Chicago, get your shit together. Even if you're dealing in un-obtainable old garbage it's not hard nor does it require OEM support to keep brakes working and suspension components remaining located under the vehicle. 30yr is a perfectly normal age for vehicles of this size and specialization in every industry that isn't fueled by a firehose of taxpayer monopoly bucks. You pass 30yo semi trucks every day on the highway. When it comes to dump trucks and other vocational trucks that are home every night they're frequently even older.
I get that to Karen who doesn't know any better that's "just what happens" to old vehicles and would reinforce the point that they're old but to anyone with the slightest shred of domain knowledge it speaks volumes about the fleet maintenance situation at Chicago fire.
Some luxury wake board boats cost $500k. They might get used twice a month, destroy shore lines, pollute the environment and are designed strictly for leisure. They won’t save anyone, or eliminate an enemy.
The article does not answer the question it asks in it headline.
It also tries to connect private equity to what is, very clearly a failure in maintenance, which is nonsensical.
I don't know about the US, but in Germany all fire trucks are based on generic truck models, so many spare parts are available outside the niche industry of fire vehicles. The blame clearly lies with the underfunding of fire departments, who can not afford proper maintenance.
Why don't towns buy the Chinese trucks? Why doesn't a new entrant start making cheaper firetrucks? I really don't know what a firetruck "should" cost but $2M seems reasonable to me for a specialized, low-volume, high-performance, American-built industrial vehicle.
Type 5/6/7 engines (basically a pickup with a tank and a pump on the back) exist. I'm not a firefighter, but I infer from the fact that these standard firefighting vehicle types are used pretty much exclusively in wild land firefighting that they are not considered suitable for structural firefighting.
It’s likely regulation is a too-high barrier of entry for foreign products, and it’s also likely regulation was steered by lobbying from the currently dominant vendor.
Capitalism that has defects introduced via regulation is sort of like Communism that has defects introduced by authoritarians: the actual version that gets implemented.
Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.
> As usual, things are the way they are because of unregulated capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.
This is exactly what happened - and why. Capitalism is a healthy system where it is a healthy system. Beyond that, capitalism is either: Beneficial thru flexible, effective governance. Or not beneficial. That's every possibility.
Exploitive manipulation of the firetruck market lies outside of the healthy-by-default area of capitalism.
I don’t get why municipal investment isn’t more of a thing - why can’t cities and counties be their own PE, buy a small fire truck company and turn it into a non-profit? If they captured the surplus that’s going to the PE company surely costs would be cheaper?
I guess that’s socialism though, so not gonna happen.
So society would actually NOT be more efficient if another company developed a slightly cheaper fire truck because there isn’t enough gluttony to make it worth it?
Government almost always seems to overpay for everything. It's a racket to benefit big finance.
The idea that everything is so complex that only a small number of suppliers are capable of building any machine is preposterous.
I bet you with a budget of $50 million, I could design and build a Firetruck from scratch as well as the entire production line and I could produce each subsequent truck for $200k max, made in America. I could probably have the whole thing almost fully automated with robots in 5 years with a bit of additional funding.
And I know nothing about mechanical or electrical engineering. I just know I could do it. I would find the right people. There doesn't need to be that many components to bloat up the cost/complexity to $2 million, that's ridiculous. I'm no Elon Musk. I just think many people with a little bit of brain could do it if given the opportunity.
The problem is lack of opportunity. I will not be given this opportunity because it works against established financial interests. The economy is a zero-sum game, that's a fact. Everybody knows this because nobody would even give me the opportunity to prove it even though $50 million would be chump change for big finance.
Why would anyone fund a venture which involves work and risk, when they can already extract the same nominal profits without any additional risk or work? Nobody is thinking about 'real value'; everyone is chasing nominal gains in a race to the bottom; whipping up the entire economy into a giant souffle full of air.
Caring about nominal gains is like caring only about volume and ignoring the weight... If the economy was a cooking competition, everyone would end up baking souffle, chocolate mousse and meringue. Nobody would be baking pound cake.
Trucks are expensive, firefighting equipment is expensive. It is a small industry with high demand for customization and low numbers, of course prices are going to be high.
>It's clearly not competitive.
It clearly is competitive though. Else you would have one or two large players and nothing else.
As a consumer (even a corporate or government consumer), you have to watch out for this in a capitalist system. My ex's family asked me to take my son to this specific water park this weekend. When I went to buy the tickets this morning, it was going to be $250 to go to the swimming pool! I live in Austin, TX and we have the coolest pool in the world and it's $5 ($8 or something like that if I take my son).
Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.
Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).
My $350 Soniclean is way more than 3x better a shitty $100 vacuum from Target. (Also seems better than everything they sell, including for a lot more...)
When it's companies preying on impulse buying, brands, trends, temporary demand spikes like a popular water park on a popular weekend then it's understandable to see people paying more than they "should" have (according to one's own high and mighty objective standards), and perhaps blame "capitalism" or believe there should be some regulation to protect consumers. Sure.
But when it is government bureaucrats spending public money procuring multi million dollar equipment, the problem is more likely to be government corruption or at best incompetence.
> It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Who wouldn’t? Aren’t people usually proud of minimizing their work to pay ratio, whether it’s earning more and more to sit at a desk and browse HN or selling a firetruck for a new high price.
What's really wild is $2M is around the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, Patriot missiles can cost almost double that. The Excalibur GPS guided round costs roughly as much as a nice Mercedes and during a conflict hundreds or thousands can be fired.
I came to this realization when learning about someone driving a car into a building to do damage and thinking "wow, that's an expensive round", then looking it up and realizing, it's not actually that expensive compared to how much military projectiles really do cost.
I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much, nor that military weapons aren't worth it. More that I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
$24 billion in American taxpayer money went to Israel in 2024, or about $65M/day. That's 32 equivalent of those. Each and every day. And this is what enables burying/killing a wide ranging, unknowable number (60k-200k?) of humans, half of whom were children, by systematic aerial bombardment using 2000 lbs. unguided Mk. 84's into urban areas and terrestrial structural demolitions, forced concentration/ethnic cleansing, and engineered famine by siege. Not all Israelis and Americans are okay with this, but protesting so far hasn't made much difference.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
-- notorious antifa leftist Dwight D Eisenhower
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
-- Smedley Butler, a United States Marine Corps Major General and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
But then, if you were in Gaza right now and consider how many buildings/lives might have been saved by the existence of a whole bunch of air-to-air or ground-to-air missiles to trash bombers with, you start to wonder if having these things for the moment you need them might not make a lot of sense. Similar story for Ukraine.
The only thing the missile has to do is be cheaper than the bomber it’ll destroy. To be cheaper than the infrastructure that can’t be bombed into dust because the bomber was destroyed by the missile. Taken in that light they suddenly seem pretty cheap.
Thanks didn't know about that speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
A lot of it going back to American arms cos, so a subsidy of industry.
Now, imagine that money going to American infrastructure and health.
If numbers are unknown, how can you claim half of them are children?
Ps: Ukrainian army has better use for ammo than Israel. Should have sent there
Very simple. Demographics of the populace. Median age is around 18-19.
It’s not all the numbers that are unknown, but so many are still buried beneath rubble that the scope of death isn’t clear. The numbers that are known are depressing enough.
So you prefer us assisting the killing of Russian soldiers rather than the killing of Hamas soldiers?
Right. To help an ally to defend against unprovoked invasion. Punish the bully, keep global peace.
I think I prefer a war fought between soldier to one fought between bombers and children.
Who wouldn't? Its a far more morally justifiable position to hold. Ukraine deserves freedom from Russian strikes on their civilians.
That's a misconception about military aid. That money is flowing straight back to US defense companies. It's not actually costing the US; it's profiting from this. And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt. Nobody is getting taxed "extra" to pay for all this.
If you strip away all the moralism and suffering, the conflicts (plural) in the middle east and increasingly Ukraine are all about keeping the defense industry and the economy going. Same with Ukraine. Same with just about any other conflict where countries like the US supply the weapons.
> And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt
Minting dollars is a form of taxation (albeit one partially paid by foreign entities that hold dollars)
You mean they are funneling their citizens’ money into some private corporations, and killing a decent number of children while doing it?
Edit: they are helping to kill the children, they are not doing it themselves
This is the US devoting resources to do one thing, build things go bang abroad, instead of doing other things like building/renewing infrastructure or providing services to citizens. So, that is a cost. The question is what are the benefits. In Ukraine I can see that, in Israel it’s got a lot more messy.
That's some top tier clown economics.
Do you think the labor and resources that went into creating that materiel would vanish if it wasn't created? Like a missile is magic and conjures engineers and metal into existence just to fulfil its creation?
Oh and in fact leaves a little left over, the "profit", because thankyou for giving it some schools to obliterate?
What would we do if we weren't blowing people to bits huh, building theme parks or something instead - oh the waste! Think of the ~slaughter~... ahem, I mean the "economy"!
the profit was made by defense contractors when it was built. and flows as wages to the workers in GA / VA / wherever building it.
what happens after it's made is a function of utility. lotta waste, but if a 2 million missile can trash 4 million in buildings, cars, and humans, then it is still a win, even if there is no profit.
Nonsense. If the US instead just ordered $24B of military equipment and gave it to Israel would you still be calling it 'not a donation'? The two are equivalent.
Doesn't change the end result, but it paints a moral dimension on those who actively profit from the deaths of imprisoned civilians. The money goes into the pockets of the owners of mostly American defense contractors' owners, arms leave for conflict zones, and mostly civilians where Gaza is concerned get made homeless, injured, or flee for tent cities, only to be pushed around again.
