People Believe NASA Funded As Well As US Military

QuantumG writes "An essay on the Space Review site is reporting that a just-completed study indicates the average citizen has no idea how much funding NASA gets. Respondents generally estimated NASA's allocation of the national budget to be approximately 24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%) and the Department of Defense budget to be approximately 33% (it's actually closer to 21%). In other words, respondents believed NASA's budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money. Once informed of the actual allocations, they were almost uniformly surprised. One of the more vocal participants exclaimed, 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"

I boldly post

where no one posted before.

Re:I boldly post

That's not a troll. A troll for Slashdot would be something like:

OMG!1!@ Vista is awesome! I'm so glad Bill Gates invented computerz.

Or would that be flamebait?

Re:I boldly post

Or would that be flamebait?

No, that would be the best argument ever for a "-10, Completely Moronic" moderation option :)

Re:I boldly post

meh

Re:I boldly post

The article summary at least indicates one of the reasons that most people really shouldn't vote.

It's like those Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes....

If you think NASA has about the same budget as the defense department ... you shouldn't vote.
If you post lame "first post" attempts on /. ... you shouldn't vote.

Hmmm... plenty more where that came from... maybe I'll turn it into a stand-up routine.

Sick

Human kind is a fucking joke. We gladly accept spending our resources on destroying resources. Hay a 100000 dollar bomb! boom. Ah! we destoyed a $10000000 building at the same time we destroyed our $100000 bomb! and we killed 20 people! who cost the iraqi taxpayers $100000000 toghether in education! What an archivement! Lets bomb another building! and so on... That's humanity, we will probably never find intelligent life in the universe, maybe intelligent life has found us - but don't want anything to do with us... ET: "Look at them... they are insane *ET laughter* - they prefer killing and destroying themselves instead of expanding their horizons and explore the universe, they obviously don't want our help..." - *ufo woosh*.

Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

If NASA's budget was increased, it would probably be at the expense of education, or something else, but not the military, so increasing their budget may lead to even bigger problems elsewhere and would not benefit humanity significantly.

At this point, you are correct

We desperately need to balance the budget. reagan and now W. LOVED deficit spending, and it is killing us. As much as I love NASA, I think that USA would be better served keeping NASA budget the same, and balancing the budget. Once we get back to where Poppa Bush/Clinton took us, then we can talk about increasing NASA.

As it is, NASA is asking for another 2 billion to build constellation faster. But if they spent that on private rockets, USA would be better served. In particular, trips to the ISS SHOULD be by spacex/space dev/Scaled/etc. They will be capable of doing this in 2-3 years. I would also rather see NASA kill Ares I, and do just Ares IV/Ares V. VERY large rockets will be needed for the moon. Heck, as it is, Bigelow is a much better way to travel to and from the moon.

Re:At this point, you are correct

There is no desperate need to balance the budget, and the deficit is certainly not "killing" America. America's debt is about 65% of its GDP right now - how does your debt compare to your income, and what does the bank think of you as a credit risk? - and federal receipts are currently growing faster than federal outlays, leading to a budget balance some time by late 2009. America has practically infinite credit, and millions of people are willing to lend to us at a very reasonable rate. At the height of our debt-to-GDP ratio, after World War II, the federal debt was over 200% of our GDP, yet we survived.

Don't trust anyone forecasting the imminent doom of America. As Adam Smith said when told the loss of the states would ruin Britain, "there is much ruin in a nation." People have been predicting disaster for America and the world forever, and it is easy to find many examples. So far, all of these people whose predictions are not still in the future (I'm looking at you, 2012 cranks) have shown to be cranks.

Re:At this point, you are correct

Although we will be fine for the near future, anything can happen. Don't believe America is an empire that can last forever.

As an empire...

Although we will be fine for the near future, anything can happen. Don't believe America is an empire that can last forever.

As an empire, no. As a nation we'll be around in some form or another till the end of time. The nukes guarantee that. If we go, we'll take the world with us.

Re:At this point, you are correct

You may be right, but that doesn't change the fact that someone will be screwed over. I'm 20 years old right now and I don't want to be in the working class that has to suffer in order to change the federal debt. I guess I'll have to start looking for a job in Canada.

Re:At this point, you are correct

Canada also has a national debt - about 40% of GDP as I understand. In fact, I think just about every country has a national debt. And most companies have corporate debt. And most individuals have personal debt. People seem to miss the fact that governments collect taxes and borrow money in order to provide social services that would otherwise be lacking. Things like... police protection, running water, a sewer system which disposes of waste in such a way that it doesn't end up in your drinking water, a public road system that anyone can drive on, a safe food supply, etc. It all seems very expensive until you imagine what life would be like without those things. Sure, it would be nice if those things could all be done more cheaply and with less waste, inefficiency, and corruption, but even so I have no plans to move to Baghdad any time soon. I'd probably pay less income taxes but it wouldn't be worth it.

Re:At this point, you are correct

Canada also has a national debt - about 40% of GDP as I understand.

According to NationMaster [nationmaster.com], the level of the US public debt is around the same level as that of Austria, France, Canada, Germany, and Portugal, around 65% of the GDP, give or take. These numbers are across different years, but are probably still accurate to within a reasonable degree.

Looking elsewhere, the deficit for FY2007 came in much smaller than predicted at $163 billion, about 1.2% of the GDP for the country. Comparing this to the deficits run by several European countries, such as France (2.5%), Germany (1.7%), and Austria (1.4%), it's not that bad (though it should be a mild surplus). The next year should prove interesting to watch, though, as various financial issues may hit tax revenues. We shall see.

They're spending theirs on infrastructure

According to NationMaster, the level of the US public debt is around the same level as that of Austria, France, Canada, Germany, and Portugal, around 65% of the GDP, give or take. These numbers are across different years, but are probably still accurate to within a reasonable degree.

It's called investing... You're blowing yours up...

HTH

Re:At this point, you are correct

There is no desperate need to balance the budget, and the deficit is certainly not "killing" America....At the height of our debt-to-GDP ratio, after World War II, the federal debt was over 200% of our GDP, yet we survived.

Actually, the reason that worked out is that the US was the only industrialized nation that didn't have her infrastructure hosed by war or owed another nation (looking at you UK which did just finally pay off their WWII debt to the US just recently) and the only other nation that was comparable industrial capacity wise was the USSR which was in its Stalinist era which didn't need a real GDP to get things done (Need a public project done? Thats what millions of German Pows and Russian prisioners for! No need to pay anyone)

Anyways, the point being is that the reason the US could afford to have such big debts is that there was no other player in town when it came to currency. You might as well be trading in gold because the US dollar pretty much was the life blood of Marshall Plan postwar Germany and Japan.

Secondly, the US produced more oil than it consumed and exported more products than any other nation (actually back then the US was a major exporter in oil) so it could deal with such large debts.

The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market.

I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but unless we actually do something about our foreign energy addiction, debt, and weakened dollar we will have problems economically. Big energy exporters like Russia and cheap goods manufacturers like China will be the winners of the 21st century.

I'm sure some of you are saying "But with a weakened dollar, it will make US goods more desirable on the foreign market!". Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper. Secondly, America has burned a lot of its goodwill overseas and most foreigners are currently frowning on US good due to political reasons.

Again this of course leads to the issue with energy imports. If Chinese goods were more expensive and it pushed for more manufacturing in the US it would still be at weakened pace due to the fact that energy costs of production, transportation, and wage inflation due to the fact it now costs more to ship and have people drive to get to the stores will mean the economy will be up the creek with a paddle of a while.

Again, we'll live and it won't be a place of anarchy but until we do something about the strength of the dollar and energy costs then things will be rather troublesome for a while.

And that is the problem

We HAD the capablity to absorb monster deficits at one time. As you point out (and I have as elsewhere), We have burned our resources and have lost our export capacity. Worse, America had a GREAT reputation post WWII (even post 911), but now, due to our invasion of Iraq, our friends are neutral to us, and all else would rather see China as the leader, than US.

I did not predict gloom and doom, but I feel that our deficit is already limiting our options. Congress debates the issue of adjusting NASA's budget, when its total budget is already less than 1% of our fed. budget. The servicing on reagan's and W's deficit is now at about 1/3 of NASA's budget.

Then top it off that politicians are pushing for illegals to come here to lower a business's labor costs. But that has the negative effect of preventing us from moving labor intensive jobs to automated jobs. Worse, the ppl are typically paid close to minimum wage, but even if we paid them 1/4 of our minimum wage, it would still be above China, and even Mexico's prevailing wages. That will lead to more jobs going overseas. IOW, we are burning our future in so many ways. Will we survive? Certainly we will. England, Germany, Italy (or Rome), Mongolia, China, Egypt, and even Persia were all once a mighty world controllers. They survive. But where would they rather be? In their current state or back to where they in control of their future, rather than others?

Re:And that is the problem

It's not that bad, really. The ol' USA is still the #1 economy, everyone wants to do business with US-based companies. No one in their right mind wants China to be the next superpower.

A slightly less gung-ho attitude towards world matters would probably be enough to restore confidence, love and trust with the US. In other words, don't start a war with Iran and North Korea right now. Try to fix Iraq by actually rebuilding infrastructure there instead of sending more soldiers. Even support *some *UN decisions perhaps?

Re:And that is the problem

Think you've messed two different things there. In terms of stock market, yes, US still has the #1. In terms of wealth and market value, you need to look across the sea for that now.

Re:And that is the problem

The EU is as much of an economic bloc as the US is.

Re:And that is the problem

Nations are incapable of emotion. Their populations are not.

Exports

We actually haven't lost export capacity. In fact we haven't lost manufacturing capacity. We manufacture more total stuff (measured in terms of prices adjusted for inflation) than ever before. Despite all the talk of manufacturing jobs moving over seas, we have more manufacturing jobs here than 20 years ago. Of course they aren't all in the same cities or industries. Manufacturing is still growing in the US, just not as fast as other parts of the economy. Manufacturing employment grows even more slowly than manufacturing output because the productivity gains in manufacturing have been much greater that other industries due to technology. So while more people (in terms of absolute numbers) work in manufacturing today, it hasn't kept pace with the growth of the population. It's shrunk relative to everything else, not in absolute terms.

Re:At this point, you are correct

You do know that the US exports were a larger percentage of GDP than ever in 2006? http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:HTP0L7C38GUJ:www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/PressReleases_FactSheets/PROD01_002835+U.S.+trade+2006&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a [64.233.169.104] Exports were 11.6 percent of GDP in 2006. They were 5.2 percent of GDP 50 years ago.
As for the weak dollar, the dollar is (mostly)falling against currencies of countries that fall into one of two classes (or in some case both classes), commodity(oil, for example) producers (Canada, for example), or higher central bank interest rates (Brazil and Canada, for example). The primary exception to this is the euro. However, the EU's central bank interest rates were lower than the US Fed interest rates until recently, when the Fed lowered interest rates and the EU central bank raised their's. We did not see a lot of "the sky is falling" talk about the euro when it dropped in value in 2005, why should we buy such talk when the U.S. dollar is falling in 2007?
The best evidence still suggests that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Which I would say is at best 5 years. However, considering that all of the current potential contenders to displace the U.S. as the number one economy have major demographic issues that start in about 10 years, I believe that the U.S. economy will remain the strongest in the world for at least the next 20.

We're still in a trade deficit...

Although we are making more money than ever before from our exports (as you point out), we are still losing money overall (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_deficit [wikipedia.org] for stats). What does that mean? We're still (overall) losing money on our trades when you bring imports into the question.

Long Story Short: We're making lots of money, we're just losing even more money.

Re:We're still in a trade deficit...

You are right that the U.S. has a trade deficit. It does not, however, mean that we are losing money. I do not fully understand the economics, however, even the article you refer to indicates that the meaning and impact of a trade deficit for an economy is highly debated among economists. The most clear thing from the article is that a trade deficit cannot be easily understood by saying that it means we are losing money.

Re:At this point, you are correct

"The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market."

The last point will eventually correct the first point. The overvalued dollar nearly destroyed the domestic industrial base because all those lower-valued currencies made it cheaper to build new factories overseas. That situation is rapidly going away. Capital is starting to flow into the country again. My employer is putting in multiple expansions that add up to about $1.1 billion. Now Singapore got the $4 billion expansion, but the tide is starting to turn.

The second point is the intractable one, but not as bad as it seems. The imports are in one sector, transportation. Fixing a structural problem in one sector is easier than trying to do it all at once.

As to the point that "Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper" I'm not so sure. Their demand would soar as well if they weren't being systematically kept poor. And they are still building heavy infrastructure.

Did you know that their government will not allow Chinese steel to be used in high-pressure steam piping? There was a minor scandal where some company bought Chinese pipe, routed it Texas, stamped it Made in USA, and sent it back to China. Where it blew up under pressure killing 6. This won't last, eventually they will figure out how to make a good pipe, but if the dollar comes down we can still compete.

And it better. The '90's dream that we would close down all "that nasty polluting industry" and get rich off of software and media content has been shown to be pretty hollow.

Now, back to my Death to the Dollar dance....

Odd, but since WWII the key to economic prosperity is to drive down the value of your own currency. France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China...(not sure about about the rupee) now it's the US's turn.

           

Re:At this point, you are correct

Odd, but since WWII the key to economic prosperity is to drive down the value of your own currency. France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China...(not sure about about the rupee) now it's the US's turn.

It keeps the wealthy wealthy and the poor working for them.
 

Re:At this point, you are correct

That depends on a lot of factors.

• Are they counting the GDP in the same way as they used to? (No.)
• What does the GDP consist of these days versus back then? (More financial services and less product manufacturing.)
• Who owns the debt? (We're well over 40% foreign investment now.)

You can't just compare one time to another without considering the differences. And don't forget that we were paid back a good sum from WWII nations for our war efforts (In fact, the final payment was just two years ago or so).

Re:At this point, you are correct

Hey, are you the same guy who last year said "Oil at $60/barrel is historically high, but there's *no way* it will hit $70/barrel -- anyone saying that is out of their mind!"

Good to see you again!

Re:At this point, you are correct

You are comparing the ratio of Debt of the federal government over the product produced by the entire economy, to our personal debt to income ratio. This is not a good comparison because the governments equivalent to income is the tax dallars that they bring in which I believe is roughly $2.5 trillion The debt right now is roughtly $10 trillion.

Lets not compare to individuals. It is more reasonable to compare the federal gov to a business. So for all the proponents of deficit spending, ecspecially our "republican" politicians, I have a very simple dare: If you can find large publicly traded companies with a debt that is 3 to 4 times their annual revenue, then I dare you to invest your own personal money in those companies. Afterall, if this type of borrowing is a sound fiscal policy as you have suggested, then it should benefit those companies in the long run.

