Bobbythegreat, Your way of lumping all "entitlements" together as 60% to make war debt look small, just reads like you want to continue borrowing from the FDR 34% money to pay your programs, and eliminate his. You're not fixing the debt that way. If you want to eliminate his New Deal programs (in a discussion about fiscal conservatism), at least discuss eliminating the tax he set up for them...otherwise we are not discussing financial responsibility at all. I like your, "the public is used to the 34% Payroll Tax, let's just keep it" and shift it around to "better" programs. No....as a voter, I want that money back to pay for my own retirement fund.
I'm comparing something that a lot of people hype up as what was bankrupting the country to what we spend on entitlements every single year. What are we getting for the massive amount of money we are throwing into entitlements? Is it worth the ridiculous amount of money we are wasting on it? I argue that it is not worth it so we should consider an end to wasteful spending. If we just give that money immediately back to the people, great, if we use that money or a portion of it to pay down the ridiculous fiscal irresponsibility of the last 8 years and beyond, even better. The point is that we are currently throwing 60% of the entire federal spending into programs that aren't really working. IMO that's a bigger deal than paying for national defense.
I'm discussing one that is 24% and one that is 15% of the budget, as retirement security Acts. Do I expect more from the others that account for 21%, sure? Do I expect more from Military spending, that is 16%, sure. A 60 vs 16 discussion is not very intellectual to me.
The reason I use the 60% number is to show that it's not just 24% or 15% that goes into entitlements, it's 60%. Social security isn't the only program, medicare isn't the only program, unemployment isn't the only program, medicaid isn't the only program. I'm showing that all of these programs combined still don't really produce. We can't isolate the benefits to society per program, so I'm showing the combined cost and comparing it to the combined benefit and it's pretty sad. I think we need to adjust our thinking when it comes to what will actually help people and what is just a waste of money.
Bobbythegreat, And I'm saying as a voter we can isolate the social benefits of the retirement security acts of FDR, because he made a social contract with us to get them passed -- "I'm going to set up these two benefits but you are going to pay for them with this specific new tax. And this this is how we are going to track the money." And they benefit all employees. That in sum makes them something I can separate out for social benefit discussion. The other entitlements fall into the income redistribution/safety net/hand out/hand up category, No? Feel free to choose a different differentiating term. Sure, let's discuss getting rid of retirement securities for all, but then I clearly lose something. So I insist you (congress, POTUS) tell me what you plan to do with FDRs tax now. Sure I'll discuss short term debt payments. But long term it reeks of over taxing without including long term replacement spending or tax reduction in the platform I'm voting on now. As a voter, describe the 24% and 15% plan to me, because that I can tangibly separate and calculate as a taxpayer and future retired employee, otherwise I cant trust you congress/potus. Hope that helps explain why I don't talk in 60% v 16% terms
Yes, very. Im not a really big fan of our war machine, however military spending does a whole lot more than just bomb brown people in the middle east. We have many great products that have resulted from military R&D.
How do you measure benefit? I expect that the velocity of money from SS/unemployment/etc. checks is higher than military spending. But are either higher than if the payroll/income tax associated with each was returned to the taxpayers? In other words, what contributes most to economic growth? In addition, I don't think that anyone would argue to completely defund the military. But I do think it is worth discussing whether 16% could be cut back to 12%. Or that if you are going to occupy Iraq then you should have a tax increase passed to pay for that occupation if you are not running a surplus at the time. If you are going to debt-fund that occupation, then why can't debt fund 1.6T (or whatever number you want to use) on infrastructure? That will contribute more to economic growth in the long term.
We could redirect that excess spending to space flight, secondary STEM education and vocational training, high speed rail transport or alternative energy infrastructure and garner similar technological and economic gains.
Just to be clear, I wasn't really talking in 60% vs 16% terms, I was only using military spending to show the vast amount of money spent on entitlement programs and show how much money was being poured into them. Even if we isolate social security, that's 888 billion dollars spent in 2015 and according to the AARP we still have at least 10 million people in this country over the age of 50 that are "food insecure" meaning they don't know where their next meal is going to come from if it comes at all. Even if you just count seniors, 22% of married seniors and 47% of single seniors rely on social security for 90% or more of their total income and the average check is only $1300 a month enough to put you above the official poverty line, but when you factor in average medical bills for a senior aged person, it's realistically below the poverty level. Point is, that's 888 billion a year, and we still have millions of seniors barely getting by. You could take a closer look at other entitlements and they'd show similar failures. Some suggest we just keep pumping money into it and it'll eventually work but at what point will that happen? How many trillions do we have to spend each year? That's my problem with the whole system, it largely doesn't work and is hugely expensive. Of course you do have a point about having to have a plan for what you are going to do if you change to a different system, I'm just pointing out the problems right now, once we agree to what the problems are, we can work on fixing them. Right now we couldn't even get consensus opinion on what is actually a problem.
