What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

vetteman said:

Nobody asked you, clown. Tell us how you felt when Romney crashed all of your talking points last night.

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vetteman said:

Tell ya what Percy, I've probably had more real pussy than you've had school lunches and unemployment checks. Now get back to the little misses before he starts to whine.

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Ulaven_Demorte said:

No, it implies that I know that the defense budget is astronomical and out of control and seriously in need of review. Not that I know which programs are in need of a scalpel.

Reading comprehension for the win.

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pete1968 said:

um, no, it's basic logic. fool.
only the informed have the luxury of calling out the uninformed.

how can anyone possibly know what is and isn't an astronomical and out of control budget without having full knowledge of the requirements and needs of that budget?

but that's par for the course around here, people claiming to know that which they don't.

face it, you have absolutely no inkling as to what exactly the defense budget is, nor a clue as to whether that budget is reasonable based on ALL the factors, including (but not limited to) necessary improvements, required upgrades to outdated or obsolete equipment and materiel, investment in future weapons, communications or logistical technologies, and investment in military technologies as response to other countries military advancements.

hell, i could be an active 3-star general and still not be in full possession of all the factors. but i'm not, and i don't claim to know what the defense budget should be.

but hey, keep pretending you're speaking with confidence. fluff those feathers, bro!

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richard_daily said:

I've asked on this board numerous times, what the military is there for; what is their defined role, and not a single wingnut has been able to give a cohesive, solid answer.

Care to give it a shot?

What are we spending 925 billion a year for?

Please break it down for me.

I can justify the expenditures for education or health care as a trade-off, if you'd like.

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pete1968 said:

i honestly couldn't tell you that they need that much money, nor could i honestly tell you that they don't need more.

i'm not in full knowledge of their exact role, both here at home and abroad. i generally know that defense covers all things military, but even then the lines are blurred. do we pay rent on the land that all the worldwide military bases occupy, or is that written off by those countries? does defense spending cover scientific research that benefits the military as well as other groups, or does that fall under some other form of government spending? are all veterans hospitals, supplies, surgical operations and medical training covered under this?

i'd have to see a complete breakdown of what their role is, what their needs are, and what they project their future needs will be before i could say with any amount of intelligence what sort of budget they can reasonably demand.

even if i could see an actual itemized list of where past spending went, it wouldn't clearly tell me if that was a good budget, or inflated, or reduced. i'd still need to see what was requested, and why.

i'm not able to speak intelligently about federal education spending either. what exactly does that cover, in relation to state and county spending? *should* the fed be paying for certain things, is it throwing money at stuff that it shouldn't? is the fed meddling in state or county matters that results in double spending, or wasted spending.

how's that? 5 paragraphs of "i don't know"

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richard_daily said:

So we should allow our government to spend 925 billion a year on something that is really extremely ambiguous and un-defined, but we shouldn't ever dare question it, or demand accountability, or even worse, reduce the amount?

Seems like a recipe for a lot of problems.

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richard_daily said:

Look at the amount of scrutiny public education faces...

I'm not saying it's not without some level of justification.

Now realize that the military has a budget of about 8 times public education... Yet there's absolutely NO public discourse about it.

Doesn't that seem a little off to you?

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pete1968 said:

it's not comparable because education matters will never be considered "national security" matters.

we as laymen don't, and will never, know the full extents of the threats out there in the world.

not only that, but maybe all our tanks don't really work, and all need to have engine overhauls. maybe half our planes can't turn left. maybe we only have 1/3 of the subs we claim to have. these are obviously lame egregious examples, but they illustrate the point that there's a lot of shit we really wouldn't want other countries to know, yeah?

clinton closed a lot of military bases and cut military spending, but not by all that much as far as i can remember. carter cut military spending, but again not by much. obama's military spending is high, though he doesn't talk about it much.

if both reds and blues spend much money on defense, then that tells you it's not exactly a partisan issue as much as they make it seem.

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richard_daily said:

The "we as laymen" argument is complete bullshit. I want to know why we're adding nearly a trillion a year to the deficit... which oddly enough, happens to be what we're spending on a military that we have no immediate need for.

Education is absolutely a matter of national security. Do you think we'll be a leader in the world in several generations without first-rate education?

If half our tanks don't work and planes can't turn left on 925 billion a year, there's something very seriously wrong with where we're spending our money on defense. If that's truly the case, there desperately needs to be more oversight and accountability, because other countries seem to do just fine on a fraction of what we spend.

The US spends a ridiculous amount more than any other nation in the world on defense... we have no need to defend any of our immediate borders.

We also spend a ridiculous amount on healthcare... The result isn't that we're healthier or safer than other first world nations.

