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Where to Cut Part II

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
13,242
Location
St. Louis, Mo.
Listening to a Talk Of The Nation discussion yesterday on the proposed across-the-board cuts in government spending, and talk got down to the military.
It was the opinion that military spending was a prime area for budget reduction, but how to proceed with two wars being fought and increasing numbers of veterans who must be cared for...
This led me to think about how convoluted all this is. The vast bulk of military spending is "internal" to the US. The vehicles and war machines and ammunition and weapons and ships and planes and food....
All produced in the US by US workers, often in what would be called "small business" operations.
How much would really meaningful cuts in defense spending affect the economy in general?
Saving billions on defense that resulted in many thousands of lost jobs (usually rather good jobs) would not be of much use...
Every time there's a proposed base closing, politicians scream bloody murder about lost jobs and the impact on the surrounding community. Military bases are major employers and military personnel spend money in the communities as well.
No doubt there's an awful lot of fat in the system, and many have criticized our continuing military presence in countries like Germany. Yet these bases provide staging for deployments elsewhere, and also evacuation centers for troops coming out of conflict areas....
Not easy decisions.
 
Other than the military, I don't know why there's any need to make any cuts. It's clear that there are powerful interests that want our economy to implode and wish to dissolve our National Sovereignty, as well as every other nation on Earth, and create a stifling totalitarian World-Government.

I figure, it's going to happen anyway, we can't do jack about it, so let's just spend lavishly and let us enjoy the last 5 or 10 years before we're mindless slaves.
 
The propblem I have with across-the-board cuts is it rewards inefficient bureaucracies and punishes efficient ones. For example, our treasurer here in Cook County (Maria Pappas) actually reduced that agencies payroll by more than 50% and reduced her budget by nearly half after taking office, all without cutting services one bit. After she did this the County Board decided that every county agency should have their budget cut by 10% to reduce costs. The County Board plan never went through, but this illustrates the problem with across-the-board cuts. Each agency needs to be looked at individually, so you can cut the fat where it actually exists (and there's lots of fat to be cut in many agencies) rather than cutting the budget of an already lean agency.

Sadly, there aren't many like Maria Pappas out there, especially in Cook County government. But she'll always get my vote.
 
INRM said:
It's clear that there are powerful interests that want our economy to implode and wish to dissolve our National Sovereignty, as well as every other nation on Earth, and create a stifling totalitarian World-Government.
Click to expand...

I happen to be one of them.
 
It's important to remember that the total actual wealth produced by in-house military construction is nil. By employing tens of thousands of people to build military equipment that is used by your own country, and funding it using money paid in taxes by people in your own country, you are not creating wealth, simply channelling it around and wasting resources (and yes, I believe the US military budget is much too big).

By taxing the same amount, employing the same numbers of people, but having them build useful equipment such as renewable energy sources, doing research, constructing new homes, schools, hospitals etc you would be spending the same amount of money but your society would be gaining something tangible in return, or at least more tangible than a huge military force with no genuine threads to fight or dissuade.
 
INRM said:
It's clear that there are powerful interests that want our economy to implode and wish to dissolve our National Sovereignty, as well as every other nation on Earth, and create a stifling totalitarian World-Government.
Click to expand...


The above belongs in the Conspiracy Theories forum, not here.
 
The main issue I have is the 3-4 trillion dollars of the eficit is money borrowed from the Social Security Trust fund, I want every dollar of that repaid , I do not want it devalued, I do not want the gubermint to pretend that they did not borrow it. I want it paid in full, with the interest that they gathered.

I wonder if often 'Social Security reform' is just a fancy way of walking away from a debt.

If you really want to cut the budget the second line to take in no more money shuffles, take foreign aide, most of it is consumed stateside by the passing of the money around, this is bogus. Then open contracts and competitive bids for all government services.

Then all federal employees and retirees should have only one kind of medical insurance, Medicare, pensions for retirees , especially the elected ones need to be slashed drastically.
 
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Dancing David said:
The Dilbert principle, spend your budget and over spend, then you get more money, stay to the budget and it gets cut.
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's not unique to government that people are pretty free with money if they're in charge of spending but it isn't their money.
 
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