Computing a Winner, Fusion a Loser In US Science Budget 196
sciencehabit writes "President Barack Obama has released a $3.901 trillion budget request to Congress, including proposals for a host of federal research agencies. Science Magazine has the breakdown, including a big win for advanced computing, a big cut for fusion, and status quo for astronomy. 'In the proposed budget, advanced computing would see its funding soar 13.2% to $541 million. BES, the biggest DOE program, would get a boost of 5.5% to $1.807 billion. BER would get a 3% bump to $628 million, and nuclear physics would enjoy a 4.3% increase to $594 million. In contrast, the fusion program would take a 17.6% cut to $416 million—$88 million less than it's getting this year. Although far from final, the numbers suggest another big dip for a program that has enjoyed a roller coaster ride in recent years. In its proposed 2013 budget, DOE called for slashing spending on domestic fusion research to help pay for the increasing U.S. contribution to the international fusion experiment, ITER, in Cadarache, France.'"
The Association of American Universities has issued a letter disapproving of the amount of research funding. The Planetary Society has broken down the proposed NASA budget.
Politics ahead. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets see how this comes out of the congressional sausage factory before we get too excited. Much of the spending is going to be contested. Budgets are also common places to stick unpopular riders, so there will probably be a few nasty surprises snuck in.
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That's collectively exhaustive of the options for getting the votes necessary to pass a budget.
It's not the worst system in the World, but never fear, they're not finished yet, either.
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Pet projects, and occasionally restrictions on funding. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone tries to sneak in a clause saying none of the money may be spent on climate change research or something of that nature.
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Lets see how this comes out of the congressional sausage factory before we get too excited.
Indeed. Normally, when congress creates a budget, they completely ignore the president's proposal. These suggested spending levels are more or less meaningless at this point. In the final budget, the value of the science to our society will be given far less consideration than the need to steer spending to particular congressional districts. Livermore, CA, where most fusion spending takes place, has a Republican representative with no seniority. Being Republican helps, since they control the House. Ca
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Livermore, CA, where most fusion spending takes place, has a Republican representative with no seniority.
Gak! Sorry, I was looking at an old map before redistricting. Livermore is now in a different district, with a Democratic representative with no seniority. Not good for fusion funding.
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"Democratic representative with no seniority. Not good for fusion funding."
Soooo you're freely admitting it's nothing more than pork? Because it is, at least in the case of NIF.
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Eh, more like pork can benefit the country, in addition to the representative's district, or it can hurt the country and benefit the rep. And our country will get outraged about both, use that to slash the former, and continue the latter unabated.
One of the problems the US constitution failed to address structurally was a process for creating a budget that limits corruption through checks and balances. Other modern liberal democracies with more recent constitutions don't have this problem to the same exte
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"Liberal democracy" isn't the same as "democracy" dumb-dumb. It refers specifically to a democracy where the rights and freedoms of its citizens are structurally protected.
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Sorry, the world doesn't comply with your theories. Sorry, I really can't help you.
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You don't actually know what the words meant. This is the problem here. There isn't some "statist/libertarian" divide in our argument, but a "know what words fucking mean/don't" divide.
Re:Politics ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
God dammit, does no one know that "liberal democracy" has nothing to do with progressive liberalism?
Are there that many people that can't go to fucking wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and looking up words. The stupid-ass, libertarian dream world is a "liberal democracy" but you're too caught up in the idea of your own persecution, that you can't imagine a world where "liberal" means anything other than "those people".
Are you slow? Do you have trouble with the simple idea of contextual grammars, upon which our entire language is built? I mean, if I called you a neoliberal idiot, would you assume I'm accusing you of being a leftist? What is wrong with you?
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I've found the majority of people just ape what their party tells them, even if it is completely wrong, whether it be liberalism, socialism, communism (of which we only refer to the dictatorship form, not like in, say, the natural communism in some Amish or Mennonite communes), or whatever. For instance, socialism does not mean a nanny state, and in fact, works quite well with Capitalism as shown by employee owned businesses and co-ops. Applying socialist concepts to government is called bureaucracy, but it
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Democracy is what get's us the likes of Obama and Schumer, and McCain and Romney.