Okay, lets here your excuses for why you will not put you money where your mouth is.

Re:At this point, you are correct

America's debt is about 65% of its GDP right now - how does your debt compare to your income, and what does the bank think of you as a credit risk?

I'm sorry, but where the national debt is concerned, the appropriate figure is not GDP but tax revenues. U.S. 2006 Tax revenues were 2.4 trillion dollars compared with 9.1 trillion in debt. If my unsecured debt were 3.1 times my annual income, I would be worried about my ability to pay. And I doubt that any bank would give me an unsecured loan for 3.1 times my annual income.

Then again I can't just devalue the currency in order to reduce my debt.

Re:At this point, you are correct

Sorry bad math. 3.8 times not 3.1

Re:At this point, you are correct

You failed to explain why you think that we cannot pay for things now and why instead our children should have to pay several times as much due to interest. Maintaining a debt is just blowing money on interest until you decide to pay it back. Pay off the debt (or at least work on it) and you free up that money that would be spent on interest to do things. Borrowing money to pay for World War II makes sense, the entire country was engaged in huge war and sacrifices were made across the nation (rationing for example). However, look at today: we are taxing our children without giving up anything ourselves.

Re:At this point, you are correct

We desperately need to balance the budget. [...]

The federal government has absolutely no reason to balance the budget or to erase the debt. Why should they? All that debt gives them control over the economy. As long as they're the biggest debtors around, Wall Street will tremble about every quarter-point increas or decrease in the prime rate. Why would anybody give a rat's ass about the federal reserve if the feds (i.e. outstanding accounts against the feds) weren't the largest collective asset in the economy?

If you're a hundred grand in debt, the bank owns you. If you're a hundred million in debt, you own the bank.

Why do you think the republicans want to privatize Social Security? Because it will make the federal government the largest single investor and thus the most powerful economic force in the country. It will give the federal government control over the economy.

Re:At this point, you are correct

Here you go. [traxel.com] here is a second. [zfacts.com] How do you figure that our deficit actually went down under GWB? Or are you doing fox news math?

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

If NASA's budget was increased, it would probably be at the expense of education, or something else, but not the military, so increasing their budget may lead to even bigger problems elsewhere and would not benefit humanity significantly.

99942 Apophis [wikipedia.org] would disagree.

Yeah... I know it will most likley miss in both 2029 and then again in 2036, but the point is that all of the threats to humanity impacts are the greatest threat. Imagine a Tunguska event happening today over even a sparsely populated area.

I mean what is the point of educated children and a nation protected from terrorists if we end up being blown to bits with an impact event.

It may not happen for another 100 to 100,000 years but what is the point of all we do today if our ancestors are going to be dead anyways. I certainly hope by 2030 we won't still be having the discussion on how NASA isn't that important in the scheme of things.

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

If NASA's budget was increased, it would probably be at the expense of education

This statement is indicative of the same ignorance of government spending that the study was trying to highlight. The US Federal government spends almost nothing on education, that having been deemed an expense best borne at more local levels. Your state pays the lions share of government contributions to university education and your county/city pays the lions share of government contributions to primary and secondary education. Most of us think that's the way it should be: it allows the residents of the school district, who pay the bills, a great deal of flexibility in exactly how and how much money is spent. If you involve the Feds in primary education, they're going to set sweeping policies that have to be applied equally in rural schools of 50 students and inner-city schools of 5000, and those policies will suck at the extremes. If you think NASA should be a higher priority than defense, tell your congresscritter you think we should forego a flight of 6 F-22s ($137M each or $800M together), a single Aegis destroyer ($1B each), or a single B-2 ($2.2B), and give the savings to NASA. One destroyer is 10% of NASA's $10B budget and would be a huge boon.

Seriously: it's your money, find out how the guy/gal you elected is making you spend it. Odds are, you'll find the highly publicized programs that you like but receive a pittance in comparison with programs you're not crazy about.

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

the smart thing to do would be to leave NASA's budget alone, and simply start referring to it's missions as "Bringing Democracy to Pluto" etc., so they could dip into DoD funding.

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

In my experience, if a project is going really, really badly, adding resources to it makes it go really badly on a grander scale. On the other hand, projects that are muddling a long can usually do a lot with some small increments of cash. I've been involved in some public "emergencies" in which politicians dropped the "M$ bomb"; the problem is that people already doing yeoman's work don't have the mechanism to absorb the money, although they could find use for a 25-50% budget increase. Instead, the emergency becomes disposing of all that money, and it goes to channels where money can be absorbed.

So there is little doubt that NASA can use a bit more money, but opening the money sluices won't turn the agency into a huge success, unless there is a project at which failure is not an option. In other words, a large budget increase would only work if it is driven by objective pull rather than money push, and then only if the money will freely flow to the goal so long as it is not yet accomplished.

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

But what if we increased NASA's budget whilst decreasing military spending. Actually if we stopped burning cash all over this war and put that money to education, we will probably soon be able to harvest people smart enough to run a country.

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

No - it would be at the expense of borrowing more money from China. The budget is not balanced.

Iraq War

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.

Re:Iraq War

the US could have funded a national health service.

It could have funded a a bit more than that.

There's a nice funding comparison chart that puts some perspective on it here [cosmicvariance.com]

Mod Parent Up

Now that puts things into perspective....

Re:Iraq War

Big investment means big payoff right? I mean that $102,000 is going to be huge versus that the crappy $500 ... you gotta play to win.

Re:Iraq War

Clearly the graph's author has never heard of a semi-log graph [wikipedia.org]. I mean, going for effect is nice and all that, but that scale is ridiculous.

Not even close.

Considering that medicare has cost us significantly more during the course of the war than the war has, the money we've spent on the war is probably not enough to pay for national health care. We spend about $300,000,000,000 on medicare each year, while the total budget for the iraq war has been less than $500,000,000,000. Then again, it depends what you mean when you say "national health care". Perhaps the program you had in mind is significantly smaller medicare?

What ever happened to calling it "universal health care" or "socialized medicine". Calling it "national health care" almost makes it sound noble and patriotic. If it's a social program, what's so wrong with calling it what it is? Once we have it, it's more likely that we will refer to it with swear words anyway, just as we would any other government program or agency. Maybe we should just call it "bitch care" or "fucking shit" right now and get it over with.

Fun times will be had by all.

Re:Not even close.

Depending on who you ask, the total cost of the war could well be $2 trillion. If that money was spend for instance on giving every US citizen access to free primary care - where conditions can be caught early, and preventative steps taken for conditions which are likely to occur in a particular individual - I think it would be money better spent.

Re:Not even close.

Something neither of you mention: If you take only the amount currently paid by individuals for health insurance and care you could pay for national health care. Compare our per capita health care costs to other industrial nations that provide health care for their citizens. Add in the 500 billion or so per year of *real* costs in Iraq and the results would be stunning.

Re:Not even close.

Actually, the US currently spends MORE per capita than Canada on the publicly-funded parts of its healthcare, like Medicare. And those programs don't cover everyone. So the upshot is that Canada is providing healthcare to everybody, and spending less per person than the US, who provide healthcare to only some of the population. That's not taking into account the amount spent by people on private insurers, either.

Re:Not even close.

The effect you mention is brought on by the Canadian "single payer" system. In canada it is illegal for people outside the government run health care system to offer health services. This gives the government a monopoly. Since the government does not have to compete with private industry, shortages in available health care do not drive up the price of health care as they do in the US. The government simply uses waiting lines and, and defines procedures with a low cost to benefit ratio as "discretionary" in order to deal with a shortage. Shortages are also easily overcome because Canadians who feel their "discretionary" procedures are essential can come to the US and pay for them.

Of course, the main thing driving up the cost is a shortage of available health care services. Demand vastly outstrips supply, and people are simply not willing to do without, so they will pay almost anything to obtain health care. It's easy to understand why there is a shortage of available health care. Medical schools set admissions caps, and refuse qualified candidates who would otherwise have become doctors. Hospitals require that doctors carry out duties that otherwise could be carried out by nurses or administrative assistants. In the end, doctors end up working long hours, and burn out quickly.

Before we try to implement a socialized health care system, we should address the artificial barriers to entry which are restricting our supply of qualified health care professionals.

You don't have to implement it that way...

Here in Australia we have private and public health care systems coexisting - not perfectly, but reasonably well. If you want LASIK, cosmetic surgery, or your knee reconstruction done tomorrow rather than in a month's time, the private sector is happy to offer the service for a big enough fee.If not, our single-payer system, Medicare, covers you. You won't get a private room, and you might have to wait for elective surgery, but you'll get treated.

By the way, you have an excellent point about the artificially restricted supply of health services. The AMA and its equivalents around the world are the last of the guilds.

Re:Not even close.

Medical schools set admissions caps, and refuse qualified candidates who would otherwise have become doctors.

Medical schools should be allowed to set those caps, after all they're the best qualified to know how many medical students they can take on.

However in the United States, it's the American Medical Association which sets up those caps for schools through their accreditation process. This is one of the biggest problems in the US that very few people know about. The United States is supposed to be one of the freer capitalist systems in the world, and yet we're one of the very few countries in the World that have completely handed control that part of our system to to what amounts to be little more than a special interest group designed to serve its own interest.

Re:Not even close.

The way we deal with that in the USA is to just call it a pre-existing-condition or ensure those who don't have any real negotiating power at their job to have to pay for 20% of everything. We ration here just like the best of them!

Re:Not even close.

About Canadian healthcare, where there was only a 'single payer' system. It's no longer true, at least in Quebec, where it is possible to have any kind of services if you got the money : http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/06/09/newscoc-health050609.html [www.cbc.ca]

Re:Not even close.

No, rationing is when you say that you will distribute a finite amount to everyone, regardless of how much they can pay. In our system, if you can pay for it, you can have it. There is no rationing. I think you're confusing the existence of a shortage, and the resulting high prices with rationing. Obviously, when there isn't enough to go around, someone will do without. In the US, the people who can't afford it do without. But just rationing as they do in Canada will not eliminate the shortage. What I'm saying is that our problem will only be solved once we ensure there is an ample supply of health care available.

Re:Not even close.

Canadian speaking. Yes you are right that people will curse at socialized medicine as we do. Like recently when I got a booboo on my finger (stupid hammer) and the emergency room wait was about 2 hours. This is annoying, but not deadly. I've had serious emergencies (an internal organ which will remain nameless went haywire) and I was wheeled in real fast and had a team of very serious people looking at me within seconds. To me the latter is far far more significant than the former.

As for the war vs health care dichotomy, that is false. Canada spends less on health care than the US does, although the reasons for that are hard to summarize and are not simply the oft-mentioned reduced overhead that results from eliminating the insurance companies (ref [pwgsc.gc.ca]). Whatever the exact explanation, if magically the US woke up tomorrow with Canada-style health care, overall costs would go down. No extra money from the war budget or anywhere else would be needed.

Of course, Canada has it's share of bureaucratic nightmare government programs, but health care seems, for some reason, to be reasonably well run as such things go. It's probably because the people take the system personally and keep up the pressure on the politicians to deliver a workable system. In the wake of Katrina I suppose Americans are disinclined to believe such a thing is possible.

Re:Not even close.

Canadian speaking. Yes you are right that people will curse at socialized medicine as we do. Like recently when I got a booboo on my finger (stupid hammer) and the emergency room wait was about 2 hours. This is annoying, but not deadly.

It's also not much different than what you'd experience at a private hospital in the U.S.

Re:Not even close.

> It's also not much different than what you'd experience at a private hospital in the U.S.

Right. It's 90 days later when you've sold your home and your cars, pulled your kids out of college to go to work and are trying to file for bankruptcy and can't because the bankruptcy law changed, that the difference would really hit you.

Re:Not even close.

if magically the US woke up tomorrow with Canada-style health care, overall costs would go down. No extra money from the war budget or anywhere else would be needed.

Wait, so you're saying that if we did the "right thing" and had a Universal/National/Patriotic Health Plan we would spend MORE money on the war??

I say that in jest, but, as we see the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex will always get more money. No matter what we do, they will get more money. Lets go with the Universal/National/Patriotic Health Plan and save money nationally. Sure, some of that money once spent on health will now be spent on death, but the consciousness shift can't hurt the discussion.

Re:Not even close.

We spend about $300,000,000,000 on medicare each year, while the total budget for the iraq war has been less than $500,000,000,000.

Ughh..all the those zero's are making me feel sick....

Don't Forget the DoD Budget

Yes, if you completely forget the cost of maintaining that military that fights the war, then you're right. Too bad the defense budget (DOD, Homeland Security Allocations to DOD, and Veterans Adm.), even when there's not a war is about $500 billion a year. Furthermore, Medicare services the most health care intense portion of our population. Using it to generalize the overall cost of a national health care system is completely inaccurate.

Re:Iraq War

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.

Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.

Re:Iraq War

You mean $200 billion - right?

I'm not sure an NHS type system would be right for the US - but there are steps which can be taken to improve healthcare in the US. For instance, introduce free primary care - i.e. you're sick, and want to see a doctor, and for yearly checkups.

Even in the UK where all services are essentially "free" (it gets paid via taxation) - there is still a large private healthcare market. I don't see why this could not continue in the US alongside some sort of state funded primary care.

Re:Iraq War

Erm, 200 million x 5 = 1 billion or 1/1000th of what you said it would cost... did you get your units wrong?

Re:Iraq War

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.

Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.

In response to you and the AC who responded to you, I did some searching. A NY Times article [nytimes.com] says the NHS costs Britain 30 billion (presumably in pounds) which equates to 61.5 billion US$. That means (assuming that the two countries are comparable per-capita) the USA could expect it to cost 307.5 billion US$ after the system settled, which is notably less than the USA military budget. This is assuming my source is correct, I don't have more time to find extra citations.

Re:Iraq War

You're right. But only if you take NHS out of context. NHS pays for (almost) _everything_ health related. It goes from primary care to dentistry (not to mention that is one of the top 3 employers in the world... thats alot of wages). Most countries with healthcare policies don't go as far, they pay the basic primary care, some in-patient care and only some cases to long-term healthcare (usualy only on psychiatric hospitals). Some drugs are paid either partialy of in full by the state, but not many (usualy most drugs aren't, they are just tax deductible). So, to compare NHS expenses to any other healthcare system is going into extremes. Pretty much like talking about democratic states and then give Muammar al-Gaddafis Libia as an example (thats how extreme is comparing NHS to a "normal" healthcare system).

Re:Iraq War

December 17, 1987 Bowing to Foes, Thatcher Backs Health Fund
By HOWELL RAINES, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Nice article, but I don't think that's entirely relevant, unless you've found a way of going back in time for your healthcare.