Conflating Ukraine with Gaza is genocide-denial gaslighting.
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Regardless of "truth" or whatever your opinion or my opinion is, in terms of PR Israel seems not to be able to influence the outcome in their favour. I want to be totally impartial and neutral - if that were only possible - and think about why that is so.
It is not a matter of opinion, it is widely documented that Israel is blocking any external aid or journalists in Gaza.
And yes, at least it gives some hope that there is still widespread outcry against the atrocities they are committing. Maybe we still have a sliver of humanity left in us amongst all the individualism and profiteering.
(except Germany of course, where protests against the war crimes committed by Israel are routinely dismantled. Two wrongs don't make a right Germany.)
Good fences make good neighbors. Maybe they should try to have our state more distanced from theirs. People might be more friendly if they feel they have some say in the situation.
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It’s daunting to think that all your lifetime contributions to the IRS might be spent launching one or two Javeline missiles in the Middle East.
It’ll be worth denying all those local citizens healthcare just so that some people far away can be blown up.
The federal government alone spends $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare. That's enough to buy almost a million Tomahawk missiles every year. The total production will be around 9,000 missiles over 46 years, or less than 200 per year. We do not meaningfully choose between paying for healthcare domestically and blowing up foreigners. Even overthrowing Iraq's government and trying to make it a democracy only cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.
The U.S. Government spends more on health care per capita than most other nations, but it has relatively little to show for it.
The American health industry is optimized to profit rent-seekers, and so it is very inefficient in terms of patient outcomes.
The US consumes way more health care than normal, and it's also super expensive. We do get stuff for the money.
We don't, our healthcare outcomes are consistently worse.
If that's in contradiction to us buying more healthcare, then we must admit that some of that healthcare isn't productive, it's rent seeking. IMO, this is what I actually see in the US, so it all adds up.
There certainly is rent seeking, but you also have a wealthy market where people are free to pay for treatments that have low returns.
As an example, rich people getting lots of testing done increases spending, but it's driven by their wealth as much as it is by doctors enthusiastic to increase revenues. And if they are healthy, it isn't going to provide them much value.
Couple this with the attempts to centrally plan capacity and you get a cost spiral.
It’s not “rent seeking” necessarily. That’s just one kind of inefficiency. There’s also overly defensive medical practice. For example, my five year old boy had a run-in with a table and got a black eye. Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.
In a sanely administered system, you wouldn’t send every five year old that ran into some furniture to get a CAT scan. You’d just accept the infinitesimal risk of some hidden injury that couldn’t be caught with physical contact examination but could be caught with a CAT scan.
In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.
The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.
For example, Americans eat a truly disgusting amount of food compared to europeans. I’m a relatively low resource consumption asian, and even I was always hungry when we visited Paris because the portion sizes were so small.
> Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.
Because it has the X-ray equipment, they have make a return on investment on it, and that's why they end up doing useless tests. Those are even harmful by the way, as X-rays are ionizing reaction, and useless CT scans are actually responsible for a non-negligible fraction of cancer in the US.
The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your son.
> In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.
This is wrong. If we're sharing anecdotes let me tell you about my 97yo grand dad who's been admitted thrice in ER this year in France, and received what would have amounted to almost $100k of medical bills in the US. (He's OK now, but at this age you never fully recover to your previous state, so every trip to the hospital is a step down).
> The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.
This is true, it explains a good fraction of the life expectancy difference, but it's irrelevant to the fact that the US pays twice are much for similar healthcare.
> The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your
But because the risk/benefit isn’t as good, they don’t have as much of this expensive equipment. The U.S. has about 40 MRI machines per million people, versus 10 for Canada or Denmark or 20 for Spain.
Why are you discussing such a topic if you can't tell the difference between CT scan and MRI though?
Do you think those differences are relevant to the point being made?
Yes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion.
Also, your numbers are cherry-picked: Japan has more MRI machines per capita for instance, and Germany or even Greece aren't far behind the US.
> Yes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion.
We’re talking the overuse of diagnostic testing using expensive equipment in the U.S. My anecdote happened to involve a CT scan, but the data I had seen on it focused on MRIs: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/per-capita-u-s-thr...
I used Canada as a data point because it’s common to compare the U.S.’s healthcare system to Canada, because the countries are otherwise pretty similar. Japan and Greece have very different populations.
It would buy a lot more than 1 million. The reason they cost so much is because they only build 200 of them a year.
That’s the story anyway. They’ll be paid either as Cost Plus or on a Firm Fixed Price. Neither of which incentivize the supplier to give the USG a better deal.
they spend 1.9T on healthcare because the largest F500 companies in the US are healthcare companies and they have utter regulatory and legislative control, and will never, ever drop prices.
European countries pay far less and have as good or better overall outcomes.
So you could have increased the healthcare spend by 12% for 10 years if you didn't overthrow Iraq's government?
Which in practice likely means that the C-suite and top people will be 4% richer, there will be 5% more unnecessary administrators, there will be 2% more line workers and the experience will be 1% better at the same or worse price point for all of us.
I'm not defending spending the $$ on bombing brown people, but it's hard to overstate how divorced spending is from outcomes in US healthcare. It's as bad or worse than colleges.
Sure, but it wasn't me who first used Tomahawks as a monetary unit to measure healthcare spend.
> Even overthrowing Iraq's government and trying to make it a democracy only cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.
2025 and some people still think the US invades other countries to give them "freedom".
is that why they overthrew saddam? to make iraq a democracy. thanks for the lols.
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The U.S. didn't even get the oil! The Chinese got the oil. The whole thing was because George W. Bush's heart was bigger than his brain: he thought the U.S. could create a functioning democracy from the Iraqi population.
Tbh, there's a non zero chance it would've been successful if not for insane policies like de baathification.
Iraq's current government is still siginficantly better than Saddam's regime, depsite being currupt and somewhat dysfunctional (and things have improved over the years in case you dig up an article from a decade ago about ISIS).
Is it: a) a military dictatorship b) a fanatics hive c) a familyclan run mafia state.
or a hybrid?
It's a parliamentary democracy with free elections and independent media. It's also chaotic, corrupt, and violent. It's much worse than Sweden or Switzerland but better than many other Arab countries.
Talk to some Iraqis, they’ll tell you they preferred Saddam to the current US puppet government.
And of course preferred that their families hadn’t been killed and homes destroyed.
Depends which Iraqis you talk to, plenty were killed and had their homes destroyed by Saddam.
For the most part, those were the non-Arab minority, predominantly Kurds.
As i mentioned in another post, if you measure success as creating a strong, prosperous, independent, viable democracy - then Iraq was an utter failure and so was Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. Which begs the question why does the US pursue the same failed policies over and over again. It turns out we were asking the wrong questions in 2005. If you measure success from the purview of the Yinon plan to establish Israeli hegemony over the entire middle-east then everything aforementioned - including all the death, terrorism, suffering, sectarian and religious strife, massacres and genocides, refugees crises, the rise of ISIS, the recent Al Qaeeda takeover of Syria - everything, was a resounding success.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan
Hear-hear! Complete own-goal. Let's take everything we learned from the rebuilding of Europe after WW2 and ... ignore it.
Whew.
Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in '98. Bush took over and then launched a ridiculously false campaign about WMDs stockpiled in Iraq. We never found a single one. It's extraordinarily naive and ignorant of basic facts to think Bush invaded Iraq out of the kindness of his heart and to support a true democracy, especially given Bush signed the extremely undemocratic, unconstitutional Patriot Act domestically right after 911 (a bill Biden claims to have originally written... noticing a pattern?)
Let's back up even further. We were "liberating" Iraq from Saddam's government, right? After we tried teaching him a lesson in the Gulf War?
Except declassified circumstantial evidence suggests that Saddam rose to power after a collaborative period between US and Egyptian intelligence agencies including a failed assassination of Qasim, and that he maintained alleged continued contact with US agencies through the 60's. But at some point the US decided it did not like Hussein's objectives and turned on him just like we'd intervened in Qasim's Iraqi government.
This is literally just US military interventionism and you should not proscribe good intent when history shows us otherwise.
edit : I forgot to mention that as of 2024, the US still controlled all oil revenue transactions in Iraq. - thecradle.co/articles-id/27007
>George W. Bush's heart was bigger than his brain: he thought the U.S. could create a functioning democracy from the Iraqi population.
George Bush probably knew what he was doing in Iraq because his VP, Dick Cheney could have told him way back in 1994[1] what would happen if we overthrew Saddam :
"Spreading freedom and democracy" was just another propaganda spin like the "WMDs". The question still remains, why did America spend thousands of lives (tens of thousands, if one counts contracters, veteran suicides, chronic conditions, etc. ) and 2 trillion dollars and counting to overthrow Saddam. Why did they continue to make the same "mistake" in Syria, Libya, Yemen , Sudan, Somalia and Iran[2] causing millions of deaths, millions of refugees, spreading death and destruction across the entire region. By 2025 the picture has become a lot clearer as only theory continues to stand the test of time - that America invaded and intervened to overthrow and destabilize the entire region to clear a path for Israel to invade and expand into "Greater Israel"[3] and become the regional hegemon. How any of this actually serves America's strategic interest is an untenable case to make at which point one will have to consider the notion that when it comes to Israeli-American relations, the tail wags the dog.[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENbElb5-xY
[2]- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNt7s_Wed_4
[3]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel#Proposed_inclus...
Yeah, all heart GWB.
