There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk

Money isn't real. Yes, allocating funds to this means there is a large swath of the population (with accompanying hard resources) which would work on this when they could arguably be working more productively on something else. But would they be spending their time more productively? Keeping what little remains of our shipbuilding capacity on life support might actually be more productive than the alternatives, given how little of value the US seems to produce when it comes to heavy manufacturing.

"Spending billions" is meaningless concern until you ask the question: what would these people have been doing instead?

At least the name Golden Fleet makes sense since everything the US military buys is priced like it's made of solid gold.

They're hard at work nuking the dollar too so maybe that doesn't matter anymore then

Don't worry - we're dismantling our science and research infrastructure and cutting welfare programs so it all evens out.

Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.

I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.

I mean, define "wasted"? Presumably money will flow to American companies, American employees, American steel industry and so on.

In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.

It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

But think of the aesthetics!

As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.