Re:Iraq War

Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.

Or, roughly about half of what we spend on health care now [chcf.org].

Re:Iraq War

Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.

And it would still be far less than the US currently spends on health care (about 1.7 trillion dollars for the last year could find data for (2003)). I can think of a few things I would like to do with my share of that extra 700 billion.

Re:Iraq War

Yeah, let's completely disregard all the money Americans are pumping into the private health insurance system. I mean because if we switch to national health care, that money will just disappear!

Re:Iraq War

Well if that's the case, then as a fair comparison you'd also have to include the money spent in the UK on private healthcare.

Re:Iraq War

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded PhD's in economics for everyone in Congress. Now that would have been useful.

Re:Iraq War

So?

One is mandated by the constitution; it's the federal government's fundamental job.

The other isn't; it's the individual's responsibility to provide for their own personal needs.

Re:Iraq War

I'd argue that any society which denies you the right to live off the land and fend for yourself (by the private ownership of land) has a responsibility to look after its people.

Re:Iraq War

What exactly is a National Health Service?

See, I ask because I have health insurance. You know, because I work hard and earn a living. And so I have a pretty damn good career.

So what exactly is this NHS going to accomplish for me that I am not already doing for myself? I can guess one thing: it's going to raise my taxes eventually.

Re:Iraq War

Too bad Americans pay more [cfr.org] per capita for health care than any other industrialized nation. You're already paying for all those people without health insurance. When they go into the emergency room for every health-related need and never pay rather than get preventative care, guess who ends up paying those costs. Certainly not the hospital or the publicly traded health insurance company.

You're already paying for national health care. You're also paying for advertising, lobbying, dividends, as well salaries and bonuses to management who keep profits and dividends up.

Re:Iraq War - silly bogeyman

and guess what, it wouldn't have been spent on National Health care anyway.

There is enough money being spent on earmarks and such to fund SCHIPS but we don't see the press wailing on Congress for it.

We already spend how much on medical care and support (income redistribution) that the money going to Iraq would have vanished without a trace anyway.

Iraq is just a convenient bogeyman, unfortunately Congress is so damn corrupt (regardless of which party actually runs it) that it took an Iraq war to keep people from seeing it

Re:Iraq War

Or, maybe they could take all the welfare projects, which has an even larger budget than the military, with many of the projects estimated to be over 50% fraud, and return all that money back to us, so that we can afford our own medical care.

The so-called war on poverty is lost, with more people living in poverty than when it was started by the democrats, and it becomes more costly every year. Now they want to use the same tactics to start a war on medicine by converting it to socilism.

Will you still be shouting "yea!" about it when the medical system becomes as full of fraud and incompitance, and as expensive as the socilist welfare system?

Re:Iraq War

Or, maybe they could take all the welfare projects, which has an even larger budget than the military, with many of the projects estimated to be over 50% fraud, and return all that money back to us, so that we can afford our own medical care.

WTF is this? A fucking contest? Gee, let's look at social services, which benefit everyone, and compare it military spending which benefits, let's admit it, absolutely no one. (At least not at this scale.)

I love the idea that these two things should be roughly equal, it's like a husband and wife arguing over their budget, with the husband talking about how the wife spends slightly more on food and bills than he spends on restoring his classic 57 Chevy, and maybe she should cut back some. Hey, dumbass, one of these things actually benefits citizens of this country, and the other does not. (In fact, the other results in their deaths, which is where the analogy breaks down.)

And, lastly, while 'many of the welfare projects' may be over 50% fraud, many of the projects are also microscopic, so I suspect that statistic was stated exactly that way for a reason. There could be dozens of tiny projects totaled two billion dollars that were 50% fraud, which would make the overall fraud roughly, oh, 0.3% of social services.

The actual large projects, social security and medicare, do not have anywhere near 50% fraud. Social security has almost no fraud whatsoever, and it's actually 'ahead' in the fraud department with the number of people who pay social security taxes to fake social security numbers. (Almost all fraud in SS there is people continuing to collect checks to the deceased, so there's almost no organized large-scale fraud, just one person collecting one check they shouldn't.) Unemployment and general welfare might have as much as 10% fraud, or as little as 2%, it depends on who you ask, but it's nowhere near 50%. Medicare doesn't have a lot of fraud, unless you include insurance companies ripping people off using Medical Part D. Sometimes doctors set up schemes, but they set those up with normal insurance companies too, or even just rip people off directly. The Federal government has no control over Medicaid distribution, so if your state has large amounts of fraud, bother them. Those programs make up more than 90% of all welfare, and, as you can see, there's nowhere near 50% fraud.

'Many of X have a 50% level of something' is a classic way to lie with statistics, even assuming it's true and you didn't pull it out of your ass. The fact you threw 'estimated' in there to try to vague it up actually just made you factually wrong, as I suspect no programs are estimated by anyone with credibility to be that wasteful. You'd have been better off leaving that word out and just asserting they were that wasteful, and then when I showed up with estimated that said they weren't, you could say the estimates were wrong.

Re:Iraq War

I'm sorry, it seems like either you or my memory is trying to rewrite history.

Who told the UN inspectors (who hadn't found anything) to leave Iraq again? Saddam kicked them out? 'Cause I coulda SWORE that ole' Georgie Boy was the one to give them the 'leave or get bombed' ultimatum. Huh, gonna hafta look into that one.

Military budget

I just can't believe USA people put up with spending 21% of their national budget on the military.

Re:Military budget

Believe it. We're willing to pay $260 billion a year on interest on the national debt.

Re:Military budget

You're off by a bit. We pay $470 billion interest on the national debt a year.
Source
http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/budget.html [kowaldesign.com]

Re:Military budget

I, as a US citizen, actually don't have that many complaints about this. I'll also state that I'm a PhD student, so I have a bias towards more science spending

1. A decent chunk of the military budget goes to science and technology development. And very often, the military does a pretty good job of giving money to promising projects that otherwise would not get any money. The computer and arpanet are only two of the very cool military funded projects. Take a look at DARPA sometime - some of the projects are rather amazing if they work out (there was an article about this some time ago).
2. The military provides a good place for many people to go after high school and keeps me out of the military. Personally, I'm opposed to mandatory military service, though I do see some of its benefits. I just know that for me, it would have interfered too much with school for me to be happy with it. In any case, joining the military gives people a chance to mature, learn skills, and make a decent living. Its not for everyone, but from what I've seen it helps a lot of people. And I have no problem paying those people to protect the US. I'd much rather that many of these people are given a good chance at a good life than roaming the streets homeless. You can claim here that its not fair that the poor are more likely to serve in the military. I'm not debating that point but am stating the benefits.
3. As a US citizen, I'm happy that the US has the best military in the world. And I recognize that this costs a lot of money. I'm also glad that we are a superpower. This does not mean I support our foreign policy, but I like the fact that the US maintains a military force like this.
4. While a large chunk of the federal budget, other countries spend more on the military as a percentage of GDP. Yes its a lot, but I personally support the spending that is in the actual budget (though, again, not the wars). Take a look at Wikipedia's [wikipedia.org] page on the US military budget. Most of the money is spent on maintenance, personnel, procurement (building new weapons), and R&D. That doesn't sound too bad to me.

Re:Military budget

3. As a US citizen, I'm happy that the US has the best military in the world.

I take issue with this statement, because I know for a fact that the UK has the best military in the world.

More seriously though, everybody I know believes as a 'well known fact' that their own country's military is the worlds best. These are otherwise sensible and not particularly nationalisatic people usually capable of making objective judgements. That's a startlingly good piece of marketing however you look at it.

Re:Military budget

no need for good marketing here. who would want to serve in any military less than the best? especially in wartime, and against a military billed as the "best"?

Re:Military budget

I think the evidence pretty clearly shows that Al-Qaeda has the best military. They have managed to stay in business after a prolonged conflict with the best-funded military in the world. Sure, you can nit-pick about details (guerrilla warfare, defense vs. offense, etc) but if you look at the numbers, they're the winners right now.

You do know that this is Slashdot, right?

I'm willing to go along with the media hurting the war effort. Hell, I'll even come out and say the media is the single largest problem with a war effort. But to say its all a plot by the Democrats bypasses sane rational logic and takes a turn down Ludicrous Boulevard.

Here's the truth about this. Reporters report, if they see a US Soldier shooting a kid holding onto his mothers leg while crying, they take a picture of it and write up a story about it because its a strong visual and emotional image. If they see a suicide bomber running into a crowd of US Soldiers and passers-by, they take a picture and write up another story for the same reasoning. Its what they do, sometimes they'll shade a story because an editor thinks it plays better one way over another, hell, they've even been known to outright lie. But for the most part, the news is accurate enough that between a few conflicting accounts from the different outlets, you can usually figure out what is actually going on. Which brings us to the ugly truth of why the media hurts a war effort

Mothers and Fathers don't want to think about their sons and daughters shooting the child in the first scenario any more than they want, say.. to think about their child being blown up by the suicide bomber in the second . Nevermind thats what war is. Also nevermind that its how wars get won.

As the old saw goes: War is the continuation of Diplomatic Negotiations through Non-Diplomatic means. Everyone knows that adage, everyone has heard some form of it. But, no one wants it to be real to them. They don't want to think about how their family members may have to do things that aren't considered good, and just, and wholesome; just to break the other sides will or ability to fight. Nor do they want to think about what the other side tries to do to their family members to achieve the same goal.

Everyone wants to think that war is some god damn morality play. Good against evil, over-writing injustices, keeping the world safe for all mankind, and other such derivative bullshit non-sense. Well, guess what, its not. War is exactly what the old saying says it is; brutal, bloody, nightmarish, and yes, evil. The damnable thing about it is, its a necessary evil. Sure, I wish we could all live in a world singing kumbaya and put all of our differences behind us, thats an unreasonable request though.

And whether you want to believe it or not, its an unreasonable request to keep a group of people from trying to capitalize on the emotional backlash of the situation. You call them democrats, but there are a lot of republicans doing the same thing. Why? Because of another sad fact. That is how you get elected. You find an emotional charged issue, in this case; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends.. of people who are out on the front lines, and then speak about their fears.

You tell them its wrong that their loved ones have to face the things they do, when everyone knew damn well going in that it was wrong before the war started, if only everyone had stopped and treated at it as a real issue instead of relating it to a Sunday Matinee. You tell them that you understand their plight, and that you'll do everything in your power to put an end to it then you throw a few pieces of work out to prove that your serious about this, when everyone knows that if as many politicians truly gave a damn about it as they are saying.. the issue wouldn't exist anymore.

So please spare me your political crackpot theory about "Why Things Are The Way They Are". There are no grand conspiracies, no plot by one party or another to destroy us all. Just a self involved apathetic population, who doesn't have quite enough foresight to think about tomorrow; a news industry who wants to get paid, and move everyone to their way of thinking so they'll have an audience down the road; and some politicians who want to get re-elected, so they can continue to do whatever it is politicians do. Thats all, the same as it ever was, and the same as it will always be.

Re:Military budget

Personally I could never be happy about a military that "accidentally" murders innocents, spits on the grave by telling them it's their own fault, and then turns around and does it over and over again.

Reference 1 [washingtonpost.com]
Reference 2 [reuters.com]
Reference 3 [msn.com]

Most of these massacres aren't even covered by the major news providers. These are the exceptions.

Of course, it's the money men that actually make the decision to wage offensive (not defensive) wars: your "representatives" in government, the people who profit by waging war. You know, the people who have that special, god-like ability to determine the price of human life.

Re:Military budget

More seriously though, everybody I know believes as a 'well known fact' that their own country's military is the worlds best.

Guess you haven't met anyone from the smaller countries, one thing is quality the other is quantity. Unless I think the military here in Norway is a legion of Rambos, we'd easily get overrun if the US, the Russians (previously the Soviets) or anyone else that's 10x-100x bigger than us decide to invade. Maybe we can win a pissing contest about the world's best special ops group (though I doubt that too), but it wouldn't matter one bit in a real war. At any rate, the day it comes to who is really bigger and *has* tens of millions to people to send to die I'd rather not be around to see it anyway.

Re:Military budget

Oh, yeah? Tell that to the virtual UK that I kicked the crap out of in Super Power 2!

Re:Military budget

as a citizen of the world I believe the best military is the one that would not exist

Re:Military budget

As a citizen of the world I believe you should remember that if we get rid of our military powers we will be free game for the Aliens orbiting quietly waiting for just that. Boards and nails man, boards and nails!

Re:Military budget

I take issue with this statement, because I know for a fact that the UK has the best military in the world.

Without getting into a, "my country can kick your country's ass debate," I will say that the UK military has come a long way since the days that they were wearing bright red coats and getting their ass kicked in north america,... ;-) But seriously, folks. I wouldn't want to be an enemy of either the US or the UK military; and since we're allies, the enemies have to face both, together, more than likely.

Back to the topic, I have to say that NASA has done quite well with their "meager" little budget. They got quite a bargain on these two cars [nasa.gov],... Of course, if NASA did have the same budget as the military, we'd probably be on Pluto by now,... ;-)

Re:Military budget

heh...

Here (Bulgaria), a serious deal of people knows that our own country's military is the world's one-of-the-worst. They are corrupt, incompetent and ill-funded.

And, there is even more complex approach to that matter (afaik, in Russia):

they beleive for their army both (corrupt, incompetent and ill-funded) AND (well known fact that it is the worlds best)

Re:Military budget

Really? I thought the Israeli military had the best techniques and training, but not the total firepower of the USA. I'm Aussie, and have no delusions of grandeur concerning our military prowess. (I have heard that we were pretty good innovators and survivors when the chips are down. And because Australian military never had the best or even adequate equipment, the chips were/are always down.)

Re:Military budget

We did. Twice. They burned our capitol, and we dumped their tea in a river. The heavy cost has made us unwilling to engage in any further hostilities.

Re:Military budget

You're saying you don't mind the military budget since a significant part is spent on science. But if the military budget weren't so obscenely large, there would be more to spend on science (and not under the guise of the military). Wouldn't that be better?

Re:Military budget

The money may be available under your scenario, but there's no guarantee it would be spent on science. Unless the budget is being allocated by science-minded people, or at the very least people who listen to science-minded advisers, a lot of that money might not ever be directed into useful research.

While everyone loves to demonize the military, the truth is a lot of that research is directed into some very pragmatic objectives (e.g. keep soldiers alive, protect infrastructure from damage, go farther on less fuel, etc.). Even the less pragmatic ideas (e.g. laser cannons on the moon) can result in funding going into areas of research that could lead to practical applications. Do you think we'd have nuclear power plants if it weren't for the race to build a better bomb?