What an amazingly stupid thing to say. It's corporatism that gets us a world in which the only candidates are corrupt. It has nothing to do with democracy. It would happen under any system in which corporations had gained this much control.
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Ah, yeah, democracy, why can't we just install Anonymous coward as dictator, that will solve all our problems(you're a moron).
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Interesting. So the corporations then select the winner in some kind of smoke filled back room ceremony then, is that about it?
That's not what I said, and you'd have to be an idiot or a shill to get that from what I said. Or you know, just a typical prevaricating asshole.
Silly me, I thought we had all these citizens voting from among all these "candidates".
Not only is that not really relevant, since the EC elects the president and not The People which is why this ain't a democracy, but the citizens vote from among the candidates presented to them. No candidate not backed by big business is presented to them seriously by the media. I should not have to explain this to you if you are old enough to use a computer by you
Re: Politics ahead. (Score:2)
When congress routinely demonstrates the forethought of a mayfly, we can consider any project that doesn't produce immediate results to be "pork" in their compound eyes
Better to cut all ITER funding (Score:2)
and give the money to our own domestic fusion researchers. If ITER ultimately leads the way to a marketable fusion reactor I am sure we can either licenses the tech or let foreigners build the plants - far cheaper for the tax payer while supporting our own alternative research.
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If ITER ultimately leads the way to a marketable fusion reactor I am sure we can either licenses the tech or let foreigners build the plants - far cheaper for the tax payer while supporting our own alternative research.
Two problems with that:
1) How is ITER going to succeed if one of its major contributors pulls out?
2) Are there any domestic programs with a better chance of success and a more concrete plan? (I'm not aware of any.)
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"1) How is ITER going to succeed if one of its major contributors pulls out?"
The US pays about 10%. Guess they'll have to find a way to make it less of a boondoggle?
"2) Are there any domestic programs with a better chance of success and a more concrete plan? (I'm not aware of any.)"
Given that ITER uses the same tired methods that have been worked on a very long time, I'd say yes all the alternatives have just as good a chance and for far less money.
Fusion is a solved problem (Score:2)
It makes sense to cut in traditional fusion research. Indeed, by now it is clear that the best and cheapest practical fusion energy reactor for the foreseeable future has been found in the form the gravity stabilized fusion reactor called Sun. With declining costs solar panels already compete with conventional nuclear reactors. If the trend continue to ~2020 even coal and oil might be seen then as too expensive in regards of solar energy.
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> even coal and oil might be seen then as too expensive in regards of solar energy
They already have too much to worry about *right now* from natural gas and wind to start worrying about PV in 2020.
You know wind in the US hit just over 5 c/kWh for a while there, right? Nuclear is 6 to 8 (the plant down the road from my house is 8.5 c/kWh).
Natural gas 3.5, solar electric 35 (Score:2)
Since you brought up the actual numbers, I figured I'd add those in. So we have:
Nuclear 7 cents
Natural Gas 3.5 cents
--------
Solar 35 cents (10AM - 4 PM only)
Wind 5 cents (when wind is between 30-40 MPH)
The two groups are separate because the top two are base power - reliable sources available all the time.
The bottom two are supplementary power - they are available SOMETIMES, and when they are available you can reduce the generation from
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Research funding must consider mid to long term planning, so one has to project somewhat in the future, say 2020. There are many such forecasts, but perhaps this one is interesting to quote in view of the origin (US DOE) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10242882/Solar-power-to-trump-shale-helped-by-US-military.html/ [telegraph.co.uk]
"The US Energy Department expects the cost of solar power to fall by 75pc between 2010 and 2020. By then average costs will have dropped to the $1 per watt for b
only citations ar the US solar energy association (Score:2)
The only two citations I see in that article are a) the solar energy association and b) the head of a solar company. If their claim is in any way hinted at by any DOE report , it's too bad they didn't cite that report. I have a guess as to why they didn't cite anything. I wouldn't be surprised if DOE had run a projection on the scenario that taxpayers might subsidize solar more, so one person using solar would pay less because his neighbors are effectively paying the outrageous cost. They could have als
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> Solar 35 cents (10AM - 4 PM only)
More like 8 to 15, depending on where you live. You can do the calculation yourself, I'd be interested to see if you come to any other sore of conclusion:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/green-apples/
> Wind 5 cents (when wind is between 30-40 MPH)
Nope, all in.