The social cultural analysis people really left us hanging when it came to finding out what is it with middle eastern culture that makes it unable to build working states and socities. Anti imperialist and anti colonial babblepprotecting the status quo of a patriarchaical, imperialist and colonisl culture that just gets constantly defeated because its handicapped by itself. Like a doctor declaring your disease a lovely character trait instead of helping. The o so solidaric allies are the worst enemies you can get. Chances are when your ideology is bad at managing economies, it's even worser at managing societies .
Its a special kind of evil to deny billions of people hope and participation in the worlds society so one can get high on ones own ideological supply. Bush at least tried . In this he and whatever the Israelis do to prevent the region blowing itself up is the lesser evil.
> The social cultural analysis people really left us hanging when it came to finding out what is it with middle eastern culture that makes it unable to build working states and socities
Nobody said that. Iraq under Saddam and Syria under Assad were working states and societies. The trouble is with bottom up democracy, and that’s a shortcoming of virtually every non-european society. Singapore for example is wealthy, but is already having trouble after its benevolent quasi-authoritarian ruler died.
> Its a special kind of evil to deny billions of people hope and participation in the worlds society so one can get high on ones own ideological supply
To the contrary, it’s cruel to push democracy on societies that aren’t capable of sustaining them.
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One of the justifications for 9/11 was that US troops were in Saudi Arabia. US troops were put in Saudi Arabia after Iraq went into Kuwait. Part of the reason for going into Iraq was to be able to remove these troops.
Uh I think you're missing the point.
Your numbers are a mess and jump wildly between scales.
The US, by all evidence, spends more on its non-universal, gap-prone, healthcare system than any reasonable (single-payer, government-provided, or mostly private insurance with universal guarantee) universal healthcare system would cost; the US spends ludicrously more than any other country per capita, and much more than most universal systems on a per GDP basis (heck, the government side of the US system alone costs a greater share of GDP than some universal systems, and more per capita than basically any of them, even without counting the larger private side.)
The US doesn't deny local citizens healthcare so that some people far away can be blown up. If anything, it limits its ability to blow people up far away with all the extra money it is spending locally to prevent people from getting healthcare.
But the US has lots of money, so it still finds quite a bit for blowing people up far away.
The US has a critical case of NIH syndrome. Nothing any other country in the world does can possibly work here regardless of how much evidence because the US is a special snowflake of a country that has black people and rural areas and no other country in the world could possibly comprehend our struggles.
There's apparently at one least cruise missile variant that basically mounts a sword on the warhead with a thin fairing. It's apparently used for killing a single target
You're thinking of the AGM-114R-9X "Flying Ginsu", which is a variant of the short-range AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missile. It's not a cruise missile.
Apparently yes I am. Thanks for correcting me
not a cruise missile, basically just a modified hellfire.
uses multiple swords. basically just a long tube with blades on it, designed to kill through direct kinetic force.
This one: https://youtu.be/weJKPcOHI0U?si=BOoGqYrixa3Bulfq
With the amount of money printing going on, it is really insincere for them to create that false dichotomy anyway. It was never about which one out of the two we could afford.
The federal bank performed quantitative easing between 2008 and 2014 as well, during the last economic crisis, but no one complained about "money printing" then. Inflation over the last few years has been a largely global phenomenon, which most economists attribute to supply chain disruptions, increased demand, and rising energy costs.
The "supply chain disruptions" explanation was always complete garbage. When there's a supply chain disruption, the price goes up and then comes back down when the disruption ends. It's very easy to see that the money supply barely increased from 2008-2014 and jumped massively during covid. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
RIP Ron Paul Revolution.
https://tenor.com/view/excited-ronpaul-itshappening-lights-g...
Because most other governments also printed a bunch of money
I now think that we've been lied to big time: One thing Covid was good for was to provide a cover story for massive inflation that was likely coming no matter what. I'm not saying it was released for that reason (and yes, I do think it was deliberately released) but governments worldwide certainly took full advantage of the chaos and uncertainty to pull off all kinds of devious projects that they had on the back burner. Look at how effective Covid was at ending the democracy movement in Hong Kong, for example. Massive overhang of inflation? No problem!
Those QE periods were minuscule in how much they printed compared to this last phase we have entered. The rise in M2 money supply is out of this world.
How many more turns do we get before the dollar is Weimar worthless? Seems like not many...
It can't happen as long as the US dollar is the world reserve currency - every other country will inflate almost as much as the US, keeping the demand in US dollars.
And the USA will never lose that status as long as it keeps importing things from so many other countries. Oops!
Healthcare spend, not including state and local governments, is many multiples of military spend:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
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Fortunately there are hundreds of millions of other people also paying taxes, so the Middle East can be sufficiently showered in javelin missiles.
If those 2 missiles can change the course of planned attack similar to 9/11, then it might be not daunting at all.
What if, on seeing two missiles wipe out another set of families, someone decides that they're now radicalized to carry out a 9/11 in revenge?
Unfortunately, terror finds it's ways regardless of what the attacked country does or doesn't do. Can you explain for example why the Yemenis are closing the shipping passage near Yemen?
Isn’t this answer easily findable? It’s a clear response to the aggressive US/IL foreign policy in the area. Here’s an excerpt from an article in late ‘23 -
“The Houthis […] say they are targeting Israel-based ships or vessels headed to Israel. They are attacking ships as they cross the strait of Bab el-Mandeb, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The Red Sea hostilities are part of a pattern of Middle East attacks from Iranian-backed groups against the U.S. and Israel in response to the Israel-Hamas war.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4382064-houthis-force-car...
Then it's an investment in future war profits. Ka-ching!
Reminds me of this quote
“ Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”
Yes, but think about how much money ends up in the pockets of private contractors, and how much suffering it causes. Don't you feel better?
It's in part because the military doesn't buy stuff from China.
The companies that make the parts for those missiles (not just the mega corp whose badge is on it) are likely only in business because they make the parts for it, and employ 20-200 people with decent pay and full benefits in Corn County, Midwest to do it.
On the surface it looks like enormous waste, it still might be, but understand that the defense budget is primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing.
This is why it never gets cut, but anyone red or blue. It employs way to many people and in way to many places without much good work. Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.
I live 500yd from one of those companies in the one of the richest and bluest states in the nation. They make buttons and knobs and switches for .mil stuff.
It isn't solely a "welfare for hicks" program like HN likes to portray though I'm sure the dollars go farther in other states.
I mean, there is also the strategic benefit of not having your capacity to wage war in the stranglehold of a potential adversary. Not to say that politicians won't vote for graft that helps their districts, but there is a legitimate argument for employing only Americans in wartime industries.
But yes, that's a big source of the expense. Even on the IT side of things, the government (especially the military) pays sometimes up to 50% more for FedRAMP versions of SaaS products that have their servers based in the US and which are only administered by US citizens.
> Republicans especially hate welfare, but if you can get people to show up and turn screws, they'll happily "waste" money on them.
but only if it's for their doners or major corporate constituents. they're not proposing WPA public works or getting the average man out working on solar panels
“primarily a jobs program and basically only thing propping up Americans manufacturing”
Not just a jobs program, but it is strategically important to national security to retain the ability to manufacture military hardware (or at least along with allies)
It’s unfortunate that means to maximize taxpayer value we have to actually use or sell all those weapons, potentially by initiating or participating in conflicts we otherwise might not have.
I mean it definitely has to be monumental waste. Look at the cost of launching rockets prior to SpaceX versus the cost now which is really a pittance by comparison.
Not that I want to see anybody build bombs
They also arbitrarily reduce numbers and raise unit costs by regulations because weapons bad, though they are dropped asymmetrically on living people anyway. The US isn't incentivizing weapons correctly for them to improve in cost performance.
We're shocked they cost $2 million dollars because until recently they didn't, and it's not because of inflation, it's because private equity has bought up most of the industry, consolidated it, and jacked up prices.
If you are going to blow something up, using these GPS guided smart missiles is actually much cheaper than previous generations of explosive ordinances.
1. You can only use one missile to hit a target. In pre-gps era we would would dozens or hundreds of rounds to ensure one of them destroys the target.
2. You can fire from a safe distance. Using artillery or dropping bombs from an airplane involves physically getting closer to the target. This introduces much more complexity that adds to the overall cost.
3. There is significantly less collateral damage when using a single missile for a target compared to bombing the general direction of the target.
4. We take significantly less risk of casualties when using these missiles.
GPS guidance isn't effective against adversaries with even the most basic electronic warfare capability. Ukraine mostly stopped using those systems years ago due to Russian jamming / spoofing. But other precision guidance mechanisms remain at least somewhat effective.
Russia uses GPS module «Cometa» («Комета») with 4-24 GPS modules at one plate.
https://reibert.info/lots/kometa.1605164
https://reibert.info/lots/kometa.1605128
https://www.olx.ua/d/uk/obyavlenie/kometa-8-kometa-m-gps-IDY...
https://www.olx.ua/d/uk/obyavlenie/kometa-5-kometa-m-gps-IDY...
Modern and historic cruise missiles mostly use dead reckoning navigational tactics and check these against terrain maps in software.
This is why they famously flew them over Iran when they bombed Iran in '91. The software wasn't yet good enough to be sufficiently assured there wouldn't be some error/drift over the fairly featureless desert resulting in some small fraction of the missiles getting confused and landing in the middle of nowhere Saudi Arabia or something.
Bombed Iraq
They flew them over Iran on their way to bomb Iraq
Edit: Now I see my mistake, lol
Except that because of all those things, the government is more likely to use it so the "it's cheaper!" argument doesn't hold water.
The comparison is not between "do it without smart bombs and drones" vs "do it with smart bombs and drones" and the former costing more.
The comparison is between "if we didn't have the smart bombs and drones, we wouldn't have done anything because whatever it was wouldn't have been worth the cost in money and American lives" versus "we spent a million dollars blowing up some stuff because we could do it on the cheap and with no risk."