Re:Military budget

Considering the basis for the power generation was built before the bomb, yes, I believe we would have nuclear fission power plants without that particular race. It was experimentation and calculation that brought nuclear power, not adaption of a constructed device. There would also be less panic at the mention of nuclear. If 'dirty' bombs had been derived first, then we could then assign heritage to the nuclear arms race.

Re:Military budget

It's fine to support more science spending, but there are problems with doing it through the military. The people in charge of distributing much of the military R&D budget are not scientists or engineers. This results in contracts going to companies because they have some retired officer on their board or the CEO is friends with some high ranking official. The poster child for taking military research spending out of the hands of bureaucrats is Black Light Power [blacklightpower.com]. Those guys are strait up charlatans, who got away with fleecing the US government because of their military connections.

Re:Military budget

1) A substantial amount of military research remains hidden from the public, so dollar for dollar I would hazard that the DoD is the least efficient vehicle for scientific research that benefits the public.

2) As a pure jobs program, the military is remarkably inefficient. If your goal is to keep people gainfully employed, you could probably create ten times as many jobs by just handing out picks, shovels, and an offer to pay $10/hr for anyone who wants to plant trees. Divide the number of dollars spent by the number of people employed. It's abysmal.

3) You don't see any consequences to our behavior? Do you think we'd have invaded Iraq if our military wasn't just sitting there like a big, idle ball peen hammer? The fact that we have it makes it very hard not to use it. It makes it hard not to threaten to use it. It makes it hard not to imply that it might be used if we don't get our way. In short, it makes it very hard to convince any country that we're negotiating as equals.

4) So, the U.S. spends most of its military budget on... building and maintaining the military? Were you expecting there to be a line item for "bribes, kickbacks, and other gratuities" or "chopping limbs off orphans"? I fail to see the "that's not so bad." As to the GDP argument, I found a list [fas.org], and the countries that devote a bigger chunk of their economy to military spending reads like a who's-who of Places Which I'd Rather Have My Testicles Dynamited Off Than Spend a Week In.

Also, you can't pretend proportionality is a good metric. Two reasons. First, if you assume that some amount of military spending constitutes a necessity, then as the economy gets bigger, then the amount of money spent on necessities should go down.

Of course, military spending is odd, necessity-wise. How much you have to spend depends heavily on how much your enemies are spending. If you're in a standoff with the country across the strait, and they quadruple their spending, then you're compelled to spend a lot more as well.

Which raises the questions: who the hell is forcing us to spend this much? and how much of the rest of the world's spending is driven by the fear of Crazy Uncle Sam deciding to turn its super nifty military's attention towards them?

Re:Military budget

The fact that it's so low leads me to assume that they included Social Security as part of the national budget, but it's funded entirely from its own special tax rather than from general revenue, and is so different from the rest of the budget that it's usually worth mentioning it on its own. It's a program that's actually MAKING money right now, and the surplus, though it is used to finance debt (at interest) is not directly diverted to other programs, but is held out for future Social Security spending (which will, in fact, eventually exceed the program's income and deplete all of that banked-up money, if nothing is changed). It's essentially self-contained and untouchable.

The % of military spending gets worse if you just look at how much it eats from the general budget, i.e. money that could be spent on something else (or not at all). Sometimes Iraq and Afghanistan are left out of figures like this, too, as so much of the funding for them gets tacked on in "supplemental" bills.

Re:Military budget

Hmm... I see this a lot - let me clarify:

1. The government points a gun at you and says "pay me X". You pay X, and then someone tells you that you actually only paid X-Y, because the rest was "different from the rest". Oh goody! I guess that means I can get it back somehow? No? What do you mean, no? You mean it will be distributed according to a Senator's priorities? And how is that different?

2. If a company took your money and promised to do X with it but instead "lent" the money to another company (with the same ownership) that then spent it however they wanted, you would no doubt sue them. The government is taking your money, promising to do nice things with it, and then lending it to itself so it can be given to dairy farmers to buy votes. If you don't believe this, think about how that money will be paid back - that's right, increased taxes. So they are taxing you, lending the money to themselves, and then you are paying the priciple and interest on the loan. Great deal, there!

Re:Military budget

> It's a program that's actually MAKING money right now, and the surplus, though it is used to finance debt (at interest) is not directly diverted to other programs, but is held out for future Social Security spending (which will, in fact, eventually exceed the program's income and deplete all of that banked-up money, if nothing is changed). It's essentially self-contained and untouchable.

Jesus tittyfucking Christ, where the fuck did you get your economics degree? Enron?

Nobody's arguing that the US government won't pay the "bonds" in the "trust fund". We're arguing that in order to pay those bonds and avoid default, the only two options are both equivalent economic catastrophes.

Social Security is like a negative-amortization option-ARM loan... on a product where you know the value of the house (taxpayer revenues) is going to go down, and the interest rate (reflecting your creditors' increasing skepticism on your ability to service the debt) goes up. The only way you can actually pay a $1M loan on a property worth $500K is to (a) raise your revenues by robbing $500K from your neighbor, or (b) counterfeit $500K of money.

Your bank will not let you (c) Write a check to yourself for $500K.

The difference is that when Joe Sixpack steals $500K from a bank, or prints $500K in his basement, he goes to jail. The government is trying to do (c) (the "treasury" "loans" "money" to the "trust fund") and it just doesn't work. It fools people who don't know accounting, but it's ultimately just an Enronesque way of saying (a) or (b).

The reason you don't see it in the private sector is people go to jail for pulling that shit. Would you invest in a bank that has this:

"Your estimated account balance is based on current management policy. Management has made changes to the policy in the past and can do so at any time. The policy governing account balances may change because, by 2040, the deposits invested will be enough to pay only about 74% of account balances."

...buried in the fine print as a disclaimer? NO! Because it's not a fucking bank, it's a fucking pyramid scheme. Go to any bank on the fucking planet, and ask any banker about that statement. Ask him to describe what sort of operation would make you such an offer.

So why the fuck do you trust an organization that says this...

"Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2040, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 74% of scheduled benefits."

...and it's not even the fine print. It's in bold text in the little "statement" the SS administration prints for you every fucking year. It's all over SSA.GOV, for fuck's sake What the figgety-fucking fuck is wrong with you?

When SS's trust fund is depleted, that expense will have to come from somewhere. The only places for that money to come from are:

a) General revenue. Raise taxes (and not just FICA taxes) on everyone to 60-70% of income.
b) Printing press. Catastrophically devalue the dollar in order to make sure everyone gets their $1000/month... even though it'll barely buy a pizza by that time.

A company tried that once. Loaning money to itself. Paying itself with the proceeds of its own bonds. You may have heard of it. It was called Enron. People wound up in jail for it.

Re:Military budget

The fact that it's so low leads me to assume that they included Social Security as part of the national budget, but it's funded entirely from its own special tax rather than from general revenue, and is so different from the rest of the budget that it's usually worth mentioning it on its own. It's a program that's actually MAKING money right now, and the surplus, though it is used to finance debt (at interest) is not directly diverted to other programs, but is held out for future Social Security spending (which will, in fact, eventually exceed the program's income and deplete all of that banked-up money, if nothing is changed). It's essentially self-contained and untouchable.

Not quite correct. The Social Security surplus is used to finance the debt, but there is no interest involved. Intragovernmental lending within the US Federal Government is done with interest-free T-Bills.

Essentially, the Social Security surplus is spent, and an IOU is entered in a ledger somewhere.

Once the surplus evaporates (10 years or so), the government will raise taxes to cover the shortfall, and the Social Security Trust Fund will continue as a ledger full of IOUs, never to be redeemed.

Note that the Social Security Trust Fund is really a case of taking money from your left pocket, moving it to your right pocket, putting an IOU to yourself in your left pocket and spending the money. All while claiming that you still have the money, and showing the IOU as proof.

Contrary to popular myth, Social Security is a Pay As You Go program, not an investment program. Every couple of years the government sends you a form showing what the return on "your" investment in SS is going to be, by and by. But, in fact, your "investment" is just tossed into the general fund to be spent as the pols in Washington desire, and your kids will be charged to pay the SS payments you'll receive by and by.

Re:Military budget

They generally know very little about how the money are allocated.
In a similar study about foreign aid, the majority of people believed the US gave over 1% of the national budget in foreign aid. (against an actual 0.17%) [source] [americans-world.org]
I'd like to decry their apathy and ignorance, but I myself know very little about my own country's budget allocations.

It's a pretty huge disparity, though. Did they really believe everything else had to manage with the remaining 43%? I'll bet a survey with more items would show the average citizen of USA believe the national budget allocations adds up to a lot more than 100%. Does anyone know the real/perceived numbers for other science/research?

Re:Military budget

Study-respondents actually put up with 33%, which what they believed was a figure. America is very specific in military needs, though but 21% seems hell of a lot of money. Must be more than 500b.

Re:Military budget

Study-respondents actually put up with 33%, which what they believed was a figure.

So, how long until the powers-that-be up that percentage to 33%, knowing that most people already believe it to be so?

Re:Military budget

The Federal Budget requested by the President for FY2008 came to $1.7 trillion. So that's basically $340 billion for DoD.

That said, the $340 billion is for the basic operation of the military. Funding for the the war is extra and is not counted in the budget total. So yeah, your guess is pretty close.

Re:Military budget

Part of it is we provide protection for other countries. An example is Japan. Japan spends very little of their budget on defense but we provide military protection. It began over WW II and not wanting Japan to maintain a sizeable military but we inherited a lot of the expense, Japan provides part of the funding. Similar with the Panama Canal. There are lots of examples including bases in Europe. Then there are things like arms subsidies for countries like Israel, but I'm not sure which budget those fall under. Most of the money really doesn't go for defense of our shores so much as our involvement worldwide. And yes a large number of us would love to see the military come home and stay there but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. It's the downside of democracy there's always going to be a percentage that disagree with the majority. We just spent nearly a trillion dollars, and counting, fighting what started out as a few hundred to a few thousand people. It would have been cheaper and saved lives giving each terrorist ten million and send them to Vegas. A few months of gambling and brothel hopping would have taught them the error of their ways.

Re:Military budget

A few months of gambling and brothel hopping would have taught them the error of their ways.

Except that it wouldn't. Not everyone thinks like Americans think, and not everyone considers hedonism a worthy pursuit. Some people just need killing.

Re:Military budget

...not everyone considers hedonism a worthy pursuit. Some people just need killing.

That's an awesome juxtaposition. Hedonists of the world unite!

yes "protection"

much like Al Capone provided to Chicago in the 20s.

Re:Military budget

It's the downside of democracy there's always going to be a percentage that disagree with the majority.

Really ?
I thought the downside of democracy (in the first past the post system anyway) was that the ruling party rarely constitutes the majority. Hence the majority don't get a say in the governing of their country. Besides which, is dissent with popular opinion properly described as a "downside" ? Perhaps you would prefer totalitarianism.

Re:Military budget

While I don't understand the idea of why the USA is defending the west Germans from the east Germans (now that west and east are lower case and there is no border between the two parts of Germany), I generally agree with you on what you are talking about.

BTW, perhaps the most concerning to me is the re-arming of Japan to the point that if the USA were to go away, that Japan can pretty much take care of itself. Explicitly, Japan spends nearly as much on national defense as the United Kingdom, and just ahead of Germany, being the sixth largest military organization in the world. Any significant increase by Japanese defense spending would put them ahead of Russia and might even make them the #2 military power in the world. Go Japan!

Now I'm not seeing a Japanese-American conflict in the near future, but the post WWII philosophy of the USA providing the military protection over Japan to make sure they can't wage a war against the USA has disappeared a long time ago. I'm not saying that the Japanese don't have some strong concerns over national defense, being neighbors to China, Russia, and Korea (both North and South). At this point, it is more of a mutual understanding between Japan and the USA to help each other if that part of the world blows up into open warfare.

Or to put it another way, Japanese military spending compared to the USA is nearly identical to what it was like prior to World War II, even if compared to the GDP of both countries it is significantly lower.

And yes, I'm aware of the legislation in 1938 to disband the U.S. Army.

BTW, your comment about paying each terrorist $10 million is a good one. While in a perfect world, I would agree with you that sending them to Las Vegas would be both a better jobs program for helping poor people (those who work in the hospitality industries of Nevada) and have given these terrorists their 100 virgins in this lifetime instead of a future life to come, I don't see a realistic way to actually make that happen. Still, it is an excellent thought, and I wish these terrorists would have thought about it before killing their fellow muslim brothers (and a few Americans along the way).

Re:Military budget

Let's face it, they would piss most of it way regardless of what it's supposedly being spent on. The U.S. government could eliminate 95% of its budget if it wasn't mired in management practices that were obsolete 50 years ago. It's no exaggeration that I feel it really doesn't matter, because the amount of money that is simply wasted far outweighs defense spending, entitlement spending or anything that could actually be considered a legitimate government expenditure, which I'm sad to say does not include science. Now I love the fact that science is funded, but I hardly see where the federal government has the authority to do so. Not that that stops anything...

Re:Military budget

It is not 21%, it is more like 67%

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/ [thebudgetgraph.com]

Re:Military budget

It is not 21%, it is more like 67%

You are carefully ignoring the majority of the Federal Budget in the link you provide. It merely deals with "discretionary spending". Which is pretty much defined as the fraction of the Budget that has to be approved annually.

The remainder of the budget (the non-discretionary part) is approved annually, but absent approval is automatically continued at the previous level (some parts are automagically adjusted for inflation, some aren't).

The "discretionary" part is the part that doesn't have automatic continuation built-in, but that doesn't really make it fundamentally different - after all, it just takes passage of a law making the (for example) military budget "non-discretionary" to change that.

Re:Military budget

It is not 21% of GDP, it is 21% of the federal government budget. It is more like 3% of GDP, which is a bit higher than the typical European country but not historically extraordinary by any means.

Re:Military budget

Considering it's one of the few things the federal government does that it's actually authorized to do, I'd say that 21% is too small. It should be closer to 100% (and should be mostly Navy spending barring a constitutional amendment; A standing army is not allowed by the constitution and an air force is not even considered.) Though I'd like to see the percentage increase by virtue of divestment of all the other stuff in favor of the states running those aspects.

We're supposed to be a coalition of sovereign states for things like mutual security, currency and infrastructure, a lot like the EU was proposed to be, and not a single monolithic nation, as the EU is marching toward.

Re:Military budget

We're supposed to be a coalition of sovereign states for things like mutual security, currency and infrastructure

We tried that. It was called the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work out too well.

Re:Military budget

This isn't 21% of the "national budget" - the number this alludes to is from Federal Government spending. Note that Social Security and Medicare, the two largest government obligation that spend more than a trillion dollars a year aren't even in the Federal Government budget. Nor is unemployment spending.