> The bottom two are supplementary power
And as another report released this very day noted (available on Ars), you can have 40% intermittent power like PV and wind before you have to do *anything
green blog vs DOE. As long as nat gas 100% capaci (Score:2)
You don't need any energy storage as long as your base power can supply all your needs. Period. If nuclear, hydro, natural gas, and coal can provide all of power, you don't need to store ie solar. Which is good, becuase there is no feasible means of storage. How much wind or solar you have has ZERO effect on that. Sometimes wind will make no power, either because it's not windy enough, or it's too windy. So you need the reliable sources to provide 100% during those times.
I see you've "rebutted" the DOE pr
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> I see you've "rebutted" the DOE price survey by pointing to a blogger as your source.
Yes, I quoted me. A professional in the PV field.
The DOE report in question is based on numbers that are approximately five years old. That's how long it takes them to put reports together. In the last five years, the price of PV has fallen seven times. When you divide by seven, you get my number.
But what's really telling is that the post in question shows you how to do this calculation yourself using up-to-date number
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An addendum, proving the point:
The DOE is currently estimating installation prices in 2018, you can see their numbers here:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
If you look at the number for PV, you'll see they predict $130.4/MWh at 25% CF. So that's $32.6/Mw, essentially. From that they estimate a total all-in cost of 144.3. Systems are going in at half that all over the place. First Solar just signed a PPA at 5.6 cents/kWh for 20 years in Nevada, which implies an installed cost of 85
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You see, with fusion more applications can exist that require high energy consumption.
You can't power rockets with solar energy.
You can't even power cars with only solar. You need an energy storage device. You won't with fusion.
Solar power basically requires batteries. Fusion does not. You realize that panel production and battery production requires a ton of oil to produce and is not clean by any means.
Fusion would drive energy prices less than nuclear ever could.
You would also find a reason with fusio
Really? REALLY? (Score:2)
R&D vs. operations perspective (Score:3)
Make of that what you will.
I have an idea (Score:2)
Priorities! (Score:2)
Pretty clear choice for 99% of politicians.
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Fusion... we dont want that to get in the way of OIL
Whereas there are certainly some oil lobbying groups that will push this line I doubt if this is the government's reasoning. If they thought that it was likely that it would produce a commercial energy source in anything but the extreme long term I expect the US government would love to have US patents on unlimited, sustainable energy. I can just see the "change of heart" where suddenly everyone must sign up to to CO2 emission targets - and use US patented technology as a large part of meeting them!
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Except Fusion is a pipe dream.
And research into Fission is only being funded on a half govt half private funding model that prevents new entrants to the field (and discourages anybody but billionaires from trying to fund revolutionary fission).
We know it works - Teller showed us (Score:2)
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We know it works - the tricky bits are scaling it down and keeping it under control.
We know it works at large scales. We don't know if it works at small scales. Since the entire goal is small-scale fusion (i.e. something that doesn't require an entire solar mass of hydrogen to maintain), we really don't yet know if it works as a viable contained power source.
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It's always like that, we know it works, but, there are lots of poops that are conveniently hidden.
My opinion is quite simple, the people making decisions don't really want fusion to work, they want to say they are funding it, while it's always ways out in the future.
Fission is commercial, and could be an order of magnitude safer and two orders of magnitude more efficient (per ton of radioactive material mined) if we invest about 10% TOTAL of what's being spent every 10 years on fusion, or just one years fu
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Correction: Call me crazy, but If you are defending fusion either you are coning us or you are being conned.
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The US government itself has little to do with nuclear energy. Congress gave that job to the NRC, and the NRC is both a salesman and regulator [reuters.com], so it has a serious conflict of interest. Basically, they are Westinghouse's (aka Toshiba Energy) bitch.
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That's right, the US government is pouring billions on solar, wind, fusion research and nothing to fission, except for incremental solutions that keep the current extremely low efficiency for solid fuel reactors (best case scenario is 1,5% for heavy water reactors utilization of fissile+fertile material, and 0,7% efficiency for light water solid fuel reactors).