On a broader scale the US's involvemnt in the foreign affairs of other nations skyrocketed when we went from having volunteer armed forces to a "professional" armed forces. Ike predicted as much in his rant about the military-industrial complex.
Except WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam were all very costly and direct engagements. US involvement in foreign affairs skyrocketed because WW1/WW2 destroyed Europe and created a power vacuum that we were eager to fill. If we didn't have these smart bombs we would just be involved in fewer but more bloody global conflicts.
> I've found it somewhat interesting that we'll be shocked at a fire truck, which gets a life time of 15-25 years and works in the service exclusively of saving lives, costs around $2 million, but not be shocked that we effectively use something as expensive as a fire truck as a single round in a gigantic gun.
Isn't military spending and the corruption of the government military industrial complex one of the oldest gripes in the American public forum? People sure are outraged about it, or were[1] -- has that become passe now?
[1] "The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement." -- Eisenhower 1953
I think if Ike was shown that the military industrial complex had prevented the occurrence of WWIII for nearly 80 years while maintaining economic growth and quality of life for US citizens, he would have withdrawn his reservations. He, above all, knew the alternatives.
I don't think so. He was not against military or peace through force, quite the opposite. The warning was about corruption and undue influence that corporations have on matters of weapons and wars.
It didn't really take off until WW2--Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex in his last days in office, but chickened out of of military-industrial-congressional complex at the last minute apparently.
There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution. That's why the Marines (part of the Navy) were all over the place supporting US business interests, but not draining the public purse too heavily (look up Smedly Butler for a good read)
> There was no real standing Army until WW2 since it's against the Constitution.
This isn’t true. Firstly it isn’t against the Constitution to maintain a standing Army. What the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 is “The Congress shall have Power To ...raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years...”
The people drafting the Constitution knew that a standing army could be abused by a tyrant, but having served in the Continental Army also knew how vital a standing Army was to maintain peace. That’s why they designed it so Congress controls the purse strings and authorises military spending only for 2 years at a time. The executive may give the orders, but there’s a time limit on the Army he can give orders to.
And the second part - the US has had a standing Army since 1796. You remember Robert E Lee resigning from the Army to join the Confederacy? If there was no standing Army, what did he resign from?
But even leaving aside these two historical facts, think about it logically. Throughout history military advantage has always been with the better trained, more experienced troops. Even if you rely on conscripts in a war, they need to be trained and led by professionals. Saying a standing army shouldn’t exist is like firing all your firefighters and saying you’ll start hiring when someone reports a fire.
Look up Smedly Butler for a great read!!!
> Not to say that fire trucks don't potentially cost too much
The only place in the entire world where fire trucks cost that much is North America, and it’s not because there’s anything inherently special about trucks made there.
> I don't think most people are really aware of the obscene costs of military conflicts.
Would those costs still be obscene if you were in a conflict where you’d want to use a significant number of them? Right now they’re expensive because they’re essentially just sitting around.
Speaking of Javelin missiles, mentioned upthread. In 2022, when the war in Ukraine erupted, the small stock of Javelins which the NATO countries were able to provide was spent in like first several months. After that, $300 drones carrying a $1000 armor-piercing round started to dominate the battlefield, leading to terrible losses in Russian armor, especially the newest and most expensive tanks. Similarly, having lost a number of advanced and expensive aircraft, and watching advanced and expensive cruise missiles mostly shot down during airstrikes, Russian forces turned to expendable drones imported from Iran (!) and expendable rockets imported from North Korea (!!).
In other terms, Protoss-type technology works well when you have a large advantage and need to deal a decisive blow; an example would be B-2s bombing the Iran nuclear facilities. But when you're in a protracted conflict against a capable adversary, Zerg-type technology, cheap, flimsy, and truly massively produced, seems to be indispensable.
It’s interesting to see both kinds of drones in Ukraine as well. Ukrainian drones are built for €300 or so and they’re staggeringly effective. “Western” drones as made by Helsing and other companies cost several thousand. While they may have more features, it’s not clear that they’re doing 10x more damage than the Ukrainian ones.
Ukraine plans to buy 4.5 drones in 2025. They’re definitely going with volume over software features. Further they’re allowing frontline drone regiments to earn “points” based on kills and using the points to buy their own drones instead of allocating them top down. The regiments appear to be favouring the cheap drones over expensive ones like the Helsing HF-1.
What’s interesting is that European governments are probably going to end up buying tens of thousands of the expensive drones because the laundry list of features, rather than investing in true mass production like the Ukrainians have. Going the Protoss way, rather than Zerg.
€300 drones are anti-personal ones. They unable to penetrate tank armor except when tank is abandoned and sits open. Drones in current generation are 10x more expensive even when produced in Ukraine.
> Ukraine plans to buy 4.5 drones in 2025.
Is that 0.5 drone for spare parts?
This is largely incorrect. The USA has supplied Javelins steadily throughout the war, including 2022. Eg, the 1000 announced at the start of June that year [1]. Moreover they were far from Ukraine's only ATGMs in 2022. You're ignoring NLAWs and Stugna-P which certainly weren't 'spent in the first several months'. BGM-71 TOWs were supplied from the middle of the year.
The war in 2022 was primarily an artillery war. Drones were in use, but the dominance you describe came later.
1. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/304947...
“ Right now they’re expensive because they’re essentially just sitting around.”
Why do you think that’s the reason for these high prices rather than, say, lack of competition?
No economy of scale. The cost to build one car is ~$100 million. The cost to build the second one is ~$20K. The only reason you can buy a car for $40K is because they build millions of them to spread the initial investment. The military buys missiles in units of 100s and there are no other buyers, so the cost per missile is massive.
I am sure there are more buyers, or would be. :P
Those contracts are put out for competitive bids. Profit margins for defense contractors aren't very high. The prices are driven by a combination of strict requirements, lack of economies of scale, and legal compliance with government mandated processes.
Why, yes, competition has been stifled like 30 years ago, because the US was dominating the world anyway, or so the administration was thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_(defense_industry)
Consolidation of defense prime contractors was inevitable due to budgetary realities and the escalating complexity of major programs. It's unlikely that keeping a bunch of small, weak companies around would have produced better results for the military or taxpayers.
If the defense contractors figured they could get away with those costs, at higher volume? Hell, yes.
If the U.S. still had it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) production facilities - as, historically, every A List nation has had - to provide honest competition? Hell, no.
History: The not-even-yet-the-U.S.A. set up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory in 1777, to manufacture military ammumition. And the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Yard in 1799.
Unlikely. The complexity of major defense programs has increased by orders of magnitude since WWII. Running a small-arms ammunition factory is one thing, but the notion of the government acting as it's own prime contactor for something like the Tomahawk program is just absurd and totally impractical.
> ... notion of the government acting as it's own prime contactor for something like the Tomahawk program is just absurd and totally impractical.
The small-arms ammo was just their MVP for 1777. By the late 1950's, the government was building stuff like this in it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) shipyard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Hawk-class_aircraft_carr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Navy_Yard
I'm thinking that a Tomahawk has rather fewer parts, from fewer subcontractors, than a >60,000-ton aircraft carrier. And doesn't take multiple years of continuous work to build, either.
Nah. The complete Tomahawk weapons system is far more complex than a WWII era aircraft carrier. Beyond the missile itself there's an "iceberg" under the surface. The software alone is huge and requires major ongoing work from several defense contractors covering multiple embedded systems, mission planning, telemetry, launch platform integration (multiple different classes of surface ships and submarines, plus now ground launchers again), testing, etc. Plus customized builds for each of the export customers. You probably have no idea what actually goes into making this all work with an extremely high level of reliability.
That sounds like every government contract ever.
Your line of argument relies on this -
Axiom: While, in the past, gov't organizations were quite capable of performing the largest, most complex, and most critical technological tasks that society faced, things are somehow Different Now - and only non-gov't organizations (very preferably for-profit corporations) are now capable of such things.
But what is actually Different Now is this: Our ruling classes de facto decided to reduce the gov't's core competency in a part of national security - because outsourcing those capabilities to for-profit org's was far more lucrative for them, and the nation seemed secure enough that they didn't much care about the downsides.
Humans are very responsive to their social environments, and its structure and unwritten rules. Setting the "Non-corporate" bit on the org that a human works for does not magically reduce what they are capable of. Linus Torvalds actually is the creator and BDFL of Linux. Even though he is an individual human - not a corporation, nor a secret front for one. The mathematicians who completed the classification of finite simple groups ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simpl... ) over decades and centuries completed that massive task while generally working individually or in small groups, for wide array of colleges and universities.
Well that's your opinion. But so far we haven't seen any evidence that governments are able to build complex software as well as private industry. So I think we'll stick with the current approach.
Military weapons cost what they do because of the requirements. Could costs come down? Sure; Ill be the first to assume we need disruption.
https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Ler-ares-industries-bui...
Indeed.
When it comes to government work, the biggest cost savings always come from questioning the necessity of requirements.
People point the fingers at defence contractors, but their net margins are typically only around 10%.
Amusingly, a decent part of the cost is to produce parts in different congressional districts as bribes for the votes. It's not that the parts are really needed for national defense (because we'd want them built in the best place) but that they're needed for national defense funding approval.
When you assume you make an ass out of you and… formerly the worlds only remaining super power.
We are also running quite low on various types of interceptors, some of which will be very slow to replace.
https://archive.ph/74N1x
Precision ammo is expensive.
