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