In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

Yeah, it’s also really a drag about how we have technology for crossing oceans and flying through the air. Imagine the savings we could have diverted to the rich if only we hadn’t squandered all of those resources learning how to do that useless stuff. After all, humans were just fine for millions of years before ships and airplanes.

> much of what it does do could easily be replaced with a generative AI model that produces new space pictures for desktop backgrounds.

Ok, you're obviously trolling here. This is clearly bait. But for anyone else reading this:

NASA's budget for 2023 was roughly $25 billion [0]

For the same year, NASA generated (again, roughly) $76 billion in economic output [1].

Every dollar of funding goes back into the economy three-fold. Doesn't really seem like a waste to me.

Also, NASA's operations in 2023 created/supported over 300,000 jobs to Americans[2]. Again, doesn't seem like a waste to me.

[0] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/fiscal-year-...

[1] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/final-fy23-n...

[2] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/nasa-fy23-ec...

"Are we going to ignore the fact that part of that government spending funded private companies owned by Musk?"

Elon musk has received ~$18 billion over a decade. In exchange he gave us the first broad market electric cars and reusable rockets which were lucrative outside of the public sector. While I have broad concerns about the money going in the pockets of the wealthy from government spending, this doesn't strike me as bad ROI. Just looking at the dollars and cents, the income/capital gains taxes paid by tesla/spacex workers+management over the last decade is almost certainly a substantially larger figure (I think Elon himself paid $11 billion in one year?) so the net "funding" of this "investment" from the government is a negative figure and this contributed to the balance sheet rather than subtracted from it.

While I may agree with you about certain problems we are seeing (e.g. wealth inequality), I think we disagree on the causes and solutions. I primarily blame government and would cite specifics such as 1 a slow down in housing construction that I blame on regulatory change (leading to large price gains which benefit established home owners) and 2 spending on bureaucracy that I view as generally going to well off people 3 skyrocketing cost of education which I generally blame on universities being enabled by incentives often from the government to act like a business and not a public good 4 increased cost of medical care which I generally view as a collection of market failings also caused by (in my view) bad policy (e.g. doctors are protected from immigrants taking their jobs due to the medical credentials not often being able to cross borders) 5 worse demographics (aging population requires more medical care and produces fewer workers). I believe you generally blame billionaires or the "very rich" who you feel are capturing a large share of the economy and I would be curious for you to lay out your case for this.

"You have to be extremely out of touch with reality and its consequences for real people if you think this is the right way to do it. The only people cool with this are prepubescents and immature adults who seem to think that life is like a video game full of NPCs and not of people who live actual meaningful lives like themselves."

I will acknowledge that often cuts are painful, chaotic, and impact real people. The nature of management for large organizations and in this case an enforced tight timeline due to political terms in my view make this inevitable and I am hopeful that there are long term positive outcomes that make the short term pain worthwhile. I don't think this makes me a prepubescent or immature adult and I don't view you or other people in life as an NPC. To be honest I view you as someone who is likely smart living a full life and who can probably be convinced with facts/figures along with a rational argument (although I will acknowledge that this takes time and happens over years / decades and not in a short conversation :D).