Ruzzians launched 10000+ missiles. Some estimate they are spending roughly $900m per day on the war. 1250+ days. Can only imagine how they could enhance their old underdeveloped infrastructure with all that money. But instead they are terrorizing their neighbors.
Pure evil country.
I found it surprising that regular, dumb 155mm artillery rounds cost 4-5k apiece. Imagine the kind of drones you can build for that much in Ukraine. No wonder drone warfare is taking off so fast.
Tomahawk missiles have a ton of tech and software inside, can fly for 1000 miles, and are also basically a jobs program for Americans in many different states.
Length of time from end of WWI (the war to end all wars, remember) to start of WWII (the next war) was 20 years and 9 months. To quote the late Tom Lehrer, “we taught them a lesson in 1918 and they’ve hardly bothered us since then”.
Length of time from the end of WWII (ending with two ideological opponents, victors who saw the fruits of victory, a ramped up industrial base focused on armaments and a devastated landscape of Europe and Asia to fight on) to WWIII is 79 years, 10 months and counting. No one reading this site has experienced a World War (and if you did, I’d like to shake your hand). Whatever keeps that counter ticking over have been, and are, dollars well-spent.
A bit like keeping your hand raised to keep elephants away from your US house (well, it’s worked so far). But the alternative is just…unacceptable.
That's mostly down to the nukes, which is why it's ineffective at preventing conflicts breaking out between (and inside!) non-nuclear powers.
"Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918,
And they've hardly bothered us since then."
another perspective is that WW1 hasn't ended, and ww2 was actually WW1. Even now, if you look at the Ukrainian conflict from an economic perspective, it's a continuation of the same conflicts of ww1
Not quite. WW1, and its continuation WW2, was a fight between Germanic states on one side vs. Britain and France on the other side. The fight ended (it really ended!!!) when two powerful outsiders (US and USSR) invaded and split the European continent.
What is happening now in the Ukraine is a result of a gross miscalculation without any grounding in reality (no, NATO was not going to attack Russia). The war in the Ukraine is not a leftover from WW2.
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Fire and rescue appliances are a bit of a problematic thing to buy as they never go very far and are retired with low mileages.
In my Australian State, South Australia, this a huge contrast with police who buy new from the manufacturer, get a three or maybe five year service contract from the manufacturer and then sell them when the warranty expires and they've done around 100,000 km (60,000 miles). So no servicing worries and they get some tax benefits so it works for them.
Ambulances have less mileage and my guess is retire after 10 years. Ambulances are very standardised so can swap metro and country vehicles to get value from the asset. There was a "twin life" ambulance (http://www.old-ambulance.com/Twin-Life.htm) that had a long life rear bit on a light truck chassis so swap out the motor bit two or three times every 200,000kms, but these days vans are used. There was much sadness in the ambulance fleet buying community when Ford discontinued the F150 type chassis in Australia.
But your average (fire/rescue) appliance in the city or country has low mileage. In the city plenty of use but never have to drive far. In the country not much use but do drive further but end up the same a very old vehicle without much mileage on the clock. Trailers can be even older 50 or 60 years before retirement. Another issue with a fire appliance is they carry water which is heavy, three tonnes is a pretty common load. And have other readers have mentioned a monopoly on manufacture wouldn't help.
I have heard that the problem with ex-emergency services vehicles is they tend to have low distance on the odometer but drastically higher engine hours, particularly idle hours. That is, they may sit with the engine idling for hours at a time to maintain power to the lights, radios, and other vehicle systems, and are generally closer in wear and tear to a vehicle with several times the mileage.
Another problem I have heard of is that while the actual mileage may be low, the miles that are driven tend to be much "harder", in the sense that an emergency services vehicle may be accelerating and stopping rapidly, and generally being thrashed without regard for the vehicle, leading to increased wear on the engine and transmission.
It reminds me of the saying attributed to Jeremy Clarkson, about the fastest car in the world being a rental.
Yes, trucks typically are running with the generator constantly on scene. Also many pumps are run on a PTO system where the transmission is put into a pump gear, further wearing on it since pumps can be run a lot on scene.
Our community has three large fire trucks, and one is sent out for every 911 call, even though the vast majority of calls are for medical emergencies, not something requiring a fire truck (which always arrives quickly, but a subsequent ambulance on call is what inevitably hauls a patient to the hospital). I've never understood why the fire department doesn't acquire and dispatch small vehicles for all those medical calls instead of a giant fire truck. Seems like that would help hold down costs.
> I've never understood why the fire department doesn't acquire and dispatch small vehicles for all those medical calls instead of a giant fire truck.
Staffing.
Almost every call requires more than two people and ambulances are typically only staffed with two people.
If there is a second call (fire, rescue, or anything that requires the larger apparatus) while the fire engine is out assisting the EMS crew and the crew has taken a smaller vehicle, they have to drive back to the station, get on the engine, and then respond to the second call. This is not uncommon-- for my department I'd say it's routine.
In smaller volunteer departments like mine, there aren't enough people to go around.
In larger paid career departments, the cost of the extra personnel needed to staff smaller vehicles very quickly exceeds the cost of the wear and tear on the larger apparatus. You have to account for more than just their salaries, but also insurance, training costs, any equipment issued, and retirement contributions.
There's also the matter of equipment. Larger apparatus carry tools and equipment that smaller vehicles can't or don't.
Many jurisdictions do have a mix of resources where EMS crews can get the additional resources they need on a call without an engine or truck responding, and it does work for the most part. Most jurisdictions can't afford that.
It seems common in Europe to not send fire apparatus, but I'm willing to bet they deal with many fewer bariatric patients so most calls don't need six guys.
Valid question, and I hear it all the time. Most of the time it's due to preparedness and staffing. By having those 4 people on a fully equipped engine, if something big (structure fire, vehicle extrication, rescue) happens, they can jump in and go with a vehicle full of tools. (provided the ambulance crew can take over).
Otherwise if they're in a car, they'd have to drive back through traffic to the station, move their gear to the new vehicle, and drive back to the scene. It can cost valuable time. Fire engines carry a surprisingly large amount of tools and equipment for a variety of purposes.
That being said, many larger departments are trying out "cars" (usually an SUV) with two people and a med bag to go to medical calls. While the engine/truck and crew stay at the station. This is fairly expensive with the new vehicle, equipment and extra staffing. However it is being done now with success in urban areas.
In my country, no fire truck is called unless there's a fire. Extracting people from a mangled car isn't the job for a fire truck. All the needed tools fit in an ordinary van.
Also, going back to get the tools or change the vehicle is incredibly stupid because: 1) crews already know what they're going to be dealing with before they leave, 2) just suppose they forgot to pack the tools - we have mobile phones, you know...
>Also, going back to get the tools or change the vehicle is incredibly stupid because: 1) crews already know what they're going to be dealing with before they leave
They have precognition and can see into the future and know that a house fire is going to start while they're out at a non-fire call in your country? That's amazing! And by "amazing" I mean "bullshit". Now it's perfectly possible in your specific region of your specific country that they have sufficient resources, or face a some what different problem space given local details like types of construction etc, which lets them allocate things differently. But you shouldn't be so quick to lob around accusations of "stupid" at proven emergency response forged through hard lessons and ruthless practical local realities from your limited perspective and thinking.
>2) just suppose they forgot to pack the tools - we have mobile phones, you know...
Did you really just suggest that an extra 20-45min wait is no problem in a life/safety critical situation, or that there will necessarily be someone who can go bring it from a volunteer fire department? Or do think that there is nowhere further then a few minutes from a fire dept? Either way you are in a serious, serious bubble.
> They have precognition and can see into the future and know that a house fire is going to start while they're out at a non-fire call in your country?
Do heart attacks and car accidents usually include fires in your country? I could only find statistics for Finland [1]. It seems that fires are so rare they're put in the "rescue and other authorities" category which has a total of 5% of calls requiring intervention.
In my country I know of only 2 or 3 cases of cars that caught fire in an accident in the last 10 years and they all caught fire immediately, not after ambulance arrived. They're so rare, it's a major news story every time. And I know of no heart attacks that were followed by a fire. /s
Let's assume that somehow a fire starts after the initial crew gets there. I'm sure everyone is trained to: 1) call for the fire truck (that's separate crew, nobody has to go back and fetch it), 2) use the fire extinguisher from the van and 3) as most emergencies are in cities, use the building's fire hoses and extinguishers until 1) arrives.
> extra 20-45min wait is no problem in a life/safety critical situation
That's not what the statistics show. [2]
> Either way you are in a serious, serious bubble.
No, I don't belive I'm in a bubble. I still belive it's a very very big waste of money and resources to call a fire truck if there's no fire.
[1] https://112.fi/en/-/statistics-on-the-emergency-number-112 [2] https://wifitalents.com/emergency-response-time-statistics/
I think the idea is that fire trucks dispatch for a heart attack, get there, and then get called in to fight a fire in another location.
It still doesn't make sense.
Fire/emergency stations are placed so they can get quickly anywhere in their assigned area. If they're at another call when a real fire starts, it's not statiscally probable to be closer than if they were at the base station. They could be delayed even more by the traffic jam caused by the car accident they're responding to.
So better send one of the vans to heart attacks and car accidents and keep the fire truck at the base stations for fires only.
In the UK the NHS/local health trusts actually have a few fast response cars which contain at least a paramedic but more often someone who is trained higher. Even the fire service will have a small car as part of an incident response team.
I've also seen more ambulances that are based on a transit/mini bus platform for call outs that aren't major, think old person falling over. They save the big boxy ones for more serious issues.