The reality is that entrenched interests on fission are against a fission revolution. They would rather keep their uranium fuel supply contracts than
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> Yeah, fusion is a pipe dream
Indeed.
> and these researchers are all losers
No, its bunker mentality. Same in the fission world, maybe worse there though.
Commissioned PV is under $1.25 a watt. If you don't understand what that means, then you should go look it up.
There is no way that any of the fusion devices anyone is working on will ever be able to match that, even if they do get it to work. And so far, they can't even do that.
Multiple electrical production means (Score:2)
Commissioned PV is under $1.25 a watt. If you don't understand what that means, then you should go look it up.
A "watt", for solar, means one watt of electrical production at noon on a cloud free day.
Since peak power usage (in the US) tends to be in the afternoon, that's excellent up to about 10% market penetration Above that, you need energy storage, which is currently not cost effective, although there are several systems that are coming along in the future and look good. However, storage adds to the cost-- it's no longer a dollar a watt if you have to operate and pay for a storage system.
Solar is also less effe
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> Since peak power usage (in the US) tends to be in the afternoon, that's excellent up
> to about 10% market penetration Above that, you need energy storage
40%
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/variable-renewable-power-can-reach-40-percent-capacity-very-cheaply/
> Solar is also less effective in winter (shorter days) and in locations with significant overcast.
Luckily peak usage matches PV input very closely south of the mason-dixon. We're not so lucky up here in Canuckistan, but it still works OK
time of day limitations (Score:2)
> Since peak power usage (in the US) tends to be in the afternoon, that's excellent up
> to about 10% market penetration Above that, you need energy storage
40%
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/variable-renewable-power-can-reach-40-percent-capacity-very-cheaply/
40% is a rather selective reading of that article. The article you link states:
"Now, the International Energy Agency has weighed in with a report on integrating renewables. It finds that, as long as intermittent power sources are under 10 percent of the total energy use, they can essentially be added for free."
That's pretty close to what I just said. (The article is talking about wind plus solar, while I was discussing solar alone). It goes on to talk about higher penetration:
"The report lumps wind and s
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So what would be the budget for creating a medium-sized star?
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Ours is kind of on the small side...
In any case, I'm standing on a giant fission reactor and you probably are too (unless you're in flight) - that technology seems to work on a much smaller scale.
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According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Sun is larger than 85% of stars in the Milky Way.
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The green lobby is just as much against fusion as the oil industry because it's "nuclear and dangerous".
Breeder fission maybe. When it's not windy ... (Score:3)
Breeder reactors may very well work out well. We'll see.
Wind power is a very nice supplement to use when it's windy, so it works well in addition to base power in certain geographical areas. Wind is NOT base power simply because it's not windy all the time. When it happens to be windy, you can dial back your natural gas or nuclear generation (base) for an hour.
Solar electric is great for locations where you can't easily run a power line, like a vacation cabin in the wilderness. However, it costs over ten ti
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> Who's to say that eventually, reactors will be built that not only work economically, but even cheaply?
Basically anyone that's not in the fusion industry. You know, like nuclear bomb designers:
Lawrence E Lidsky, ‘The Trouble With Fusion’, Technology Review Vol. 86 October, 1983. Pages 32-44.
Or large scientific groups:
Allen L Hammond, William D Metz, and Thomas H Maugh II, ‘Energy and the Future’ Washington DC, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1973.
Or the enti
Re:fusion is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
> Maybe advanced computing can be used to simulate fusion reactors
They've been doing that since the 1960s. The simulations say it all worked 25 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASNEX
I'm not convinced more simulations will help.
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Solar power did work - but the utilities suddenly saw it was eating into their peak demand profits.
If $1,500/month home electric = "did work" (Score:2)
Solar electric costs ten times as much as hydro or natural gas. So if everyone was using solar power, instead of paying $150 / month for your electric bill, it would be $1,500 / month. If paying $1,500 / month for electricity is your definition of "did work" you must be that filthy 0.0001%, mega wealthy.