The best measure of military spending is percentage of GDP. The US spends 4% of GDP on the military. In 1999, Clinton slashed it down to 3%. In 1986 under Reagan, it had been 6.2%. At the height of World War II, it had been about 38%.

North Korea, on the other hand, spends 20-25% of GDP on its military. Britain and France spend about 2.2% of GDP, and these are two of the most capable militaries on Earth. The US has more obligations though - leading NATO, the defense of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf States, the smaller Pacific States, securing the seas around Somalia, around Singapore, the Carribean, etc.

The US is a great power, but with great power comes great responsibility. The US is notable in history as being rather beneficent in fulfilling her obligations.

Re:Military budget

Also, it's odd that people on slashdot are so quick to encourage massive funding for NASA, because of the technology they develop, yet disparage military spending, which includes a lot of advanced R&D.

Also, NASA is a PR friendly way to fund ballistics research. Making a bomb is one thing, making somethign to deliver the bomb accurately 20,000 km away is a harder engineering problem.

Re:Military budget

Also, NASA is a PR friendly way to fund ballistics research.

You might have made a very well reasoned argument along that line back in the 1950's when NASA was first created, and certainly there have been some refinements of launch technology that have been transfered from NASA to the U.S. Air Force (who runs the actual ballistic missile program in the USA).

But who needs a ballistic nuclear missile to make the journey to Saturn? Or Pluto?

I just don't buy this common argument, and it has very little to do with reality or what NASA actually gets involved with.

The bulk of NASA spending is currently on maintaining the current "army" of workers who service the Space Shuttle, and that is one of the many reasons for the current debacle that surrounds the Ares I & Ares V programs. NASA is more a pork barrel program (starting with Lyndon Johnson back in the 1960's) to "earmark" technical research centers throughout the USA, and a jobs program for PhDs in America.

Because these individuals with PhDs are pretty bright, and they do come up with some cool stuff from time to time, it can be argued in some ways that there is a huge benefit, both economically and politically to have people employed this way. It is also nice to know that somebody in the federal government is doing the way far out "what if?" thinking about what the future of the USA might be like 100 or 300 years from now.

I just don't see how Ares I development is going to help create a new generation of ballistic missiles for the Air Force.

Re:Military budget

It seems only the US is willing to do the hard, thankless work, and the rest of the world is happy to enjoy the benefits, while criticizing everything the US does out the other side of their mouth.

Well, it's generally accepted that that's the state of affairs that tend to come around in a unipolar (one superpower, a global hegemon) world. That position is, in many ways, more precarious than a bipolar world, since there isn't as much of a necessity to rely on a superpower for protection from the other one, since there isn't another one. It's also relatively safe to piss off the hegemon, since any action that country takes to enforce its hegemony is likely to build antipathy globally.

Don't worry, before long we'll get a rival (or, more likely, coalition of rivals) that can go toe-to-toe with us, and then you can stop worrying about how everyone's so damned ungrateful.

Re:Military budget

Don't worry, before long we'll get a rival (or, more likely, coalition of rivals) that can go toe-to-toe with us, and then you can stop worrying about how everyone's so damned ungrateful.

Sadly, I think that you right correct on the "before long". The problem is that China is building as fast as possible. Combine that with Venezula, Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea, etc. and we are in for a rough time.

Re:Military budget

Venezula

I never have quite got this. What on earth is America's big problem with Venezuela? Are they threatening to charge for their oil in euros or something?

Re:Military budget

One word: Socialism.

The US attempts to eliminate socialism wherever it finds any. The real reason there were so many authoritarian socialist regimes in the 20th century is that those are the only ones that can survive the assaults of the US (and to be fair, plenty of other states including the USSR) are the highly militaristic ones.

Re:Military budget

As a Brit I will hold my hands up and publically state that I do, from time to time, engage in some playful anti-americanism. I don't offer any apologises for this however, as I happen to know that many Americans engage in some playful anti-britishness (we do, after all, receive many of your syndicated television programmes here, so get to see some of it first hand).

Having said that, I do appreciate certain benefits that the US provides and, I have visited the states on several occasions (not recently, as I am disturbed by stories I have heard on border policy) and I have found that most Americans that I actually meet to be generally quite nice folks (with some exceptions, but no more than anywhere else in the world).

What irks me, and you do this in your post, is when actions made by the US are made out to be uniquely selfless and benevolent. This simply *does not happen*. No government is a charity, every penny spent must be demonstrated to serve a self interest. What tends to happen is that an action is taken that has some kind of positive secondary effect and that secondary effect is made to look like the primary motivation, but this is nothing more than a bank robber bringing statistcs on how many innocent people that the bank he robbed happened to forclose on in the previous year.

Iraq is a case in point. Weapons of mass destruction, The oppresion of Saddam, or oil revenue/security. One of these things was a primary motivation, the other two were secondary effects spun to look like a primary motivation. Perhaps I am being arrogant myself here, but I am sure that anyone sensible understands that Iraq was a war for resources. Hell, I can even say I understand that motivation (although, the cost has been far too high).

If you are going to praise the US work that goes into protecting trade routes, at least be honest and say that this is done primary to protect the interests of US corporations (and this is true even if the actual goods move between two other states) and that the whole world benefits from the secondary effect of more secure trade routes. For that, I salute you and your culture, but please don't try to make it sound like it is done from the goodness of your hearts.

Re:Military budget

but I am sure that anyone sensible understands that Iraq was a war for resources

While that sounds not unreasonable I have to ask... WHAT resources? What have we actually gotten out it? Nothing that I can see.
Where's all that cheap oil everyone claims we went to war for?

Re:Military budget

Where's all that cheap oil everyone claims we went to war for?

You miss the point. Its not about providing cheap oil to the masses, its about securing the supply for the oil companies to distribute. The price you pay at the pump has nothing to do with it. The 5 year stock price of any western oil company (go check them out on Yahoo finance) has everything to do with it.

Re:Military budget

But are the Western Oil companies actually getting access to the Iraq oil?

Re:Military budget

While that sounds not unreasonable I have to ask... WHAT resources? What have we actually gotten out it? Nothing that I can see.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you think we wanted resources for everyone? No no no, that's not how we do things here [wikipedia.org].

Re:Military budget

Yeah... we just went right in there and took all their oil. `Now we're rich. Go us.

Re:Military budget

I don't disagree with you.

It is great when you can benefit yourself personally, and do a greater good at the same time.

My problem is with the person who make the donation for tax purposes, and then runs around telling everyone about the donation in an effort to gain credit for being selfless.

Re:Military budget

The UN doesn't send troops anywhere unless the US volunteers to spend the vast majority of them.

Why must you turn Slashdot into a house of lies?

Current UN peacekeeping operations [wikipedia.org].

MINURCAT: all European, half of them French.
MONUC: a wide variety of nationalities, none American; largest contingent is from Pakistan.
UNOCI: troops principally from Bangladesh, Bénin, France, Ghana, Jordan, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Sénégal and Togo.
UNMEE: 1,500 of 3,300 troops are from India.
UNMIL: various nationalities, none American.
UNMIS: again many nations, none American.
UNAMID: not in Darfur yet, but among the nations stating that they are likely to participate you will not find the USA.
MINURSO: many nations, none American.
MINUSTAH: principally Brazilian, with other South American nations providing the rest.
UNMOGIP: no Americans.
UNMIT: no Americans [un.org] though Wikipedia does list the US; maybe there was one guy who's since gone home.
UNFICYP: no Americans, troops from many nations led by Argentina.
UNOMIG: this is the first one I've found where there ARE Americans, though the bulk of the force seems to be Russian.
UNMIK: substantial American presence, 3,000 of the 16,000 troops in Kosovo. At the height of the operation the US provided 7,000 of 50,000, just ahead of Germany on 6,000 and equal to France, but well behind Britain's 19,000.
UNDOF: Austria, Canada, India, Japan, Nepal, Poland, and Slovakia.
UNIFIL: no Americans, largest contingents from France, Germany and Italy. UNTSO: has some Americans, can't find a breakdown by nationality, but the total strength of the force is 150.

So, er, yes. Thank you, America, for your great contribution to UN peacekeeping operations worldwide. Now we see why that colossal defence budget of yours is good and necessary.

Re:Military budget

Most Americans have an artificial hatred for UN for some strange reason.

Re:Military budget

Maybe it's because the U.N. has a very real hatred for the U.S. and its interests.

Re:Military budget

Or more likely the US a a very real hatres for anybody elses interests,

It is funny when people talk about the UN as if it were a country that has a clear goal to overtrown the USofA, while the real enemy comes within and is already there in the form of a president among others.

Re:Military budget

A very real hatred demonstrated by what ? the U.N. is nothing more than a forum. Its institutions are neutral, the people running it even more so. Perhaps too neutral for the U.S.'s taste ? Perhaps due to the fact that at the U.N. the U.S. is only one nation amongst hundreds, albeit one with a permanent seat at the security council ?

Re:Military budget

It is simple. (As you can see from the other reply you have got.) US has a "big brother" attitude, it has been like that for a long time now. US economy runs by bullying other countries (this is a gross exaggeration but you get the idea - Iraq is the latest example where an idea that a country other than US has chemical weapons was enough to get majority people riled over it... or the constant "weinventedit" tag on control of internet by ICANN here on Slashdot... the history is filled with examples).

Plus, it is a free land where people who want to shed their cultural identities come all the time (not talking of aliens, but migration from Europe, Asia... etc.). It was also the biggest economy after fall of USSR, if you assume USSR had an "economy". It is but natural for average Americans to have a superiority complex.

And so they don't like UN, because it is a union of every other country. UN and USA have opposite agenda, former wants to listen to everyone while latter wants to have his own say in every matter. A mutual hatred is inevitable.

(UN is just a front of many nations... and most of them don't like this "big brother" attitude of America.)

While people are happy to quote how much USA spends on UN, they forget that it is to have a bigger piece of pie. If it were not for such large contributions, USA would have been expelled from UN after Iraq war started. One might have doubts but USA and UN both need each other.

Re:Military budget

Expelled? Yeah right. Iraq wasn't expelled from the UN for invading Kuwait. Countless countries haven't been expelled for genocide.

Re:Military budget

More countries will stand against USA than Iraq etc. Successful people have more enemies.

But yeah :) It would probably not be expelled... I got carried away with my thinking...

Re:Military budget

I have to agree with the AC look at what happened more recently with Burma. All talk, no walk.

Re:Military budget

The US pays the largest percentage of the peacekeeping budget at around 25%: http://www.state.gov/p/io/pkpg/ [state.gov] US personnel are active in 8 of the 17 peacekeeping operations, but actual US troop numbers were hard to find (or my search abilities were weak). This is further confused by the fact that the US is reluctant to place troops under direct UN control. Kosovo, for example, had US troops under NATO control, so though they were supporting the UN peacekeeping mission, they were not "UN peacekeeping troops" included in the UN's headcount

Re:Military budget

I think the United States is a little busy with their own activities at the moment.

What do you mean

One of the more vocal participants exclaimed, 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"
We've gone to war, where you wanna be!

24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%)

So, 12%?

Re:24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%)

I'm sorry. What?

Re:24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%)

lol. Thanks for the play-by-play. I missed it the first time through.

Re:24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%)

And they say mathematics never ruined anyone's life...

Priorities

respondents believed NASA's budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money.

Bombing stuff is important.

The even more surprising thing is

that the Iraq and Afghanistan War aren't even part of that massive DoD budget!

Re:The even more surprising thing is

Well of course not. Those particular expenses are on the Visa. Thank God we can just print more money, huh?

Wait, what?

There is war in Afghanistan?

Spacetravel does not make oil

War does.

Re:Spacetravel does not make oil

Actually, this war retains oil, which will otherwise be taken away from us, making the problem even worse.

Not that we didn't create the situation; If we hadn't started the war, we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. However, suggesting that the Iraq war was originally about profiting off of oil is ludicrous.

Re:Spacetravel does not make oil

Not that we didn't create the situation; If we hadn't started the war, we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. However, suggesting that the Iraq war was originally about profiting off of oil is ludicrous.

No. It was about Halliburton and a thousand other no-bid contractors profiting off of everything else.

I do hope that Bush, Cheney, and their entire administration are put on trial after the next president takes oath.

Re:Spacetravel does not make oil

Hey, Titan has lots of hydrocarbons.

US military spending

The amount of resources the US spends on the military is obscene, IMHO.

As I referenced in my /. post earlier this month
( here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=352789&cid=21263533 [slashdot.org] )

The US spends almost 60% of all global military spending, not counting the 2 undeclared wars, Iraq and Afganistan. That is $623 Billion out of a total of about $1.1 Trillion. The Iraq war is estimated to cost over 1.2 Trillion(ish), with about 500B spent so far. Those are direct costs - cash spent, and does not count indirect costs or opportunity costs or the human toll.

Some details can be found here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm [globalsecurity.org]

and here

For me, I'm done keeping quiet. I'm done being polite. I'm done hoping that these wrongs will be corrected, eventually. I bring up the reality of what is happening in the US in common discussions with people. It makes people uncomfortable, as it should. Criminals are running the show, and no one has or will step to stop them. Now that the US has installed a chief lawman that is covering up past crimes, there is no more room for polite waiting and hoping things get better legally.

Re:US military spending

Criminals are running the show, and no one has or will step to stop them.

Psst. There's a presidential election next year. Bush & Co are out.

Re:US military spending

And most of Bush's potential replacements are as bad or worse, it appears. Ron Paul excepted.

Re:US military spending

And most of Bush's potential replacements are as bad or worse, it appears. Ron Paul excepted.

Yeah, he only wants to shut down NASA.

The support he gets from racist and hate organizations like Stormfront is a bit troubling too, as are some of this statements from the 80s which are plainly racist.

But hey, he's got a bunch of maniacs on the web pulling for him.

Re:US military spending

Not being American I don't really follow this stuff, but I see absolutely no reason why Ron Paul would have to be anti-semitic to have the support of anti-semites. He just has to have some policies in accord with the policies of anti-semites. If he doesn't believe in propping up Israel because it's none of their business and anti-semites don't believe in propping up Israel because they want Israel's enemies to prevail, well, he'll get some "the enemy of my enemy" votes.

Re:US military spending

Doesn't matter. They are all members of the same old boys club. You can change the figurehead, but not the body of incompetents behind it.

Re:US military spending

Sure, there's an election scheduled. But as time goes on I become more and more skeptical that it will actually happen, or if it does that it will be free and fair. We are extremely close to being a police state, and Bush & Co. have been following the script for creating one fairly closely. One of the upcoming steps is suspension of elections for "security" reasons. The other option is they put in a hand-picked successor by manipulating the election. Either way, waiting for next year's election may be too late.