I think this video from the Not Just Bikes channel shows quite well the major difference in approach between fire departments in the USA vs the Netherlands (which is quite similar to many other European countries): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ
Fire engines in Europe are as well equipped as the American/Canadian ones while not depending on these massive and expensive bespoke rigs.
but the ambulance crew already has a paramedic, so why do they also need one from the fire department?
Because the fire department can usually get there faster. The goal is to get medical help there as quickly as possible.
What do you optimize for?
Person on scene?
Time to hospital for patient?
Time to arrival of a fully equipped ambulance to deal with emergencies?
Risk and time from dealing with a complex handover of the patient from fire truck crew care to ambulance care?
For me it seems like in the vast majority of cases optimizing for getting a fire truck on scene fast is the wrong solution. Waiting a few extra minutes for the ambulance would improve outcomes.
And it is of course possible to differentiate on calls.
A life or death situation like a cardiac arrest or someone bleeding out would select from all available units. Including the fire department, ambulances and police. But those are a tiny sliver of 911 calls.
Vote up from me, but even this isn't optimal. As opposed to fire trucks, ambulance vans can be parked almost anywhere in the city waiting for calls. They don't need to wait at their base station. They get faster to a call location than a fire truck.
In 99% of US jurisdictions, you cannot even develop land in a way that prevents an enormous firetruck from driving all around the property. Which means less density, more wasted space for road, further cementing a car-centric life.
Yes, in some places there may be more fire stations than ambulance locations. But that's not always the case. In the modern age you would think that either the ambulance or the fire truck could be routed to the destination based on the their GPS locations depending on which is closest.
But also, I don't understand why first responder ambulances don't co-locate with the fire stations (in places where there are more of the latter). If there's an emergency that is not a fire, the ambulance goes.
Most rigs in Europe (I'm in France) are Sprinter type van like an ambulance, which is the one which gets mostly called. The other Sprinter are with tools, and or two big ladder trucks for the real fires which rarely happen.
To me they seems to have tuned their rigs to what they need most In rural area prone to forest fire, they have big all terrain trucks with water tank (useless in cities)
The fire truck goes because it has a paramedic.
It needs a paramedic because fire fighters often need paramedics.
So if the small vehicle has a paramedic, you still need one for the big truck.
And if you have another vehicle, you need a bigger apparatus bay at the station and more beds and more staff times three shifts.
Finally, when the 911 call comes in there is not time to triage. The system is optimized for response time because people might die.
I assumed it's so it gets used, otherwise it would just sit there and might not work when needed
> Seems like that would help hold down costs.
That's not a goal.
Here’s a good video with overlap on the reasons causing this, with current cost comparisons for Chinese made fire trucks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78nZ-JJNmzQ
As always, 1. leaving it up to the market and then 2. ignoring anti-trust enforcement. What a surprise. China's pace of QoL improvement will eat the US (and really, the West) alive.
even at 100% tarriffs US is still not competitive.
My two cents of info as mildly informed. I am a volunteer ff/emt.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
Thanks for the first hand feedback. It is helpful. When I read your post carefully ("laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics"; "Who fixes that in a volunteer department?"), the first thing that crossed my mind is your tax revenue is just too low. You cannot have nice things with low taxes.
Another way to think about it: Are other highly developed nations seeing the same "crisis(es)" that you mention? (Think G-7 and close friends.) Hint: They do not.
We're definitely not undertaxed. A big problem is wholesale public corruption. We now pay inflated salaries for current public workers and for extremely-high retirement plans for past workers which was promised decades ago but not funded.
* Seattle cops blatantly defraud us and one gets 1 week unpaid vacation: https://publicola.com/2024/11/07/officer-suspended-for-exces...
* Those same cops retire at 55 years old with retirement packages worth over $4M (boosted fraudulently as above).
* Similarly, Seattle fire calls have a lot of people and a lot of them getting overtime https://publicola.com/2025/01/24/nearly-200-firefighters-mad...
All this means we get taxed a lot more for ever fewer workers.
And this only scratches the surface. NFPA demanding all breakers be arc fault (add $1k+ to every home build), Seattle permitting being years backlog, governments don't have workers which know how things should be built so our construction costs are 10x other developed countries. We're living off legacy and have an ever-dropping standard of living.
I do not think the issue is low taxes, it is probably resource allocation.
it's usually both. things are not cost-effective, too many things happen at muni/county level, but of course at higher levels there's a huge backlog (due to lack of competence, due to low spend), plus the US is huge and sparse.
the "developed world" has a lot of problems with high costs (Baumol effect, extremely high standards, etc) and also the problem of low scale. China was able to roll out thousands of miles of high-speed rail at a very low relative cost, because of scale, a bit lower quality and lower standards (human rights, eminent domain, worker safety)
for example when it comes to policing the US pays comparatively less (given the rate of crime it has) even though it pays more than many other OECD countries
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-sp... (see the police per 100K metric, for example France has 422 whereas the US has 242)
> Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board.
How much power are we talking about? 10-20 years ago, sure, using the engine and alternator for power made sense. Nowadays a hybrid has a several-kWh battery and plenty of power, along with an engine and generator optimized for much better charging performance. A PHEV is even better.
I wonder why there don’t seem to be PHEV van platforms. If someone made something like a Transit or Sprinter with a 50-100 kWh battery, an engine, and an option for a serious 120/240V system so that monstrous 12V wiring could be avoided, it seems that much nicer, more efficient and longer lasting ambulances could be built, not to mention camper vans and such.
This is exactly it. I'm also a volunteer for a small town, in a department that is decently funded. We have had the same two engines since 2009. We just (within the last month) received a new engine. It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine. It's a major struggle.
Also something most folks don't know: about 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. If you're in a big city you'll have 4 paid folks on an engine (maybe 3 and 1 intern) but as soon as you venture out of the city you'll see more engines 100% staffed by volunteers. And if you don't know the difference that's a good thing!
Fire departments run on budgets that would also shock you (how low they are).
> It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine.
It's too bad the only possible way to pump water is with a $2M specialty truck. Let's just raise taxes.
The issue is that you're expecting trucks to go out in conditions like https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IFEiwNMrZ8, particularly if your volunteer brigade operates in a rural area, and they therefore have to keep crews alive in those conditions. This puts a minimum cost on each one.
Yeah, the minimum cost isn't $2M, but it's probably pretty close to $400k a truck. Then you add on urban rescue equipment if you're not in a rural area and things start to get very expensive.
It's funny you say that, yet the first guy in the video is driving a small SUV https://youtu.be/7IFEiwNMrZ8?t=129
Put a pump on a trailer. The problem with this country is we're not allowed to have "decent"; we are only allowed to buy the "best" and so we just hobble along with old shit while everything's breaking down and we're paying too much for the things we do buy.
In Australia that's either an ultralight tanker, which would cost around $100k USD today but with far lower 550L capacity and a lower throughput pump than a heavy tanker, or it's a command vehicle, and its modern equivalent would cost about $60k USD but have no pump or water tank. The ultralight tankers are mostly used for getting to fires faster when they're small, dealing with inaccessible terrain, or just being an extra vehicle during blacking out etc.
The problem you're always going to run into is that your truck needs to haul around 10 tonnes of water and protect its crew. You can stick a pump on the back of a hardened ute, but then you need to leave and find water 20x more frequently plus your pump is a dinky little water pistol, or you can drive a commercial water tanker into a bushfire, but then your driver needs to be unusually brave and no longer have much to live for.
I accept that firefighters are getting ripped off, but it feels like maybe 5% to 20% of the cost could be reduced, and then you're still dealing with unaffordable equipment.
Here in rural Western Australia there's a range of official vehicles, the local (wheatbelt area) farmers have supplemented them recently with an ex military unimog purchased at auction and fitted with an 8 (ish) tonne water tank (with anti slosh baffles) and extra cab insulation.
Not sure where specifically they sourced it, one of the military surplus auction houses like:
https://www.australianfrontlinemachinery.com.au/vehicles/uni...
Does the job and scrambles well.
How does this compare with funding for your local police department?
These numbers for trucks paired with the 3+ year wait times are very real. It hits small communities the hard because they have a small tax base but still need a certain amount of trucks. You can only consolidate so much before you are to far to respond.
Another good point called out in the article are the floating costs. The manufactures do in fact increase the costs after the fact so not only do you need to order a truck years ahead of time with a budget you don’t have (borrow money) but then you have to cough up an indeterminate amount of money years later. A real sad time for first responders.
I would think it’s more about economy of scale. If you tried to build a car without any of the standard parts being available, it would be expensive.
That explains why they're expensive, but not why they're more expensive than they were before.
One likely significant factor is the Baumol effect. As mass-produced things get cheaper everything that requires a lot of manual labor gets relatively more and more expensive.
This is basically the Abbott baby formula shortage but for this other critical product. Instead of having a large market with more competition the US has its own special sausage.
Is this really any different to pre-covid, I could negotiate $3k off a Toyota Sienna minivan and have my pick of color tomorrow and now there is a several month to a year waiting list and I have to pay $5k to 10k over MSRP and MSRP is up 20% since 2019?
You should never pay over MSRP.
You can get Siennas for $1-2k under MSRP. Shop around.
Where?
I paid MSRP but had to go to a dealer further away. The nearest one had several thousands in markup. It magically evaporated when they found out where I was going, but trust had been lost.
If nothing else, check out fb groups. There's a toyotas at msrp group where dealers willing to work with long distance buyers post.
Pre-sales tax + tag, or post?
That seems crazy lol, why do siennas have a wait list? Is there really that much demand for a minivan? Or is it a supply thing?
I doubt one has to pay more than MSRP for a Sienna in Jul 2025, but in the minivan market, there is insufficient demand to incentivize automakers to make more of equivalent quality to Toyota. And even if they do, it would take decades to match Toyota's brand reputation.