Yes, I'm aware that if you're the only one using solar, politicians will force al of your neighbors to pay the bill. Subsidies "work" when 1,000 people are all subsidizing one guy. We can't all subsidize
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> Solar electric costs ten times as much as hydro or natural gas
It costs about 2x, max. Compared to nuclear it's already at parity:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/green-apples/
You can do the calculation yourself.
a blog starting with "change all the numbers" (Score:2)
You keep posting that, a blogger who starts his post with "change all the numbers, because solar is way more effective than the manufacturers rate their systems to be". That blogger WISHES solar was only twice as expensive. The DOE price survey says solar customers actually pay ten times as much.
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> That blogger WISHES solar was only twice as expensive
Well that's what I paid for mine. Are you saying I'm lying?
> The DOE price survey says solar customers actually pay ten times as much
No, it says they paid ten times as much several years ago. Go look at the Table 1 in the latest version here:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
This is the DOE *prediction* is for 2018, based on numbers from 2011 (read the caption). And the one you're quoting twice the number on the DOE web si
Good luck with predictions, and half-billion scam (Score:2)
> This is the DOE *prediction* is for 2018
Finally you said something honest! All this time you've been saying 11 cents, comparing it to the 3.5 cent actual retail price of natural gas. I'm glad you're now being a little more transparent - some people PREDICT that one day the cost to build new solar plant may come down. Other people predict Bitcoin will make them rich. I'm not betting on either.
Nanosolar scammed / lost half a billion of our money, Mt Gox did the same. Similarly for Solyndra and all th
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Bullshit, utility scale solar is down to $.11/kWhr as of Q4 2013 (down from $.21 in 2010 when the DoE started SunShot) which is less than double the $.056/kWhr total cost for new natural gas plants.
DOE says AVERAGE 35. Maybe 11 at 1PM in SoCal (Score:2)
DOE says the national average is 35 cents. .?
I don't know where you got 11 cents. Is that the marginal cost at 1PM on a sunny day in Southern California? Is that the panel manufacturing cost, ignoring installation, trackers, distribution, etc
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It's the current installed cost [greentechmedia.com] of utility scale solar.
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> It's the current installed cost [greentechmedia.com] of utility scale solar.
The AVERAGE utility scale. The low-end costs already beat SunShot:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/grid-parity-new-mexico-style/
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Interesting, though I have to wonder if Macho Springs/First Solar isn't receiving some type of subsidy that allows it to reach that price.
You quoted PREDICTED generation cost to utility (Score:2)
Your link says that's the predicted cost to the utility to build a solar plant. That is, not including distribution costs, etc.
The actual retail price is 35 cents, compared to 3.5 for natural gas.
Even your link says "solar electricity doesn’t really compete" with other sources.
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The notions that solar power doesn't work and that solar power hurts utility company's profits are not mutually exclusive. It is called negative power prices. Due to laws requiring utilities to buy wind and solar power at any time, combined with the inability to store or transport natural gas supplies due to lack of pipelines, the cost of electricity often becomes negative where the power company pays customers to waste electricity because of unpredictable excess capacity. This hurts utility company earning
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The donors and bundlers were in solar. Get some in fusion.
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I think that everybody's patience can get a bit thin after 60 years of waiting... I would probably spend a lot more money in 4th gen fission research rather than chasing fusion holy grail.
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The reason everyone is still waiting is that funding keeps getting cut. Way back when they estimated that workable fusion was 20 years away, at then-current funding levels. Now, 60 or 80 or whatever years later they *still* haven't received cumulative funding equivalent to 20 years at the initial funding level. But progress-per-dollar has proceeded more-or-less as estimated, and at current funding levels we should have fusion in 20 years or so.
A sad statement on political priorities.
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Re:Hello, Barack? This is kettle (Score:4, Interesting)
Citizens get the government they earn. I hear more hate about the billions spent on solar power than I do about the trillions wasted on Bush's wars. If Obama were a smarter man, he'd invade Cuba or something, dump the rest of the budget into coal, and get elected a third and fourth term.
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Or let's look at a source that doesn't specialize in enema tasting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
25% federal budget goes to Medicare and Medicaid, 23% to Social Security (totalling 48%).
Defense spending is 18%.