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pete1968 said:

chances are, there is something not right. and oversight committees already exist, probably in triplicate.

whether we have immediate need or not is unknown to you, unless you're actually leon panetta and post here in your downtime. you might think you know what we do and don't need, but you don't. so please, save your righteous indignation for another issue. i'm glad to know you care about it, but funnel your energies in more useful ways, brother.

education is important, but it's not true national security, don't twist those terms. and remember, we've spent shitloads on education with no discernible change in graduation rates or test scores. the problem with education, from my perspective, is that there's too many chiefs and not enough indians. the teachers unions all seem opposed to every damn idea that comes along, yet they don't offer solutions to fix either the bad schools or the shitty individual teachers.

we spend a lot on healthcare, and thanks to your buddy obama we're primed to spend even more. and will it make a difference? only time will tell. similar to the teachers unions, the big lobby (insurance industries) will push their agenda and influence policy, to their benefit and to our detriment, most likely.

and you can't really compare u.s. defense spending with other countries. bigger countries like russia and china not only spend more than they say they do, but they also don't have the same kind of world police role that our military does. smaller countries spend less when they know they have big daddy (aka u.s.a.) in their corner.

and don't even mention israel's military

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richard_daily said:

So we should allow our government to spend 925 billion a year on something that is really extremely ambiguous and un-defined, but we shouldn't ever dare question it, or demand accountability, or even worse, reduce the amount?

Seems like a recipe for a lot of problems.

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richard_daily said:

Using your logic, if you're not Arnie Duncan, then you're not allowed to have a position on education.

It's ludicrous to even suggest that.

We're spending nearly a trillion a year on the military. That's our deficit... right there.

What are we getting for it?

If you can't tell me, then ultimately, we're not getting anything.

Don't give me the whole smoke and mirrors "well, we don't know what threats here might be out there that our government is protecting us against" bullshit meme... Give me credible, discernible results.... For a trillion a year, the american people deserve that.

If you want to talk about no results at 120 billion a year, then we should be talking 8 times as much about no results at a trillion a year.

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richard_daily said:

Using your logic, if you're not Arnie Duncan, then you're not allowed to have a position on education.

It's ludicrous to even suggest that.

We're spending nearly a trillion a year on the military. That's our deficit... right there.

What are we getting for it?

If you can't tell me, then ultimately, we're not getting anything.

Don't give me the whole smoke and mirrors "well, we don't know what threats here might be out there that our government is protecting us against" bullshit meme... Give me credible, discernible results.... For a trillion a year, the american people deserve that.

If you want to talk about no results at 120 billion a year, then we should be talking 8 times as much about no results at a trillion a year.

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pete1968 said:

no, that's not actually not what i'm saying.

you can have an opinion all day, you can assert your position all you want and i respect you for that. i'm just saying that you, me, and 300 million others aren't being told everything. we can agree that obama probably shares more of your interests than bush or reagan, yet he didn't cut military spending by $1T, so that begs the question 'why not?'

they're the parents, we're the children. mom & dad aren't filling us in, and they never will. accept it and find another battle to fight, or move up to toronto.

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JohnnySavage said:

First of all, we need to cut military spending and put all the boots back on American soil. There's no reason for us to be gallivanting all over the world. What would be the American public's position on an Iraqi airbase in Arizona?

But - military spending is the highest form of corporate welfare. Say, for example, we cut military spending by 25%. That means we put 400,000 troops on unemployment. It means defense contractors lay people off, also adding to the unemployment numbers.

Military spending is a huge economic engine in many parts of the country, and those areas would be devastated by the cuts.

It's not an easy problem to solve.

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richard_daily said:

Maybe you treat the government as your parent, but I certainly don't.

If they're spending our money, I want to know how and why.

You can justify your budget without giving away any national security issues...

The military isn't justifying theirs.

They should be forced to. Taking it off the table for debate is doing future generations a huge disservice.

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pete1968 said:

i'm with you, i'd like to know everything. i hate having only a fraction of the picture.

but i accept that whether a tree-hugging dem or a double-barreled rep is in the white house, we'll never be told the whole truth on defense spending.

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richard_daily said:

How much of the trillion a year goes to actually creating jobs? Rhetorical question of course, but I can guarantee you that there are more effective ways of doing it.

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JohnnySavage said:

It's not creating jobs, it's maintaining jobs. If you've spent 30 years as a machinist at General Dynamics and your tank program is cut, how are you going to feed your family?

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richard_daily said:

And if you cut education, or any other program, the same is true, no?

The military is being held up on a pedestal as beyond criticism. I disagree with that basic tenant.

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JohnnySavage said:

I disagree with it too, and would like to see it cut. But it's a complicated issue because military spending is so entwined into the economy. Laying off a machinist working at General Dynamics is no different than laying off a machinist working at General Motors.

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richard_daily said:

Fair enough. I'll give you that point for sure.

I still don't think (and I have no data to show for this) that the defense budget is using money to effectively create or maintain jobs...

If I saw data to the contrary, I'd change my opinion, but I'm not finding anything easily attainable. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

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JohnnySavage said:

Naval shipbuilding is a good example. When the navy started the 688 class submarine program there were two shipyards building submarines. 30 years later, the 688 class came to an end with nothing to replace it. The navy put the SSN-21 class out for bid. Newport News Shipbuilding won the contract, but Electric Boat went to Congress showing the impact on the local economy of shutting down its shipyard in Conn. So Congress split the work for the program to keep the people in Conn. employed. The SSN -21 program had no real mission, but it was a welfare program to keep people employed until the next program came along.

You can see that economic reality in almost every program where the private sector is delivering the products the military uses.

I think the first step is to close foreign bases. As was shown in Afghanistan, we can bomb anywhere in the world with planes based in the mid-west. We don't need bases in other countries, which support their economy, not ours.

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