There is Toyota Siena, Honda Odyssey, Kia Carnival, and Chrysler Pacifica, and I think that is it.
Among those, the people wanting to buy a Toyota are maybe considering a Honda, but otherwise they are only going to buy a Toyota, and they will pay a premium for Toyota.
Chrysler and Kia are downmarket and not a consideration.
And minivans are not a huge market, so Toyota probably does not allocate too many resources to making more Siennas since they do not expect to sell many more at their desired price.
So why not M A N fire trucks? Those are widely used in the European Union, and are considered good quality.
Many of the MAN trucks in Europe are fitted out by a supplier like Rosenbauer (mentioned in the article) who pair a standard truck chassis (MAN, Scania, Mercedes, etc) with a modular equipment layout. You'll know their iconic Panther trucks which are used at many US and Canadian airports.
The cost quickly adds up once you start adding features, and they have a lot to choose from.
https://www.rosenbauer.com/en/au/rosenbauer-world/vehicles/m...
We have strict regulations and standards set by the NFPA, EPA, and DOT for fire trucks. Would need to make significant modifications for it to meet standards.
Well there's the problem. One of the same problems we have with housing. Overly complicated regulation forcing custom builds.
To what extent is that really justified by differences from Europe, and to what extent is it protectionism like it is for cars?
It says that cost for a regular fire truck has increased from 300-500k to 1mil from 2010 to 2025. Considering house and car prices have doubled, we can chalk most of that up to purely inflation. Seems like another case of forgetting that inflation has been sky-high due to botched COVID response and what would be a good story in previous decades just, isn't.
The article makes it abundantly clear (down a ways from the top) that much of the cost increase is due to small companies being acquired by monopolists. E.g.
> Fast forward 60 years, and those businesses were contending with aging founders, depleted municipal budgets, and declining fire-truck orders. Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.... the REV Group, now one of the three leading manufacturers of fire trucks in the U.S. REV captures about a third of the country’s $3B in annual fire truck sales ...
“About a third” doesn’t sound anywhere near a monopoly to me.
This is all demand-side inflation: For any number of better and worse reasons (mostly worse), as building codes have gotten stricter and fires have become rarer, municipal spending on fire departments has exploded. Well-funded fire departments buy more expensive trucks than they probably need, just like well-funded police departments buy military-class SWAT equipment they probably don’t need.
Monopoly is a misnomer, because it implies a single seller. In reality any market with a small number of incumbents will exhibit anti-competitive behavior, which is what people usually mean when they talk about monopolies and antitrust law. With a third of the market, a single company can effectively set prices based on desired margins, rather than having to compete on price.
Do you have evidence for your claim about well funded fire departments splurging on unneeded equipment? Police departments buy military surplus through federal programs that specifically encourage it [1]. It has nothing to do with how well funded they are, which is why you see that equipment show up even in smaller and poorer areas that don't have particularly well-funded police or the need for a Bradley fighting vehicle.
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2020/06/12/police-departme...
If there are two more companies just like that one, that's 3-thirds of the business, right?
Point is, what's to stop that from happening? In that business or any other, it's bad for many, good for a very few.
In one side-effect, the wait time for a new truck has reached up to 4 years. And the contracts are being written so that the cost can go up during that wait.
A third of the market isn’t a monopoly, but it is enough economy of scale to allow for reaping huge profits if competing against a long tail of smaller competitors.
That's an HHI of 1089 at best. Pretty high, indicating consolidation is a big deal.
Sorry, I tend to tune out parts of an article that make statements, and skim until I find a supporting fact. I probably skipped right past it, because there were no supporting facts.
The article makes this assertion without much proof. The buyout may or may not have caused the price hike. If anything, unified R&D would have allowed to save on costs.
> unified R&D would have allowed to save on costs.
which a typical private equity company with a near monopoly on supply would naturally pass on the customer via reduced pricing?
That seems at odds with how such things often go.
At the very least they'd compete on cost against the other 2/3 of the market and conquer more of that.
The most popular new car is the RAV4, which starts at $29,500 today [1]. In 2010, a new RAV4 retailed for $21,675 [2]. Dealers were more flexible with haggling back then, but at best, that's still only a 50% increase.
[1] https://www.toyota.com/rav4/
[2] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/toyota/rav4/2010
That's not a great comparison due to the difference volume can make on your fixed costs. Even taking a work trim Silverado isn't great, but even from 2017 until now it's almost doubled ($27k to $44k). I'd assume it would be even worse for a low volume vehicle like a fire truck.
This is a great stat. I asked Google what is the annualised inflation rate: It says 2.77%. That is still amazingly low. A lot has happened in those years -- quantitative easing plus COVID-19. Both were once-in-a-lifetime, enormous economic events.
Your stat is too narrow and misses a lot of important factors. It's better to just use a stat that summates all of them, such as the average cost of a new car.
The average new car today costs about $48,000 [1]. The average new car in 2010 was about $24,000 [2]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/08/a-new-car-costs-nearly-50000...
[2] https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-744-september-10-2...
Average of what? All of car models available? All actual cars available to be bought? Cars that are actually sold, not just sitting in lots like Teslas?
How many people’s salary went up 50% in the same timeframe?
Most of them?
Following from my other post above, it is only 2.77% inflation per year. Do you really think people haven't seen pay rises of at least 2.77% per year in those 15 years? It seems hard to believe.
That doesn’t explain the other half of the story which is that it takes 4-5 years to get one.
Standard low rate production effects. Equipment like fire trucks are full of weird, low volume things made by a few, or only one shop somewhere, built exclusively to order, with long lead times. A fire truck is simultaneously a mobile power station, a mobile high pressure water pump, a mobile communications base station, and a high performance all-terrain, all-weather vehicle. It has to do all of that without killing any firemen, so there are very high liability costs factored in. Also, every major department has a collection of hang-ups about how a fire truck is supposed to function and what it's compatible with, so there is no way to scale production.
The consolidation of suppliers for all of this is also a contributor to cost and delivery time. That problem is endemic throughout Western economies.
I don't get why you'd care.
House prices are not typically a part of inflation.
And there's NOTHING suspicious about that, right?
I'm not sure what you are getting at but this is a definition issue more than anything else. You either do or you don't include real estate in inflation and if you don't then you can't suddenly add them in later on, then you'd have to re-compute that number all the way back and then you can't really call it inflation any more without all kinds of footnotes about whether you mean inflation v1.0 or v2.0. I agree with you that it would have been better if it was part of it from day #1, if only because the cost of housing is a massive factor in the cost of living.
> You either do or you don't include real estate in inflation and if you don't then you can't suddenly add them in later on
I didn't, I compared average home price then vs now.
That's a result of an increase in demand and a very strong shortage of supply, which is related to inflation but not quite equivalent. Houses, as a store of value have substantial differences compared to the rest of the items that go into the inflation calculation, and don't get 'consumed' in the same way that say a bag of potatoes would be.
I don't necessarily agree that the price of houses shouldn't be in inflation, but it is there by proxy and the calculations do make some sense:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-consumer-pri...
So it is the cost of shelter rather than the prices of houses that determine inflation.
On Alibaba a Chinese fire truck looking like it does the job is ~$100k https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-Brand-New-SYM55...
In the UK they are ~$500k https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-19629694
Are there any industries where private equity has come in and resulted in better, less expensive, or faster advances in their industry sector?
I recently watched a YouTube video that described how American fire trucks have gotten progressively larger over time, which may help explain some of the cost increase: https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ?si=6yTFjZQwlJz5OZkp
I was trying to find information how much a new John Deere combine costs, but too much spam... Combines are complicated machines with lots of parts that need to go together nicely. Seems mechanically similar to a fire truck.
A 2024 combine [1] is listed for $790k. And a fire truck in Sweden was priced about $700k in 2023 [2].
[1] https://vanwall.com/shop/agriculture/harvesting/combines/202...
[2] https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/satsningen-pa-civilforsvaret-tv... (Swedish)
> REV captures about a third of the country’s $3B in annual fire truck sales, with runner-up Oshkosh reporting revenue of $767m (~26%) and Rosenbauer International at $254m (~9%).
So three companies control around 62% of the market.
That doesn't seem like too much consolidation to me. If anything, it might be too little consolidation to hit the sweet spot where the gains from economies of scale outweigh the risks of monopoly effects.
For comparison, staying in transportation, in the US 3 companies have 45% of the market share for cars [0]. 3 airlines have 62% [1]. And there are a lot more flights or cars sold than fire trucks: maybe a better comparison is passenger airplanes where three companies worldwide have 99.6% [2].
Private equity may be greedy, and would charge monopoly prices if it could, but there's nothing in the article to suggest that fire truck manufacturers have that kind of pricing power.
[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-automakers-by-u-s-ma...
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250577/domestic-market-s...
[2] https://simpleflying.com/how-airbus-boeing-production-change...
Also, the top chart tells you the actual answer: the price of fire trucks tracks pretty well with inflation.
Fire trucks are up 860% since 1973, as measured by one Illinois municipality. But everything else is up 620% [0], so that explains 3/4 of the price rise. Nobody thinks manufacturing in the US has got cheaper in real terms over the last fifty years.
[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1973?amount=1
NotJustBikes has an interesting video on this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ
By the way the owners of AIP also happen to mostly be suppliers of materials for building these vehicles. They have a double incentive to abuse their monopoly position.
Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
The article says this company has one third of the market. This is not a monopoly.
> Comparable vehicles cost ~500k Euro (~600k USD) in Germany for instance. Update regulations to allow imported vehicles, get popcorn, and laugh as they wail and cry foul play.