Oh I don't disagree with you here, as I've said many times, we have a fiscally irresponsible party, and a REALLY REALLY fiscally irresponsible party that have been running things for decades. When I talk about making cuts across the board to pay down the debt, I'm including the military and I think it's irresponsible to not balance the budget every single year....it's even irresponsible when you borrow money to cut taxes despite what Republicans seem to think. Cutting spending means nothing if you waste those gains by cutting taxes. When I talk about entitlement reform, it's just another option, the "easy" path would just be to keep everything pretty much the same and just make across the boards cuts till you pay down the debt and never run a deficit.
Those are all valid programs that would be extremely helpful. The question arises in what happens when Russia and China surpass our military capability. Military power and economy go hand in hand. If we could only be like Canada and have a friendly nation guard our borders at no cost.
So we shouldn't just be scared of terrorism and ISIS, we should be scared of Russia and China as superpowers who threaten world peace. And further, we should believe that only the POTUS and USA can save the world from scary monsters. Nah, no we don't have to be scared into debt spending, and no s/he can't make the world safe for all Europe, ME, Asia, etc all by herself Are you really justifying debt spending because the world is a scary place and we are all alone protecting it?
Russia and China will invade us, as recourse for all those times we invaded Russia and China. What happens when we weave imaginary threats and invasions out of whole cloth to justify vomiting tens of billions of dollars every year for generations on end on destructible, non-commercial assets? What happens we impress hundreds of thousands of young men, with a special focus on racial minorities and the poor, into military service under threat of imprisonment?
The Tenth Amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." It doesn't say "enumerated" which is a key point as if it was specifically enumerated then you would be right that it would've had to be written into the Constitution. "Delegated" does leave it more open and two centuries of jurisprudence back that up. I actually agree with you somewhat in this regard that there should be more control on local schools but in an interconnected economy that we have it is important to have some understanding of what educational standards are like across the country. Article Section 8 specifically empowers the Federal government to regulate commerce between the states. It doesn't say that the government only does so when states can resolve themselves. While yes the federal government could not involve itself in such matters and leave it to the states but that would make it very difficult to conduct business and would impose far greater restrictions and complications if each state had to negotiate agreements regarding interstate commerce with the other. In my example MN could place tariffs on the donut that was baked in WI. This was one of the reasons why the Articles of Confederation were scrapped in favor of the Constitution. Things like that actually weren't unknown during the time of the Framers and part of the checks and balances was to address that if one branch was corrupt it would be checked by the other branches. I give the Framers a lot of credit but I think you're giving too much credit that they could've solved most issues. The Framers were brilliant but they were flawed and limited by the mores of their time. In many ways they understood this and built in processes to address change.
I never implied an invasion. We are not the worlds super power because we are nice folks and the world decided to take a vote and use the USD as a reserve currency for the hell of it. We can protect our assets, domestic and foreign. We can protect our allies, and in turn, they trust us. Have you forgotten what happened when the last country turned into a war machine and started invading all of its neighbors? I dont have the best memory, but if I recall, one of their allies preemptively bombed one of our territories. Im fine with a statement saying we spend too much money on military or there is great waste in the military complex, but lets not pretend not have a military is unimportant.
Jobs too. Defense jobs are VERY well paid. Base closures are difficult not because of military need, but because of job loss---even when the closure plans include switching the base to some other productive venue where everyone keeps their jobs. Because they also generate money for that community. Even the military jobs themselves are not bad paying, considering that they include full room and board, and a very good retirement package. All things that need to be considered when talking about downsizing the military. Personally, I think the military should be sized for ... military needs. Call me crazy....
We need to be wary of that happening. I would be much more concerned about China. We have a limited supply of global resources, and we already were competing with China for them. The resurgence of our domestic oil production alleviated this...for now. But, World Wars happen over these things. Access to resources is precisely what led Japan to start WWII. China might find itself in a similar situation. We already see them flexing their muscle in the area. That will only continue...and it would grow significantly were their military on a par with ours. In particular, we need to continue emphasizing research. We are entering an era where military technology will determine military power. Stealth, laser weapons, rail guns, robotic equipment...these are all game changers. And...they also likely create lots of very good jobs, and spin off technologies.
Pretty much this. Nobody is invading China, Russia or the US. However if we are fighting proxy wars in countries like Afghanistan, we do not want to be the less superior. If we do not fight these proxy wars, then Russia and China will continue to invade and occupy 3rd world countries. Once they control the resources, then they can start dictating the world economy. No amount of shovel ready government jobs will save our economy.