Re:US military spending

Here's one of the annoying yet remarkable things about slashdot. People who can type yet spew some of the stupidest drivel possible. Somehow it's not ok for Bush to fuck over the Constitution, but it is ok for you to do the same (eg, impeachment on the charge that you don't like him). Despite innumerable claims to the contrary, no one has presented a convincing reason why Bush should be removed from office nor mustered support in Congress to do it. There's a good reason to wait for the next election. It's the right way to remove someone who is otherwise legally in place.

Re:US military spending

Um, the charge is fucking over the Constitution. Seems like a good enough charge to me. And if Congress won't do it, well, maybe we need to get rid of them, too. After all, they should've been doing their fucking jobs and preventing the president from fucking over the Constitution in the first place, not granting him legal loopholes to do it. But believe me, my reasons for wanting him impeached go far beyond the fact that I don't like him. Though I totally agree with you that free and fair elections are the right way to remove someone legally in place, if they're illegally in place and no one will impeach them, it's unlikely you'll get those free and fair elections, isn't it? Also, at this point, removing Bush from office won't necessarily fix the problem anyway... just because the faces change doesn't suddenly remove all the power that the Office of the President has stolen from Congress and the People.

Re:US military spending

As I see it, the problem here is not that the Bush administration is overreaching though it is, but that you seem to think that your dislike is equivalent to a legitimate charge of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". We shouldn't impeach and remove presidents merely because they become unpopular. Perhaps there are a few that don't overstep a bound, but my take is that every administration has done something that is unconstitutional. That's not in itself an impeachable offense. Otherwise, it'd mean that presidents could be removed any time Congress felt like it. As I see it, the Bush administration has backed down every time the Supreme Court has decreed that something is unconstitutional.

In other words, you have no cause for the fantasy you spin. No explanation for why someone in power would attempt to suspend elections, much less think they could get away with it.

Re:US military spending

You know, you're right. It is unfortunate that violating the Constitution is not considered a "high crime". The problem though, is not that this administration has violated the Constitution (again, you're right, every president has), but that it has done so in a consistent systematic way that has progressively shrunk the rights of Americans. To be honest, I don't think the suspension of elections is likely, nor do I think that the administration would get away with it. I find it more likely that the elections will be manipulated to put in place a successor that will just be more of the same. Even if that doesn't happen the fact remains that the Office of the President has grown far too powerful; it is far easier to give or steal power away from the people than it is to wrest it back from those who have usurped it. Free societies have become police states before, and they have done so by following the path we've been following for the past eight years.

As for why someone in power would try to suspend elections, I would think that would be fairly obvious--those in power wish to stay in power. No one seeks power because they want to give it away.

Re:US military spending

While I am in no way trying to disparage what you are trying to say (in fact, it needed to be said), let's get one thing clear:

In 2010, Geroge W. Bush will not be President of the United States of America. Period.

The U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits him from even holding office after that... unless he wants to run for the U.S. House of Representatives again. I have no doubt that the people of Texas might even support that idea, even if Laura might not like the thought.

This isn't a question of what the results of the next election is going to be, because Bush isn't even running for office. He simply can't. Or more to the point, I support the removal of George W. Bush from office under the grounds of the 22nd Article of Amendment of the Constitution: He has served his two terms honorably and it is time for somebody else to take the flak of idiots like the one who insists that Bush get impeached. It took over two years for Clinton to get impeached...when there was even support for the idea. Two years from now, Bush won't even be President.

BTW, a part of me really does want to see Hillary run against George W. Bush. And from a political strategy viewpoint, I think it is incredible that she has organized her campaign explicitly along the lines to run against Bush when he isn't even running.

Re:US military spending

As far as I can see, the war in Iraq is thoroughly justified, well-executed, and cheap in both material and human terms. Compared to pretty much any war of comparable scale, any way. Compared to a family picnic perhaps not so much, but you'd have to be insane to make that comparison.

Re:US military spending

"As far as I can see, the war in Iraq is thoroughly justified, well-executed, and cheap in both material and human terms."

It would have been cheaper to buy Iraq outright. Every person in Iraq could have gotten $40,000 and the US a 51st state for a cool 1.07 trillion... George is an idiot.

Re:US military spending

Yea, ummm, we already tried that. We put a guy named Saddam in charge. Didn't work out so good.

Re:US military spending

ya.. when a war costs nearly a trillion dollars, kills 100x the people it was started over [supposedly] and considering that Iraqi people are DYING AT A RATE GREATER THAN UNDER SADDAM HUSSEIN, "well-planned", "well-justified" and "well-spent" would not be the words I'd use for it. More like "TERRORISM"

Re:US military spending

Look at military spending as percentage of GDP. That's what makes a superpower these days. The US economy is so much larger than most others that a relatively small percentage of GDP adds up to a huge raw number.

Try Truth and Politics [truthandpolitics.org] for some interesting charts and numbers. Take a look at this PDF from the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Division [fas.org] for comparisons to other countries including charts to rank by total dollars and an alphabetical list.

The US spends far less of the country's total buying power on defense than many other countries, and much of that is spent helping defend allies around the globe. Those allies tend to be happy for the help, although the specific methods employed often come into question.

Re:US military spending

The amount of resources the US spends on the military is obscene, IMHO.

If that is the case, what about the money that the USA spends on social programs?

Or worse yet, servicing federal debt?

Military spending in the USA isn't even the #2 item in the federal budget today, and if the Pentagon were to be demolished, every member of the armed forces discharged, all of the bases closed... or in effect the Department of Defense eliminated from the federal budget, there would be virtually no impact on overall federal spending.

I'm not saying that in many cases some huge mismanagement of funds spent toward the military is inappropriate, but comparisons in the way that you have made them are hugely inappropriate.

Furthermore, I would strongly question the figure of the USA spending 60% of all global military expenditures. While I have no doubt that you can find some source like some UN agency to proffer those numbers, there are so many things to account for actual defense spending that it is difficult at best to compare one country to another, much less every country in the world. Particularly when it comes to military spending, there are so many things that affect exchange rates, the amount of money spent on military pay, conscription rates, and more that have a huge influence on the actual "cost" of maintaining a military. The U.S. Department of Defense is pretty open (particularly in a democracy that requires public accountability for these expenditures), is staffed by an all-volunteer force, and has an exchange rate with other countries that is at best unfavorable. Compare that to China where there are conscripts, do not necessarily publish accurate figures about how much they spend on their military (and no real need to do so), and a deliberate manipulation of the exchange rates to encourage more trade imbalances going their way. Very few countries in the world even have a political climate to derive accurate figures for military spending that even attempting to generate those numbers is difficult at best, and for most a hopeless cause that is more of a pure guess.

America can easily afford military spending at its current levels, and by itself I don't think this is a reason to post such a "hate America" diatribe here. You can be critical of specific policies and perhaps of perceived political injustices due to being a political heavyweight in world politics. But otherwise you are being clueless about the topic you are writing about here. Far more countries have a much greater proportion of their economic capability getting dumped into military spending, and use their militaries not for fighting external aggressors but for oppression of their civilian populations.

Re:US military spending

Military spending in the USA isn't even the #2 item in the federal budget today, and if the Pentagon were to be demolished, every member of the armed forces discharged, all of the bases closed... or in effect the Department of Defense eliminated from the federal budget, there would be virtually no impact on overall federal spending.

That is completely false. Of the discretionary budget of ~1 trillion. $717 billion goes to military/national security. The Department of Defense gets 481 billion directly with 145 billion allocated separately for the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan. Demolishing the pentagon would have a huge impact on the federal spending and would reduce by at least 480 billion, but it would throw us into a major recession because so many jobs rely in the military industrial complex.

The overall budget is approximately 2.9 trillion but Social Security(608 billion), medicare (386 billion) and medicaid (202 billion) are paid for by separate taxes and are not discretionary spending.

More on the budget http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1 [thebudgetgraph.com]

Re:US military spending

All spending is discretionary. Just because some law was written around WW2 doesn't mean that congress can't change how it works. This is a sad excuse to change the conversation. The taxes are different? They're still taxes paid by the same people! In fact, the middle class pays more towards social security because of the income cap on social security.

It is disingenuous to say that non-discretionary spending should be ignored.

Re:US military spending

You're right, it's not the #2 item, IT'S THE NUMBER ONE ITEM!!!!

Re:US military spending

I'd love the see the DoD truly staffed by an all-volunteer force.

This is an AC troll trying to goad me, but for the sake of argument here (and because this is so incredibly inept that it deserves are response), I'd like to point out something here:

The U.S. Army is staffed completely by people who have voluntarily joined its ranks. They have stepped up to the recruiter and signed up on their own, without any government program that "forces" them to be there.

In most other countries of the world, including much of Europe, soldiers are "drafted" into the service and are conscripts, not volunteers. This is a huge difference between how the U.S. military is organized compared to those of other countries.... and a reason why the U.S. Army does comparatively better on the battlefield: The soldiers have personal motivations above and beyond the gun pointed at them by their own government to serve.

On top of everything else, the purpose of a decent military organization is to scare the hell out of anybody who wants to challenge that country's military... in other words, peace through strength. It also is the final line of civil defense if for some reason local police can no longer maintain civil control. In theory, if you challenge the police with automatic weapons and RPGs, the police can call in the military to deal with your challenge to the government. And it has happened on a few occasions. Generally this role is performed by the National Guard units, but active duty Army units can also get involved (or more likely Marine units) if the Guardsmen are overwhelmed.

BTW, the reason why completely cutting the DoD spending wouldn't have any real impact is that I have no doubt that existing federal departments and programs could easily grow to use that same money.... and more than likely would. A national health care system, to use a recent political example, is one of those that could easily grow to completely consume current defense spending and be begging for much more.

Re:US military spending

Although I can provide no links, I do remember seeing many breakdowns of how "war money" is spent. A good portion of that was on equipment and R&D. When I say equipment, I mean non-expendables. A know alot of money has been spent on converting all of our HMMWVs (Humvee) to be up-armored. It seems obvious that having a whole bunch of troops running around on a battlefield without armor was a bad thing. So, the Army added armor to any vehicle that can handle armor. As a Soldier (but not speaking on behalf of the Army or US Government), I'm glad that we learned this against an adversary which doesn't pose a threat to us domestically. Learning this against a large world power would have been probably been costly. Now, the Army has loads and loads of uparmored HMMWVs. Although it was a war expense, it should have been a peace time expense. However, people are treating these numbers like the money would have never been spent if we hadn't gone to war. It's possible that's true, but the money isn't going into "consumables" 100%. Yes, we now spend more money on feeding soldiers, because the food is shipped. However, the Soldiers would have been fed in the states anyway. Again, it's money that is attributed to the war budget, but a portion would have been spent in peace anyway.

Now, I'm not saying I think we should or shouldn't spend this much money on defense, I'm simply saying that you should take any numbers that are based around something so politically charged with a grain of salt. I think all government budgets, it could be shrunk by using the money better. That's a given though. Education, Health Care, Defense, and even NASA have huge amounts of monetary waste simply because of their size. There will be people who mismanage the money (either through mistakes or malice). I'd still like to see alot of that waste go away.

DISCLAIMER: I am a Soldier currently deployed in support of OIF. My above views in no way represent the views of the US Government or the US Army. The above is an indication only of my personal view points and observations.

Re:US military spending

I bring up the reality of what is happening in the US in common discussions with people.

You must be that guy at work.

Labor Costs

The US spends almost 60% of all global military spending,

Don't forget that we also have higher labor costs. The paycheck for a typical soldier in China or India is going to be something like 1/7th that of the US.
       

The post may be wrong.

From CIA Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html [cia.gov]:
Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 4.06% (2005 est.).
Does this 4.06% (~530 billion dollars) of GDP (2006 est.) correspond to 21% of the federal budget?

If this is true, the federal budget represents ~2.524 trillion dollars, or ~19.3% of GDP... It seems a lot.

Re:The post may be wrong.

Does this 4.06% (~530 billion dollars) of GDP (2006 est.) correspond to 21% of the federal budget? If this is true, the federal budget represents ~2.524 trillion dollars, or ~19.3% of GDP... It seems a lot.

Seems pretty low, actually. The British government typically spends something like 40% of GDP. The US tends to be a lot further right, and so generally has lower taxes, but I don't think it's that much less. Possibly the individual state budgets are not counted in that figure?

Re:The post may be wrong.

Sounds about right. Middle class is in the 25ish% tax bracket, and most of us have mortgages and other things which reduce our tax liability.

Re:The post may be wrong.

Possibly the individual state budgets are not counted in that figure?

Bingo. The 19.3% figure is only federal (national) government spending.

There is an unofficial holiday each year called Tax Freedom Day [taxfoundation.org]. Based on the average total tax burden for a US citizen compared to their average income, it's the day on which we start working for ourselves instead of for the government. For example, if the total amount of federal, state and local government taxes was equal to two twelfths of people's total income in a given year, Tax Freedom Day would fall on March 1st of that year. They seem to calculate it based on taxes/GNI, which is a decent proxy for budget/GDP.

Tax Freedom Day in 2007 fell on April 30th. "In percentages, [US] government at all levels now takes 32.7 percent of the nation's income." Still less than the British govt, but not by nearly as much.

Re:The post may be wrong.

Over 30% less than the UK (or, from the other perspective, the UK spends almost 45% more), in fact, which is quite a significant difference in the grand scheme of things (the US has one of the lowest government costs in the world). In the business world, a difference that large would put one company's profits through the roof and the other company out of business. The UK is not the largest per-capita cost by a long shot, and we get much more done here for much less. Our defense spending is relied upon worldwide to varying extents, which further lightens the load for our European allies, allowing them to have much smaller defense budgets.

Remember that just as state and local spending is not included in the US figures, municipal spending doesn't appear in most other countries' figures--and its relative cost is higher in unitary systems, as local governments finance much of what a state government would.

Also note that state and local spending produces NOWHERE near the 10% difference you imply by your source (which would suggest that state spending is nearly half the federal budget). 32.7% is not the tax liability per capita by a long shot, because you're using a totally different methodology for calculations than the post you're replying to (government as share of GDP vs. dubious and misleading "tax freedom" dates). 32.7% is within the spin-inflated reasonable range for the aggregate cost of government (which in turn doesn't credit the portion generated by government), but individual total share is under 25% (since citizens only pay taxes in ONE state each, not all fifty).

Re:The post may be wrong.

From my limited understanding, far more of the government is centralized in the UK than in the US. While local spending is probably quite similar, the US has far greater state spending than the UK. Most of British government, from what I've heard anyway, is either local or national. Feel free to correct me.