And immediately get 100% tarrifs :)
Double 600k is still less than 2m. Might still be a viable tactic to bring down the current prices.
The real cost of the American fire truck is in the roads it forces to be extra wide. It’s those trucks that make it necessary to have oversized neighborhood streets. Most countries don’t need that.
In Europe, you’ll see small, peaceful neighborhoods where people naturally drive slower on narrower roads. More greenspace. Less asphalt. They have small fire trucks that can navigate those streets just fine.
There’s really no reason they need to be so massive. It's a choice.
Or rather, European cities have to settle with inferior small fire engines because of their legacy infrastructure.
And yet you have similar or better fire death rates statistics in Europe (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates) despite "inferior" gear.
Perhaps they have more of them per sq.km/dwelling, or build houses and make wiring to less crappy standards. The choice of bigger, heavier trucks is not because of shortage of smaller chassis or excess money, they fit more stuff.
That works a lot better in Europe because realistically it's a lot smaller. America is absolutely gigantic
I'm not sure I understand your point. Just because the country is large doesn't necessarily mean that you need larger fire trucks?
(Or that America needs a one size fits all approach to fire trucks - things that work well in cities may not work well in rural areas)
Since you have typically much larger distances to travel, people want larger cars. You couldn't take american cars down some of those english roads.
What does the size of the country have to do with the size of firetrucks?
Hah! Private equity. All those firms should all be forced to shutdown or be heavily regulated.
Yes, private equity needs to be shut down because, I don't know, some American city refuses to do maintenance on their trucks or something. Surely private equity is to blame.
The solution to cities not doing maintenance for whatever reason is not to gather all the companies together that provided a service under a single banner and then allow them to price gouge. Especially not when that service is required for the fire dept.
In my city the maintenance is done by the fire department, not in the US though.
Also fire truck repair is much more amenable to competition (the article points out how fragmented and competitive the market for the trucks themselves already is), this is just truck maintenance there are small to large shops for this around the entire US. Especially since the trucks themselves likely are generic and not fire specific.
This is entirely on the city, blaming some other boogeyman for this is absurd. Sure, you hate private equity, but they aren't some menacing ghost causing everything bad in the world.
One one hand all the complaints about regulation and regulatory capture in here are 200% valid.
On the other hand JFC Chicago, get your shit together. Even if you're dealing in un-obtainable old garbage it's not hard nor does it require OEM support to keep brakes working and suspension components remaining located under the vehicle. 30yr is a perfectly normal age for vehicles of this size and specialization in every industry that isn't fueled by a firehose of taxpayer monopoly bucks. You pass 30yo semi trucks every day on the highway. When it comes to dump trucks and other vocational trucks that are home every night they're frequently even older.
I get that to Karen who doesn't know any better that's "just what happens" to old vehicles and would reinforce the point that they're old but to anyone with the slightest shred of domain knowledge it speaks volumes about the fleet maintenance situation at Chicago fire.
You can find old ones ( said to be in running order ) for around 5k on Facebook Marketplace. That’s some depreciation curve!
Some luxury wake board boats cost $500k. They might get used twice a month, destroy shore lines, pollute the environment and are designed strictly for leisure. They won’t save anyone, or eliminate an enemy.
thanks PE!
The article does not answer the question it asks in it headline.
It also tries to connect private equity to what is, very clearly a failure in maintenance, which is nonsensical.
I don't know about the US, but in Germany all fire trucks are based on generic truck models, so many spare parts are available outside the niche industry of fire vehicles. The blame clearly lies with the underfunding of fire departments, who can not afford proper maintenance.
Why don't towns buy the Chinese trucks? Why doesn't a new entrant start making cheaper firetrucks? I really don't know what a firetruck "should" cost but $2M seems reasonable to me for a specialized, low-volume, high-performance, American-built industrial vehicle.
I think at some point, people are going to have to start doing things for themselves again.
Somebody will go buy a standard commercial truck with a flat bed and put a pump and hose on the back of it.
Type 5/6/7 engines (basically a pickup with a tank and a pump on the back) exist. I'm not a firefighter, but I infer from the fact that these standard firefighting vehicle types are used pretty much exclusively in wild land firefighting that they are not considered suitable for structural firefighting.
They did. From the article:
>“If you’re hanging out the window on the fifth floor, we can’t get you on a ground ladder,” he says. “You’re jumping.”
>Somebody will go buy a standard commercial truck with a flat bed and put a pump and hose on the back of it.
This is literally every single fire truck in Germany. Designing trucks is hard.
Put the equipment into container sized modules, load on standard truck, add seats instead of sleeper cabin, buy standard truck.
Firefighters want massive trucks they don’t need and push a bunch of regulation that makes everything worse. It’s not a big surprise.
The reason appears about 1/4 of the way into the article, and it should be familiar by now:
> Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.
As usual, things are the way they are because of unchecked capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.
What stops imports?
One point is that the US fire services seem to like really massive trucks, but fire trucks overseas are generally smaller.
Roads in the US have more space and homes in the US are more flammable
M A N makes enormous fire trucks, and they are quite popular throughout continental Europe.
Regulation most likely.
Darn capitalism and its regulation
It’s likely regulation is a too-high barrier of entry for foreign products, and it’s also likely regulation was steered by lobbying from the currently dominant vendor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
Capitalism that has defects introduced via regulation is sort of like Communism that has defects introduced by authoritarians: the actual version that gets implemented.
Totally unregulated capitalism only works in a world full of perfectly ethical and moral people. Sounds like an Ayn Rand novel to me!
Surely, the government and legal liability play no part in this, only bad businesses.
Probably the government, also-capitalist buyers would buy cheaper if they could.
Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.
> As usual, things are the way they are because of unregulated capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.
This is exactly what happened - and why. Capitalism is a healthy system where it is a healthy system. Beyond that, capitalism is either: Beneficial thru flexible, effective governance. Or not beneficial. That's every possibility.
Exploitive manipulation of the firetruck market lies outside of the healthy-by-default area of capitalism.
I don’t get why municipal investment isn’t more of a thing - why can’t cities and counties be their own PE, buy a small fire truck company and turn it into a non-profit? If they captured the surplus that’s going to the PE company surely costs would be cheaper?
I guess that’s socialism though, so not gonna happen.
Why can’t there be more than one provider of this good?
Small market
So society would actually NOT be more efficient if another company developed a slightly cheaper fire truck because there isn’t enough gluttony to make it worth it?
You asked why there's only one company, not what would be good.
The comment we are replying to:
> As usual, things are the way they are because of unchecked capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.
Government almost always seems to overpay for everything. It's a racket to benefit big finance.
The idea that everything is so complex that only a small number of suppliers are capable of building any machine is preposterous.
I bet you with a budget of $50 million, I could design and build a Firetruck from scratch as well as the entire production line and I could produce each subsequent truck for $200k max, made in America. I could probably have the whole thing almost fully automated with robots in 5 years with a bit of additional funding.
And I know nothing about mechanical or electrical engineering. I just know I could do it. I would find the right people. There doesn't need to be that many components to bloat up the cost/complexity to $2 million, that's ridiculous. I'm no Elon Musk. I just think many people with a little bit of brain could do it if given the opportunity.
The problem is lack of opportunity. I will not be given this opportunity because it works against established financial interests. The economy is a zero-sum game, that's a fact. Everybody knows this because nobody would even give me the opportunity to prove it even though $50 million would be chump change for big finance.
Why would anyone fund a venture which involves work and risk, when they can already extract the same nominal profits without any additional risk or work? Nobody is thinking about 'real value'; everyone is chasing nominal gains in a race to the bottom; whipping up the entire economy into a giant souffle full of air.
Caring about nominal gains is like caring only about volume and ignoring the weight... If the economy was a cooking competition, everyone would end up baking souffle, chocolate mousse and meringue. Nobody would be baking pound cake.
>The idea that everything is so complex that only a small number of suppliers are capable of building any machine is preposterous.
Did you read the article? It even says that the market is full of smaller companies. Around 50% are at <10% market share.
In a nation of 350 million people that's not particularly impressive. The price of the product says it all. It's clearly not competitive.
Trucks are expensive, firefighting equipment is expensive. It is a small industry with high demand for customization and low numbers, of course prices are going to be high.
>It's clearly not competitive.
It clearly is competitive though. Else you would have one or two large players and nothing else.
grifts like this can't happen without tolerance and in some cases help from corrupt public servants
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As a consumer (even a corporate or government consumer), you have to watch out for this in a capitalist system. My ex's family asked me to take my son to this specific water park this weekend. When I went to buy the tickets this morning, it was going to be $250 to go to the swimming pool! I live in Austin, TX and we have the coolest pool in the world and it's $5 ($8 or something like that if I take my son).
Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.
Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).
Vacuum people have been trying to normalize high prices for a long time... From the old Internet: https://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/kirby/kirby.html
My $350 Soniclean is way more than 3x better a shitty $100 vacuum from Target. (Also seems better than everything they sell, including for a lot more...)
When it's companies preying on impulse buying, brands, trends, temporary demand spikes like a popular water park on a popular weekend then it's understandable to see people paying more than they "should" have (according to one's own high and mighty objective standards), and perhaps blame "capitalism" or believe there should be some regulation to protect consumers. Sure.
But when it is government bureaucrats spending public money procuring multi million dollar equipment, the problem is more likely to be government corruption or at best incompetence.
> It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Who wouldn’t? Aren’t people usually proud of minimizing their work to pay ratio, whether it’s earning more and more to sit at a desk and browse HN or selling a firetruck for a new high price.