I'm sure the numbers are skewed more towards Medicare/Medicaid and Social security for Obama's 2014 proposal.
Now go back to your hole and stop getting news from the biggest shitrag in the world.
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25% federal budget goes to Medicare and Medicaid, 23% to Social Security (totalling 48%).
That's misleading. Social Security is paid for with Social Security withholding-- it actually pays more into the budget than it pays out.
Likewise, Medicare is paid for by a separate fund, which goes into the medicaid trust fund..
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The Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare Trust Fund are illusions.
In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Which means that when SS/Medicare start spending more than they take in (within ten years, unless they raise SS/Medicare taxes on you young people), the Trust Funds will redeem those T-Bills, which will be paid for by borrowing from the public or raising taxes.
Note that if the Trust Funds did not exist, when
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In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Wrong, the debt that the Social Security Trust Fund purchases is not interest-free. You can see that here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda... [ssa.gov]
If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.
Even if the special issue bonds were interest-free, that criticism wouldn't make sense. That would mean the Trust Fund is giving the government interest-free loans, and then being paid back later. That is completely different than if they didn't save the money to begin with, but still had to be paid back later when they're out of money.
The Trust Fund will run out of mo
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The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes
Or we could, you know, get rid of the cap [ssa.gov]. I have yet to hear a coherent argument explaining why regressive payroll taxes are a good thing for this country.
A tax with two brackets:
$0 - $117000; 2.9%
$117000+; 0.0%
I'm sure it's this way to encourage job creators to, um...
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I support regressive taxes in general because it makes all people at least somewhat aware of what stuff costs.
Considering things like the EITC were invented to offset payroll taxes for the poor, I don't think you can say it's entirely regressive.. it's just that the numbers appear on different pieces of paper so some people don't connect them. It's still regressive for some people (guess who... the middle class of course!) but not for the poor.
Personally I think the concept of Social Security is utterly stu
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Oh yeah, forgot to add.. after abolishing Social Security, old people with no income could go on welfare.
Social Security actually is a welfare program since poor people get a disproportionately high benefit compared to what they paid in.. it's just not called welfare because back when it was originally proposed, most people were still properly ashamed at not pulling their own weight.
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That's misleading. Social Security is paid for with Social Security withholding
Mostly... it's also paid for with interest on the debt that Social Security owns. I'm not sure what percentage of public debt is held by the SS Trust Fund, but I'm sure it's not negligible.. and about 6% of the overall budget goes to interest in general.
it actually pays more into the budget than it pays out.
For now, but it's projected to run out and then become a burden on the general tax revenue. Or result in a SS tax increase. Probably both, plus reduced benefits.
Yay, my generation gets to pay more than any generation before it, and get either the same or wor
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And bonus: these taxes are specifically excluded when people say "the poor pay no income tax". The poor actually pay a fair bit of tax, and as far as your paycheck is concerned, the "withholding" line looks just like the "FICA" lines. At low wages, the former is tiny, while the latter is quite large. On a rich person's paycheck, the latter is capped so that it comes to practically nothing. Or they'll be paid in forms other than paychecks, so that it IS literally nothing.
But when your goal is to "prove" that
Re:Change department name (Score:5, Informative)
THEY HAVE SPENT ALL THAT MONEY.
Who are "THEY"? The people running Medicare? No, that's not right.
The point is not that "we're fine"; we're not.
The point is that trotting out Social Security and Medicare as examples of why our budget is broken is misleading. These programs are funded through separate withholdings, withholdings that exceed the cost of said programs. Perhaps these programs are "too much", and we should decrease their scope along with their respective withholdings. Perhaps they're "not enough", and we should increase their scope along with their respective withholdings. Perhaps they're "just right", and we should leave them alone. In any case, these programs have very little to do with our current budget woes, as the funds to pay for them are being collected just fine.
That the money collected specifically for these programs is instead misappropriated or borrowed against is no indictment of the programs themselves. Yes, the money has already been spent. No, the money has not already been spent on these programs. You can start pointing at social welfare programs as the primary drivers of deficit spending once you show me how gross tax receipts are sufficient to cover defense spending and all the other shit that's paid for out of the general fund. I say that as someone who works in the defense industry.
