Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England
4 trillion or so. Honestly, its not that much money. $16,000 per person spread over 18 years? So that gets me half a years worth of insurance premiums.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
You could do a lot with $4 trillion beside cut everyone a check.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England
You could, but it doesn't go as far as you think.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
+492|3422
make babies not bombs
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX

Jay wrote:

I said that what the Democrats were proposing did nothing to lower costs or improve quality.
According to some rightwing nut yelling into a microphone on his youtube channel no?
I know I'm overpaying.
Then the solution must be to maintain the status quo.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX

Jay wrote:

You could, but it doesn't go as far as you think.
It could have put $8,000 worth of solar panels on every home in America.

I mean, wouldn't it have been nice if the govt had given you free used your taxes to buy you solar panels, give you free electricity for life and free college instead of wasting the money on kerosene and bullets and making you fight in a war on the other side of the world?

But socialism is bad so never mind.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-03-05 17:32:58)

Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
We could have researched how to prepare for pandemics. $4 trillion could have filled out a whole pandemic skill tree.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6601|949

$4 trillion is actually not a lot for war but we can't afford to spend that on healthcare.

that's not even a hot take. That's potato level logic.
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America
I think it's if you bought into the "America's the greatest country" shtick, it cannot that there is somewhere that has it better. It's why people still claim that in spite of all evidence. Even if overall cost of living is less, it's "look at these crazy taxes". We piss away so much money on out-of-date trickle-down jerkoff fantasies and bombing the browns that people cannot fathom the sheer scale of what it could do for our domestic issues.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen … _of_Norway

Stupid Norwegians, they should use that money to give tax cuts to hard-working self-reliant citizens.

Then they can use the money productively, for steak dinners and pickup trucks for example

Isn't this what Ayn Rand dreamt of?:
https://live.staticflickr.com/4072/4632910387_1827851351_b.jpg
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/obese-woman-dragged-behind-truck-with-rope-because-shes-too-big-to-fit-inside-00_00_15_08-still009.jpg

How stupid are these people, using that money so wastefully, I mean dur,:

https://i0.wp.com/www.norwegianamerican.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Hv5gOdM2n3dpZgAd9YhpuQrveIBQxQB6FqdW_3TSU-ng.jpg?resize=650%2C366&ssl=1
https://www.azocleantech.com/images/slideshows/Article/558/large-dam-norway-Bent-Nordeng.jpg?width=1000&height=674
https://d3rr2gvhjw0wwy.cloudfront.net/uploads/activity_galleries/102370/2000x2000-0-70-7ed7d6167bcebe5a7548c8e7776ac4cb.jpg

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-03-05 19:14:25)

Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
On topic: How is it that America is the only country in the world to consistently deliver senile gropers as candidates for the top job?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England
After looking it up, the real cost of the war was $778BN, or roughly $3,000 per American spread over 18 years ($167 per year). It's not nothing, but it also isn't much in the grand scheme of our federal budget.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821

Also, let's stop pretending we live in some military dictatorship where all the money is being siphoned off for bombs and tanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2018 … raphic.png

Roughly 2/3 of our federal budget is already tied up in healthcare and social security. Its an even higher percentage in most state level budgets. Medicaid is not cheap.

Last edited by Jay (2020-03-06 03:01:57)

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
+492|3422
let's talk about a little tiny thing called the military-industrial complex.

the huge government contracts and tenders given out to 'bombs and tank' manufacturers, and the entire communities, not to mention political careers, which are dependent on bringing those contracts home to x-y-z state (the way the F-35 is set up to be manufactured across basically every single US state is food for thought; and what politician is going to kickback against them? bad for jobs, bad for votes!).

it seems a huge amount of the nation's health and its economic circulation seems to be reliant on offloading massive amounts of ordnance on dustbowls in the middle east. the orders for the missiles have to keep coming in, the latest and greatest jets have to be built, the factories and plants have to stay open, and a whole bunch of aimless blue-collar slack jaws have to be fed into the corps and kept off the unemployment stats.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Military_Expenditures_2018_SIPRI.png

seems healthy. 'but wait', you'll say, 'we're the richest nation on earth [debatable] so of course our expenditure dwarfs all the rest'. yes, the richest nation on earth that matches its social security spending with its military spending. what a curious choice and political determination. what could you do with all that wealth and prosperity if you turned it inwards? what do the US army corps of engineers make of the levees, bridges, dams, roads, and infrastructure of your country?

here's the UK budget for 2016-17, for example.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/UK-Government-Expenditure-2016-17.jpg/1920px-UK-Government-Expenditure-2016-17.jpg

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-06 03:18:29)

Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

uziq wrote:

let's talk about a little tiny thing called the military-industrial complex.

the huge government contracts and tenders given out to 'bombs and tank' manufacturers, and the entire communities, not to mention political careers, which are dependent on bringing those contracts home to x-y-z state (the way the F-35 is set up to be manufactured across basically every single US state is food for thought; and what politician is going to kickback against them? bad for jobs, bad for votes!).

it seems a huge amount of the nation's health and its economic circulation seems to be reliant on offloading massive amounts of ordnance on dustbowls in the middle east. the orders for the missiles have to keep coming in, the latest and greatest jets have to be built, the factories and plants have to stay open, and a whole bunch of aimless blue-collar slack jaws have to be fed into the corps and kept off the unemployment stats.



seems healthy. 'but wait', you'll say, 'we're the richest nation on earth [debatable] so of course our expenditure dwarfs all the rest'. yes, the richest nation on earth that matches its social security spending with its military spending. what a curious choice and political determination. what could you do with all that wealth and prosperity if you turned it inwards? what do the US army corps of engineers make of the levees, bridges, dams, roads, and infrastructure of your country?

here's the UK budget for 2016-17, for example.
Uzi, that's cool. Did you look at the infographic that I posted? You spend 6% of your budget on military defense. We spend 6.58%.

Yes, in raw number of dollars, we spend a shitload compared to everyone else. We also have roughly 4 times the population of the UK and a much higher cost of living than our nearest adversary, China.

Not really apples to apples with the rest of the world...
https://static.digg.com/images/b768552c524f40638325121c92c4fba3_b0f889bdc7714d40886702e2878472cd_1_post.png

Last edited by Jay (2020-03-06 03:25:20)

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

let's talk about a little tiny thing called the military-industrial complex.

the huge government contracts and tenders given out to 'bombs and tank' manufacturers, and the entire communities, not to mention political careers, which are dependent on bringing those contracts home to x-y-z state (the way the F-35 is set up to be manufactured across basically every single US state is food for thought; and what politician is going to kickback against them? bad for jobs, bad for votes!).

it seems a huge amount of the nation's health and its economic circulation seems to be reliant on offloading massive amounts of ordnance on dustbowls in the middle east. the orders for the missiles have to keep coming in, the latest and greatest jets have to be built, the factories and plants have to stay open, and a whole bunch of aimless blue-collar slack jaws have to be fed into the corps and kept off the unemployment stats.



seems healthy. 'but wait', you'll say, 'we're the richest nation on earth [debatable] so of course our expenditure dwarfs all the rest'. yes, the richest nation on earth that matches its social security spending with its military spending. what a curious choice and political determination. what could you do with all that wealth and prosperity if you turned it inwards? what do the US army corps of engineers make of the levees, bridges, dams, roads, and infrastructure of your country?

here's the UK budget for 2016-17, for example.
Uzi, that's cool. Did you look at the infographic that I posted? You spend 6% of your budget on military defense. We spend 6.58%.
did you see that we also spend 3.5 to 4 times as much on healthcare and social services? that produces a totally free-of-use system. what does yours get you?

what does the cost of living in the US have to do with your military expenditure, exactly? so you're spending a lot on missiles because lockheed workers want an american wage? you spend 2.5x as much as your 'global rival', china. they have 4.25x your population.

and what does any of that have to do with my point that the american economy is jacked up and reliant upon the dope of high-grade arms manufacturing?

Roughly 10 percent of the $2.2 trillion in factory output in the United States goes into the production of weapons sold mainly to the Defense Department for use by the armed forces.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/busi … mplex.html

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-06 04:23:39)

Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

let's talk about a little tiny thing called the military-industrial complex.

the huge government contracts and tenders given out to 'bombs and tank' manufacturers, and the entire communities, not to mention political careers, which are dependent on bringing those contracts home to x-y-z state (the way the F-35 is set up to be manufactured across basically every single US state is food for thought; and what politician is going to kickback against them? bad for jobs, bad for votes!).

it seems a huge amount of the nation's health and its economic circulation seems to be reliant on offloading massive amounts of ordnance on dustbowls in the middle east. the orders for the missiles have to keep coming in, the latest and greatest jets have to be built, the factories and plants have to stay open, and a whole bunch of aimless blue-collar slack jaws have to be fed into the corps and kept off the unemployment stats.



seems healthy. 'but wait', you'll say, 'we're the richest nation on earth [debatable] so of course our expenditure dwarfs all the rest'. yes, the richest nation on earth that matches its social security spending with its military spending. what a curious choice and political determination. what could you do with all that wealth and prosperity if you turned it inwards? what do the US army corps of engineers make of the levees, bridges, dams, roads, and infrastructure of your country?

here's the UK budget for 2016-17, for example.
Uzi, that's cool. Did you look at the infographic that I posted? You spend 6% of your budget on military defense. We spend 6.58%.
did you see that we also spend 3.5 to 4 times as much on healthcare and social services?

what does the cost of living in the US have to do with your military expenditure, exactly? so you're spending a lot on missiles because lockheed workers want an american wage?
Do you?

