I found a job posting from 2020. I didn't know much about this agency so I looked them up. Turns out I didn't know much about them because this was established in 2018.
One of the interesting bits about the job posting is that, not too surprisingly, there are no salaries:
> All members will serve at their own expense and receive no salary or other compensation from the Federal Government, with the exception that members may be reimbursed for travel and per diem in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations.
Which, to me, can read two ways: altruistic people trying to make the industry better
OR
You won't even be selected to this committee unless you're already wealthy enough to foot the bill yourself and shape policy in a way that advantages ones self.
I don't know which way to read it, but if it wasn't costing anything, cutting it "for cost savings" can't be completely true. Maybe there were other overhead costs, but even saying that those costs are $1M/yr is a rounding error for the national budget.
This sounds to me like industry bodies such as WG21, TC39, JSR expert groups, etc. A way to get people with full-time jobs in relevant industries together to plan their shared future. I doubt the members of this board are wealthy people joining it in their own capacity. As such, i don't think it makes sense to consider them as either altruistic or self-serving; it's just part of their job.
A very small nitpick but the discretionary budget of the US is far smaller than most realize - in 2024 it was only 1.75 trillion.
And notably, most military spending is discretionary, so the remaining funds for basically all the neat dynamic things government can do is less than a trillion.
A million is of course still a rounding error at e.g. $900 billion, but it adds up really fast, especially when you consider that these are ongoing costs.
I'm having a hard time taking this seriously: "only 1.75 trillion"
What a ludicrous statement. I mean, I know inflation has been bad but not THAT bad. One or two trillion dollars is an absolutely enormous amount of money.
Haha, yeah I should have put quotes around "only" but you have to keep in mind that this ~900billion that remains is the entire government budget for everything besides stuff like medicare, social security, and so on.
When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error.
But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion.
But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt.
It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.
One of the interesting bits about the job posting is that, not too surprisingly, there are no salaries:
> All members will serve at their own expense and receive no salary or other compensation from the Federal Government, with the exception that members may be reimbursed for travel and per diem in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations.
Which, to me, can read two ways: altruistic people trying to make the industry better
OR
You won't even be selected to this committee unless you're already wealthy enough to foot the bill yourself and shape policy in a way that advantages ones self.
I don't know which way to read it, but if it wasn't costing anything, cutting it "for cost savings" can't be completely true. Maybe there were other overhead costs, but even saying that those costs are $1M/yr is a rounding error for the national budget.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/13/2020-22...