Re:The post may be wrong.

Well, that's the oeuvre of a unitary system. There IS no state spending in the US sense of the word. The big-ticket items are nationalized, and you don't have the repetition in spending you do here (there's no second legislature to fund, no administrative overhead from state health programs). On the other hand, things like emergency services, libraries, and other services which are usually funded (indirectly) by state (as in U.S. state, not the traditional meaning of the term) revenue are instead funded locally. Local /municipal governments therefore cost "more" in effect than in the US because they're not propped up by US-state money.

For example, say local government spending on paper is 0.5% of PCI in the US and state spending is 2.3%. On paper in the UK, local government might be 2%--4x the US--but that's because the US gross budget numbers don't account for how much of the state budget just gets handed off to cities/counties (which might bring them closer to parity). So just 0.8% of the money, less administrative overhead, rolls back to national programs. All of these numbers are illustrative, not empirical.

The raw data are collected through different means for calculations like these. Depending on what purpose you want to serve, you can count the money based on who collects it (in unitary systems, usually predominantly the state ("nation")) or based on where the money is spent. In places like the UK that lack a US-style state, power and money is redistributed to compensate. Most of the power goes to the national level, but lots of the spending gets channeled down to the municipal/local level, where it makes more sense (roads, general social services [not big-ticket things like social insurance and health care, but the other kind], recorder's offices, courts).

Re:The post may be wrong.

Parent post misstates many facts and is quite misguided about the whole thing. Every number in the post is wrong, as is some of the reasoning. I'm not going to waste my time correcting someone who's obviously not interested in the actual numbers, but I didn't want to let it stand either. If anyone else is actually reading this and wants the details, just reply to my post so I get a notification and I can help you out.

Re:The post may be wrong.

Yawn. Your figures are disingenuous.

The United States has the third lowest tax burden of all OECD countries (~27%), beating out only Mexico (which taxes mostly goods and services) and South Korea (which benefits from a high export surplus and lower entitlement expenditures but even still only manages to fall in at one percentage point less).

Tax/GNI is not equivalent to budget/GDP. Budgets are not directly linked to current taxes and introduce a wild amount of error in your calculation. Your premise is faulty, and your site doesn't reflect the average citizen, but the average statistical fictional person-unit because unlike proper research methods you're attributing tax burdens to individuals where they are not taxed (both in redundant state spending overlap and in corporate taxes).

If you were to use comparable data sources for the UK, the amount would be proportionally increased, meaning that you're not really closing the gap at all with your "numbers". UK tax burden is ~43% higher than in the US, with an ~11% increase in budget/GDP (38% vs. 27% [and yes, that is inclusive]), reported by OECD for over 30 years and for dozens of countries, while your source is used by no one but nutters. Do you honestly believe what you wrote? You accepted a poorly-calculated figure (19%) and said "that's not all" and linked to a sensationalized and equally poorly-calculated different figure that proposes 33%--intimating that 1/3 of spending was missing. The "missing taxes" don't close the gap nearly as far as you suggest, and eerily like the saying, the truth is almost exactly in the middle.

People in the United States enjoy a ~30% lower tax burden than in the UK, all spending inclusive. It is the one of the lowest in the developed world and the lowest of the G8. At 27%, it's little more than half of the first-ranked 52% (Sweden). Coupled with the gigantic defense spending disparity (European-level spending on defense would cut US tax burden down into the 22-3% range), our tax burden is arguably too low compared to other developed nations.

Americans know lots of things.

Americans might not know NASA versus Defense Department budgets and all that useless crap, but I bet the majority could pick Britney Spears' crotch out of a line-up.

Re:Americans know lots of things.

Or could tell you who is winning Dancing with the Stars. That ought to use a little bit of that massive defense budget on the bozos that came up with that crap show.

Re:Americans know lots of things.

Leave Britney alone!

Re:Americans know lots of things.

Hey,

Better than picking a line-up out of Brittney Spears crotch!

Re:Americans know lots of things.

I'll get you for that. I spit a mouthful of coffee all over my keyboard.

Hope you don't mind if I pass that along if the occasion arises.

Federal budget vs. GDP

Those are interesting figures, but I'd argue that the important figure (besides the straight-out money amounts) isn't NASA/defense spending as a portion of the federal budget, but rather how they compare as a percentage of GDP (gross domestic product). For FY 2006, the federal budget was 18.4% of total GDP, meaning that NASA was 0.107% of GDP and defense spending was 3.86% of GDP. Despite this, NASA still spends more on spaceflight and space science than the rest of the world combined.

That said, even though NASA could probably use more funding, misallocation of resources is still a huge problem. I agree heartily with this recent comment by Clark Lindsay over at RLV News:

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=4926 [hobbyspace.com]

Keith Cowing responds to Mike Griffin's claim that he did not cause the VSE budget problems: Mike Griffin on VSE Woes: "I did not put us into this position" - NASA Watch - Nov.15.07

        You most certainly did get the agency into the predicament that it is in today. Instead of going off and reinventing the wheel (Ares 1) you could have bought EELVs off the shelf from a ULA catalog and focused only on CEV development. You forced a rigid and recycled architecture upon the agency - one that requires large monolithic launchers - when in fact you could have come up with one that used existing launchers or straightforward derivations thereof.

I can certainly support that scolding. I think Ares 1 is a disaster and Ares V is a bad dream. However, rather than NASA choosing an EELV outright, I would have preferred a Super-COTS competition in 2006 that went something like the following:
* A budget of two or three billion dollars for Phase 1
* As with COTS, the systems proposed should be capable of supplying a minimum amount cargo to the ISS per year but be upgradable to crew operations no later than 2011.
* The ULA firms would be invited to enter their proposals along with the entrepreneurial rocket firms
* Four commercial launcher proposals would be selected for Phase 1
* The entrants would decide for themselves whether a capsule or lifting body or whatever is the most cost effective system for cargo/crew delivery.
* Assuming at least two firms successfully fulfilled Phase 1, the two with the lowest cost/kg to the ISS would each be guaranteed half of all NASA launches to LEO in, say, the period 2010-2015.
* NASA would focus on lunar exploration systems that would work within the capabilities of the COTS transports. (This would no doubt involve a more modular approach than is currently envisioned.)

Too late now, of course, to run such a COTS competition. It's possible, though, that Lockheed-Martin has used the current studies with Bigelow and SpaceDev to prepare a proposal for NASA launch services just in case the next administration cancels Ares 1. On the other hand, if the Falcon 9 initial flights go well, there will be no need for such alternatives.

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

... but rather how they compare as a percentage of GDP

Why does it make sense to divide this statistic by GDP?

Dividing by GDP is statistical trick used in the US to make numbers look lower. Did you know that the USA has the lowest IQ per GDP on the planet? What does that prove?

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

Because that's a decent way to compare relative expenditures in different countries.

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

We're talking about the budget of a single country.

P.S. Your logic also assumes that things are linearlly scalable.

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

We're talking about the budget of a single country.

So what? This sort of normalization is also useful for comparing quantities over time. Money and GDP changes. IIt's like the use of dimensionless quantities [wikipedia.org] in engineering.

P.S. Your logic also assumes that things are linearlly scalable.

Linear scalability is a math operation. I just did it. The logic is consistent and useful.

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

You totally missed the point on both counts.

Re: 1st, we're not talking about time either.
(You also assume that GDP is valid metric, which it is not)

Re: linearity
If a country with 1/1000th the GDP of the US who wishes to have a space program tries
spending 1/1000th of what the US does, it is unlikely to get much of anything useful,
let alone 1/1000th as much ROI. *That* was the point. Some things have to be done big
and require a certain minimum level of inputs e.g; aircraft carriers and major space
exploration. Jeeps or sub-orbital thrill rides don't require as much, but you don't get
as much either.

Re:Federal budget vs. GDP

You totally missed the point on both counts.

I'd like to see a reason why I'm wrong here. All I can see is that this bothers you for some reason even though we're not doing IQ per GDP calculations here.

Re: 1st, we're not talking about time either.
(You also assume that GDP is valid metric, which it is not)

We are talking about quantities that can be compared either to other time periods or to other countries. Such comparisons are in fact a standard and reasonable thing to do. Hence, normalizing by GDP is a reasonable as well.

Re: linearity
If a country with 1/1000th the GDP of the US who wishes to have a space program tries spending 1/1000th of what the US does, it is unlikely to get much of anything useful, let alone 1/1000th as much ROI. *That* was the point. Some things have to be done big and require a certain minimum level of inputs e.g; aircraft carriers and major space exploration. Jeeps or sub-orbital thrill rides don't require as much, but you don't get as much either.

That sum of money would be roughly 16 million USD. That's sufficient to fund a space probe, high altitude balloon program, sounding rockets, earth-based telescope, or a number of other things that would be considered a modest space program. Given the remarkably low ROI on many space projects (eg, the Space Shuttle or International Space Station) due to political dynamics, it's not clear to me that this hypothetical country would have a comparably low ROI. 16 million USD is relatively easy to isolate from political corruption and dillution of purpose.

Another thing to note is that when you spend that money is as important as how. In twenty years, it may be feasible for our above country to fund a small orbital science research lab, for example. Technology of the future may make such a task affordable.

The war against humanity

As many of you are already starting to realize, governments are not working for the total benefit of the public. They can be manipulated into making our lives harder than necessary, and they do it quite efficiently. Wars are invented, monetary systems hold a fierce grip on people making them their slaves, etc.
All this anxiety, hate, disillusion, and sorrow is one of their aims. Why? because an ignorant, weak and depressed humanity can be more easily manipulated into its own destruction, whether it be by itself, or by a treat from outer space, and this is the final goal.
What can we do? Wish for a change, spread the good, think positive, and motivate a change from within. The world is not as bad as they want us to believe, there is more good that anything else, but that doesn't make the news.
All I am saying: The darkest moment is right before the dawn.

Re:The war against humanity

All I am saying: The darkest moment is right before the dawn.

Are you trying to say its going to get darker?

Re:The war against humanity

Not necessarily darker, but it depends on us, and that is why we need to be optimistic and irradiate goodness. The world is not going to be destroyed, but the world must change, and each one of us is here with a purpose that we need to discover and accomplish. This is the time when the time is now.

Re:The war against humanity

It's actually pretty bright right before dawn....

budget

While the allocated military budget may be 21%, once you take into account all the related costs (i.e., costs you didn't have with so large a military), the military probably accounts for more than half of the federal budget.

What is truly scary, however, is not this little factoid about NASA, it's that people who are supposed to live in a democracy and keep whining about taxes have no idea where their money goes.

So, let me summarize it simply: if you want lower taxes, don't vote in a militaristic nut next time.

Re:budget

...or a nut that must fund every social program under the sun.

Re:budget

...or a nut that must fund every social program under the sun.

The US hasn't had one of those in many decades; the fact that you think this is a real possibility just shows that you're both uninformed and brainwashed.

We have been to ...

Typical uninformed citizen moans 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"

Not True! We have been to Iraq, Kuwait, Afganistan, Panama ... Soon we will be going to Iran, Pakistan... What rot these guys are talkin' 'bout?

Re:We have been to ...

Typical uninformed citizen moans 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!' [in space]" Not True! We have been to Iraq, Kuwait, Afganistan, Panama ... What rot these guys are talkin' 'bout?

And we cratered them up too. If you can't go to a moon, then bring a moon to you.
     

I'm reminded of what Ike said:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

A strong military is essential to safeguarding liberty and the Republic. But a strong military doesn't have to be one of excess. The military has become a tool for delivering profits to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and other conglomerates under the auspice of national security. It's a tool congressmen use to allocate military projects to their districts, whether or not such projects benefit the mission at hand.

Some examples of the Pentagon's famed waste and corruption:

The Crusader artillery project, finally canceled in 2002 after $11 billion was spent on it. Donald Rumsfeld said it wasn't mobile enough for the 21st century. What is so wrong with the current Paladin artillery platform that this project was required in the first place?

And what about the Coast Guard's troubled modernization efforts [reuters.com], contracted out to Lockheed and Northrop? The project is $7 billion overbudget and nine years behind schedule, yet both of these companies still continue to work on it. And Lockheed and Northrop will continue working on projects for decades to come despite this.

The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough? If the branches could afford dabbling in that stuff, then they should go for it. But it's a matter of prioritizing; money is not infinite, despite what the debt-ridden government believes. Maintain the systems we have, many of which are at the breaking point after years of service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Churning out more wonder weapons seems pointless when our current crop of fighters perform just fine.

There comes a point where we must see this game for what it is. The challenge is in creating a ready, able, and fearsome fighting force while not indulging the excesses of the military-industrial complex. And I know that many great things have come from Pentagon-sponsored R&D projects. But these programs can still exist without spending countless sums of money.

And this doesn't even take into account that such a fearsome military is all too often misused in wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq. So we spend all of this money to build a huge military, then spend even more money to misuse it...without ever having declared war. Brilliant.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

The military has become a tool for delivering profits to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and other conglomerates under the auspice of national security.
Is there another company better suited for designing aircraft and other military technolgies? If so, why aren't they bidding on more military contracts?

The Crusader artillery project, finally canceled in 2002 after $11 billion was spent on it. Donald Rumsfeld said it wasn't mobile enough for the 21st century.
Imagine the first pioneers in computing. To 99% of Americans, I'm sure it sounded impossible/stupid/wasteful/etc.. Guess who poured R&D money into computing? Guess who still does? Yes, several military projects have been nothing but giant sinks. They failed. The produced nothing. Can you show me a research institution that hasn't had a failed project? Yes, these failures have big dollar costs, but the successes that they have are immeasurably succesful.
Do you have any idea how much money the military has spent on developing medical technology and techniques? When we go to war, demand for this tech only increases...

The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough?
The F-15 was designed in the 70s. Yes, it's time to replace it if we're going to stay #1. I firmly believe that if you don't have the best airforce in a major war, you loose. I like a my countries military setting itself up for success by being the best. I'm sure if you were the pilot in one of these aircraft, or a Soldier on the ground being supported by these aircraft, you'd agree. Oh, and did you here about just the other day when an F-15 fell out of the sky? Have you heard about the numerous times that "maximum flight hours" for these craft have been extended because nobody expected them to still be in service?