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We may disagree on which agencies fall outside the purview (or should, at least) of the federal government (I, for one, think the DOE is pretty awesome, and I'm glad that my tax dollars help support it), we can at least agree that shit is broken, and it's not really because of old people or sick people.
The shit that our elected officials do with the money we give them can not be morally defended. If I spend my whole life paying into Social Security, when I'm 70 is not a good time to tell me th
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Oh yeah and let's not forget that it was OBAMA that cut NASA's budget and cancelled the shuttle program. You're worthless as a human being.
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I note that you can tell more lies but you can't actually answer my question. That's because you're worthless as a slashdotter.
I can afford the karma hit I'll take from your pathetic friends if I continue in this vein, so I shall. I get more upvotes in a month than you've ever had.
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"Human beings are worthless; only property matters" seems to be a pretty accurate summary of conservative mindset.
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Pointing to a Huff Post article that misrepresents costs is ignorant. Just sayin.
Which costs does it misrepresent?
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The point, I believe, is what does having a military that big actually do for us? Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil, giving the local terrorist groups a massive shot in the arm with our abuses and cowardly combat tactics? (Yeah, sure, drones and airstrikes may be more efficient in terms of friendly lives spent and the corresponding social backlash back home, but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughter
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Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
You can't seriously think that's the terrorist perspective. In asymmetric warfare, the smaller group rarely gives the bigger group a chance to fight back, or they'd be destroyed pretty quickly. Most tactics in asymmetric warfare involve hiding before the enemy can retaliate, and using surprise attacks to your advantage. Not to mention terrorists have no problem attacking people who have no capability to
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The US is a net exporter of oil. Granted we weren't when we started pounding sand, but that choice has always be a strategic and environmental one.
>but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
I'm not speaking of the active terrorists, I'm talking about all the civilians getting slaughtered by our machines. Or more to the point, their surviving friends and families whose impotent rage makes them prime candidates for recruitment int
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I'm not speaking of the active terrorists, I'm talking about all the civilians getting slaughtered by our machines.
That's what people say, but it's impossible to know for sure what drives terrorism recruitment. If we were sending in troops on the ground to do hand to hand fighting and getting our asses whooped by terrorists who still used dirty tactics, I personally don't think it would make one whit of difference. There would still be civilians getting killed (perhaps fewer). There would probably be more disruption (more invaders, take longer, less ability to target precisely). The local populations would still be Musl
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Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
We are actively preventing weaning ourselves off the stuff right now. Point the first, the USDOE proved in the 1980s that you could make biodiesel from algae cost-effectively by the time biodiesel hit $3/gallon with the most basic of technologies. Point the second, a patent war between GEVO and BP/Dupont's shell company Butamax is currently preventing us from being able to purchase Butanol, a cleaner-burning 1:1 replacement for gasoline which can be made from any organic material. Point the third, the feder
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I've been fascinated with algae production of biodiesel for a decade now. I'm curious, the DOE proof of concept that you're talking about.. is that in 1980's dollars or today?
From what I've heard there have been plenty of commercial attempts to produce biodiesel from algae and they have failed.
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but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
Well, such things are useful to winning wars though there are plenty of examples throughout history of that not being a sufficient condition for victory. But there is also the other side of the coin, what have these people subject to slaughter done to deserve a fair fight?
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Anyone who isn't a complete monster? Because fair fight is for sports, and if that's what killing people is for you, then that's what you are.
Don't use deadly force unless the other option is even worse, and if it's worse, don't risk it by giving your targ
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$100 million is nothing compared to the scope of the problem. The Manhattan project was around $25 billion over about 4 years. The Apollo program cost $170 billion over about 15 years. The reason why fusion hasn't worked yet is simply because it hasn't been funded to those levels yet.
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The NSA's budget is about 52 billion dollars.
To give more perspective, the last time I checked, the entire federal budget for non-NASA basic scientific research (including cancer, infectious diseases, clean energy, etc.) didn't even come to that much.
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The common man won't be allowed to have his own fusion reactor, so it will remain under control of the existing power brokers. All it will do is reduce their costs.
Since they are given state-sanctioned monopolies they don't need to worry about a competitor offering lower rates either.