And this doesn't even take into account that such a fearsome military is all too often misused in wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq. So we spend all of this money to build a huge military, then spend even more money to misuse it...without ever having declared war.
What the military is used for, and how big its budget is are to different subjects. Always try to emphasize one point when making an argument and don't throw in a random tangent.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

Okay, the F15 is old, so why not build new F15's, which are STILL better than anyone else's shit, and not spend money to design a new aircraft, when we already have the ability to build one that is very much sufficient to defeat any foe.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

"so why not build new F15's, which are STILL better than anyone else's shit"

Not really. The Russian Su-27 and family are very close in capability to the F-15. Electronics-wise, they're a bit behind, but the airframes are about on par with current US aircraft. In exercises held recently, Indian Su-30s beat US F-15s pretty soundly.

The Typhoon, while a little smaller than the F-15, is just as (if not more) maneuverable, and has newer avionics and systems. It will eventually carry the Meteor, which outranges any current US missile.

The French Rafale is similar.

There's only so much an airframe can do for you. And even if everyone is still not caught up, what's to say that they won't in the next five or ten years? Do you wait till everyone's caught up with you before you start working on new technology? No, because everyone else will pass you in the time it takes to get everything rolling. You have to stay ahead of the game.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

Because not only are they old... but they are expensive to maintain. Reducing Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs were generally not a design driver in aviation in the 70's and 80's. As the cost of aircraft have increased, the military (and the people) expect these vehicles to have significant lifetimes. Over long vehicle service lifes, high O&M costs can crush your future budgets. Modern aircraft, while much more expensive to develop and procure, can actually *save* money in the long run by having a smaller maintenance and operations footprint. For example, the 787 and F-35 were designed to maintainable from the outset. The maintenance procedures were developed while the vehicles were still in the CAD phases with the simplicity of these procedures driving key elements of the design. This wasn't possible when the F-14/15/16/18 were developed.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

Is there another company better suited for designing aircraft and other military technolgies?

No, but there used to be about 50.

If so, why aren't they bidding on more military contracts?

Because the government has trouble effectively wielding the power they hold with a plurality of demand, whereas the merging aerospace companies fully understood how much power they would hold with a plurality of experienced supply.

To be fair, this is hardly a government-exclusive problem. It's just another version of industry's complaint that they can't find enough experienced employees and they don't want to hire anyone unexperienced. Make too many good short term decisions without worrying about the negative long term consequences and eventually it catches up with you.

No, air superiority is not necessary.

I firmly believe that if you don't have the best airforce in a major war, you loose.

You seem to think that air superiority is still important. This is an old point of view which has been superseded with the renewn interest in improving the army.

The Army can hide under bunkers and buildings, hide amongst the population, camouflage its tanks and anti-air guns and artillery. The army can move and occupy land. Not the air force.

Bombing before landing is important but the navy can do that more easily than the air force so why the need for air superiority?

The only reason is to be able to use helicopters and cargo airplanes. They can make your grunts move faster and safer but that's pretty much it. And don't forget that you can get air superiority thanks to anti-air guns and missile systems. As a matter of fact, do you still believe there are dog fights in the sky? Air planes are now airborn missile platforms to bomb and intercept. Small and stealthy pilotless aircrafts are the future.

The air force is not obsolete but it is definitely not the most important part of the team. The ground troops are the most important. The others are just gravy.

The Top Gun era has ended. Time to move on.

Re:No, air superiority is not necessary.

You seem to think that air superiority is still important. This is an old point of view which has been superseded with the renewn interest in improving the army.

Air superiority will always be necessary, as is ocean superiority. You cannot control the land if you cannot defeat what comes from the air and sea.

The Army can hide under bunkers and buildings, hide amongst the population, camouflage its tanks and anti-air guns and artillery. The army can move and occupy land. Not the air force.

Mission objectives are not always to take land, sometime you just need a specific target neutralized. Sometimes that target is someone else's air power.

Bombing before landing is important but the navy can do that more easily than the air force so why the need for air superiority?

Yeah that navy is going to be doing that with a carrier battlegroup, which is arguably THE air-superiority force at sea. If you don't own the sky when the ships show up, your enemy can hit them from the air.

The only reason is to be able to use helicopters and cargo airplanes. They can make your grunts move faster and safer but that's pretty much it.

Truely, but lets not forget the ability to provide close-air support troops in trouble on the ground, or simply to make their fight easier. And medivac and C&C/intel birds too.

And don't forget that you can get air superiority thanks to anti-air guns and missile systems.

Only if you want to put your platforms at risk, easier and cheaper to send a bird than try to explain why a nuclear carrier is sinking because an enemy fighter got close enough for a lucky shot.

As a matter of fact, do you still believe there are dog fights in the sky?

If you ignore the basics, someone somewhere one day will seriously make you regret it.

Air planes are now airborn missile platforms to bomb and intercept. Small and stealthy pilotless aircrafts are the future.

Remote control is fine but nothing beats being AT the fight.

The air force is not obsolete but it is definitely not the most important part of the team. The ground troops are the most important. The others are just gravy.

Depends on the conflict. If you want to take and hold ground, sure, never gonna happen without a man in the mud. But if your mission objectives are to break a blockaded port, or destroy a weapons facility, etc its a different game. Oh and by the way, when you do put in the ground pounders, chances are they won't be "regular" Army, it'll be Rangers, paratroopers, air cavalry, and the Marines. Regular army is largely defensive and support these days.

The Top Gun era has ended. Time to move on.

Yeah that theory was behind the reason that we needed the Top Gun school in the first place.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

What the military is used for, and how big its budget is are to different subjects. Always try to emphasize one point when making an argument and don't throw in a random tangent.

You think it's that clean cut? Ever heard the adage, "If all you have is a hammer, you start seeing nails everywhere?" Our outrageous military spending and our outrageously militaristic behavior are joined at the hip.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough?

Never. This isn't a problem caused by the military industrial complex, but a traditional fact of war for millenia. Technology is constantly upgrading. A military force that fails to keep up will gradually grow irrelevant. However, there are a number of problems here that do come from the military industrial complex. The key one is that future military capability in democracies is routinely sacrificed for rent-seeking. This is the real problem you are seeing. For example, the F-22 project was intended to build 4 times more planes than it actually did (183 bought compared to 750 intended). So the huge investment in the F-22 infrastructure has turned out to be another boondoggle. The fun and games comes both at the expense of the US taxpayer and of US military effectiveness.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

You know nothing of history. It is a strong military that makes peace and prosperity possible. Before the advent of organized cities and armies, humans lived by the creed might makes right and were largely nomadic. In those societies, the mere existence of the weak was considered theft from the strong.

No civilization in history has ever experienced significant and sustained population growth without a large army. Such a statement is based on the fundamentally flawed belief that men are inherently just and that there is in reality no need for a military. Considering that most of the world today is far less civilized than even the Roman Empire in decline, I would be careful what you wish for.

Anarchy and fear are the life experiences of most of the world's people. The few beacons of civility that exist are maintained via military strength.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

Churning out more wonder weapons seems pointless when our current crop of fighters perform just fine.

The problem is, "performs just fine" twenty years ago does not equal performing just fine today.

Did you happen to hear about the Chinese submarine that just popped up next to the USS Kitty Hawk [dailymail.co.uk], the only US supercarrier, during a USN exercise last week? The submarine slipped past a protective ring of 12 other warships and at least two other submarines, just so the Chinese could tell us that they can do so.

Obviously our technology is good enough. Jeez.

What I don't understand is how they can build such good submarines and still sell us such crappy electronics :)

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

Whoops. It's the last remaining Kitty Hawk class carrier, which I was under the impression was the only class of "supercarrier." Turns out there are several classes in the "supercarrier" category. Yay! Now I know too much, and they're going to be coming to send me to Gitmo in the night. Write me!

NSF even worse

NSF entire budget in FY07 was ~37% of NASA's budget (16B vs 5.9B). Of that 5.9B
$215M went to astronomy. ~56% of that $215M went to facilities like NRAO, NAIC, Gemini and NOAO.

      NSF has a much better track record than NASA in terms of ROI it's just not as sexy.

      While I'd love to see NASA's budget increased I'd prefer to see NSF's increase.

http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2007/tables.jsp#tables [nsf.gov]

Belthize

What about scale?

seriously, this is the dumbest comparison I have ever read... how many people work for the military & how many vehicles do they have to maintain compared to NASA? Thats like bitching that the Oswego NY school system doesnt get as much as the NYC school system...

Re:What about scale?

There is a delay effect in terms of spending, and if you ask the Baby Boomers (now approaching retirement) about NASA and who they might have known that was either an ex-NASA employee or somebody connected to a NASA contractor, I think you might be very much surprised.

Back during the Apollo era, it seemed as though nearly all surplus engineering talent was being soaked up by the nearly "limitless" funds being spent on NASA, and it was an amazingly huge part of not only the U.S. economy, but also on nearly every other headline you would find in the newspapers... and routinely on the evening news on television. If you didn't live in the 1960's (I was just a kid at the time.... so my perspective is somewhat warped through the lens of childhood) it is very difficult to comprehend what exactly I'm talking about here. It was hard to think which got more P.R. attention in the 1960's.... going to the Moon or the Vietnam War.

In addition, in terms of how many people worked for the military vs. how many worked for NASA.... again, there was surprisingly parity there in the 1960's as well. NASA had of course fewer actual employees, but I would dare say there were perhaps more actual civilian contractors (at least employees of civilian contractors) than would be involved with the military at the time. And in terms of vehicles that NASA maintains.... it is quite a bit more than just the couple dozen spacecraft that they are famous for. NASA maintains a couple of blue-water ocean ships, has several armored personnel carriers (mainly for employee protection at launch sites), a rather significant investment in aviation including a couple 747's, and quite a bit of other infrastructure. I'm not saying that it is approaching the level of the U.S. Department of Defense in terms of sheer numbers, but it isn't something to completely ignore either. A not insignificant number of NASA assets are "borrowed" from the DOD as well as needed, such as when entire air carrier battle groups (during "wartime" even) were tasked explicitly to NASA projects, such as capsule recovery in the Pacific. Training aircraft and other military hardware is still used by NASA even today.

What I'm trying to say is that there are many people who have not been aware of the politics surrounding NASA over the past 20 years, and think that the same level of funding for NASA has been followed since the Kennedy Administration. And keep in mind that this group of individuals (the Baby Boomer generation) is also the largest block of voters in the USA, especially as they are approaching retirement age. That they think NASA is being funded at much higher levels than they really are, but are expecting the same results that happened in the 1960s. No wonder that many of that generation think going to space is soooo hard that the catch phrase of "if we can go to the moon, we can _____" is so popular.

Re:What about scale?

*whoooosh*

That was the sound of yet another missed launch (due to insufficient funding) zooming over your head.

And?

Hey, the US Constitution says to provide for the common defense, but nothing about sending up government bureaucrats on pointless joyrides. Oops?

Virgin Galactic et al will bring humanity into space, not central planners and their boondoggles.

Re:And?

As much as I'm a supporter of the New Space industry, government still has a role. Everyone knows that NASA needs to get out of the role of ferrying stuff to LEO. It's possible for companies to make a profit on it now. However, the government still has the role of exploration, the so-called Lewis and Clark role, pushing the boundaries in ways that can't make a short term profit and that are too expensive for individual philanthropists to fund.

So while I'd agree that the current state is problematic, the general concept of a government space program is not without very old historical precedents. I think that SpaceX and the X-Prize guys will be instrumental to getting to the future we need, but it will be in partnership with the government, not in competition with it. From my conversations with various people on both sides this seems to be the general consensus, although of course the details are always up for debate.

Re:And?

As much as I'm a supporter of the New Space industry, government still has a role. Everyone knows that NASA needs to get out of the role of ferrying stuff to LEO. It's possible for companies to make a profit on it now.

Considering no private spacecraft has even been remotely close to low earth orbit, how can you tell? They shot up, touched space and fell straight down again. To go into orbit they need vastly much higher speeds.

Re:And?

SpaceX has gotten close to LEO, they had the velocity, just some GNC problems. Though perhaps not as private as Scaled Composites (they recieved some DARPA funding), its significantly different from the traditional business model behind the Delta series, for instance. Furthermore, I paraphrase that statement from things I've heard from some high-level NASA officials as well as armchair experts like you and I.

Part of NASA funding goes to the Stargate that the

Part of NASA funding goes to the Stargate that the Military runs.

shrug

The average citizen doesn't know the difference between a billion and a trillion. The Pirahã with one, two, and many. We have 1 to a million and more money than we can imagine. I don't think we can conclude anything from the survey, except that people have no concept of how much money we're spending on the military.

   

But it's consistent

This study is done once very year or two, and people always seem to have forgotten the results by the next time it's done again. The key thing to know is that since the end of Apollo (which barely got NASA above 4% of federal spending) NASA has basically hovered at 0.5%. That's for nearly 40 years now (Apollo funding peaked around 1967), which I think represents an amazingly stable national consensus about how much we want to spend on the civil space program.

It started with Theodore Roosevelt

Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_Diplomacy [wikipedia.org]

Big sticks are fine, until they start swinging. When all you have is a hammer...

Don't be fooled ; military budget is far higher

that statement actually closer to 21% so irritated me with its fallaciousness I had to reply. the question should have been "Do you keep up with the latest budget shell game of how we can hide spending for the military-industrial complex?" You have only to glance at who [dittmar-associates.com] ran this poll to realize their obvious conflicts of interest. In fact, 21% is absurdly low, as is 33%. It is actually 64% of net discretionary funding now [about.com]. Wake the _uck up, sheeple [drake.edu]

Re:Don't be fooled ; military budget is far higher

Net Discretionary spending is not the same as the total budget. In fact, NDS is about 40% of the total budget. I think the original figure of 21% is base military as percent of total government expenditure. And by military they mean base military funding, not WoT stuff.

So there is no big disagreement really between your figures and the article figures ...

Re:Don't be fooled ; military budget is far higher

The article is talking about % of total gov. spending while you are talking about net discretionary funding which is only a portion of gov. spending.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending [wikipedia.org]

Haven't gone anywhere?

Bullshit. Just in recent years we've gone to Afghanistan, Iraq, and soon, Iran!

American Pie

http://www.benjerry.com/americanpie/ [benjerry.com]

NASA Marketing Department

So, most citizens think NASA makes the same $ as the US Military? Sounds like NASA needs a better Marketing Department more then another tecno-widget.

Re:Silly Humans

They should be researching innovative computer and material technologies

I think they do that.

Re:Argh - study "in preparation"

Worse are what people think we spend on "welfare", especially in "red" states.

Re:Argh - study "in preparation"

And people who think illegal immigrants are getting welfare and other such benefits.

Re:Argh - study "in preparation"

Yeah, even if they are, it's racist to think so.

Re:Silly Humans

Have fun living without the hundreds of things invented by NASA that we now get to enjoy as consumer products thanks to their research efforts.

NASA just won a nanotechnology award and people STILL think they're useless? Are you retarded or something?