We spend 24% of our federal budget on social security plus another indeterminate amount on federal employee pensions, you spend 31%.

We spend 24% of our federal budget on health care costs related to Medicare and Medicaid, plus some other percentage on VA benefits etc. You spend 18.8%.

And yes, we spend a lot because our troops make American wages and aren't conscripts and because missiles are stupidly overpriced.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
+492|3422
well done, you're getting at my point. so what does that expense get you? we have a totally free-to-use healthcare system.

how much of your income goes out on forms of tax, by the way?

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-06 04:23:01)

Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

uziq wrote:

well done, you're getting at my point. so what does that expense get you? we have a totally free-to-use healthcare system.
It gets me nothing.

Never did I say our system was awesome. All I said, throughout this thread, is that what the Democrats have proposed does nothing to address the underlying reasons why we have the most expensive health care in the world. Their entire "fix" consists of replacing the existing insurance company administrators with federal government employees.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
The U.S. has the highest Wuhan Flu death rate if any nation. 5% compared to the 1 - 3% average.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
does calling it ‘wuhan flu’ make you feel better about the fact that the reason the american death rate is higher is probably because nobody can afford to get sick there? and because your own leaders are possibly more inept than dreaded China?

this whole video thread is incredible.
https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1236053291584368640

it’s going to be an interesting test of jay’s hypothesis about the best government being no government. so far as i can read online, america’s response to the coronavirus thus far has been consistent with a ‘no government’ response

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/13/opin … index.html
CNN coverage on trump's 'abysmal' CDC appointment, 2 years ago.

Redfield's early engagement with the AIDS epidemic in the US in the 1980s and 90s was controversial. As an Army major at Walter Reed Medical Institute, he designed policies for controlling the disease within the US military that involved placing infected personnel in quarantine and investigating their pasts to identify and track possible sexual partners. Soldiers were routinely discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families.

In the 1980s Redfield worked closely with W. Shepherd Smith, Jr. and his Christian organization, Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, or ASAP. The group maintained that AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.
lmao, this is the guy you have on the job. sounds like dilbert's ideal candidate. it's amazing how much these fruitcakes all sound alike, religious or anti-religious, when it comes to scientific illiteracy and blaming everything on 'rampant individualism' and not, you know, inept treatment and public health administration.

i guess you reap what you sow when you let the president appoint a bunch of bootlickers and yes-men (and purposefully leave half the positions in various administrative depts empty as a political choice).

The White House has had a hard time choosing, vetting and retaining top appointees. After 16 months in office the President has fired or accepted the resignations of 23 top officials, including Redfield's predecessors, Dr. Thomas Frieden and Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald. Frieden, who served as health commissioner for New York City and was appointed by President Barack Obama, made $219,700 in the position.

Six months later, Dr. Fitzgerald, then state health commissioner in Georgia, was appointed to lead the agency that protects Americans from epidemics, water contamination, cancer-causing compounds and hundreds of other health threats, at a salary of $197,000. Questions were immediately raised about her relationship with the Coca-Cola Corporation and their sponsorship, at her behest, of a Georgia anti-obesity campaign.

In September Fitzgerald made decisions in CDC's Atlanta headquarters involving $28.6 million worth of private contracts for electronic data-keeping relevant to opioid prescriptions. One of the companies receiving those grants was Greenway Health, in which Fitzgerald and her husband held stock worth $300,000. Senate queries led to a larger investigation and the discovery that she continued in December to hold stocks in pharmaceutical and medical management companies that posed clear conflict violations.
how long before the government stops blaming the democrats or nasty media who insist on reporting the real figures, and starts blaming the individual cruise ship tourists or dying victims? you know trump is going to take all of this very, very personally.

at least the libertarian 'thought leaders' all have apocalypse bunkers on plots of land in northern california or wyoming or whatever.

https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1236059773231079430
you can see where jay gets his notion of one day becoming a history professor from. 'i like this stuff!' says the man who called coronavirus a “hoax”, dismissed WHO mortality figures and suggested we use flu vaccine.

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-07 02:27:21)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

Aren't the US armed forces being force-fed equipment they don't want? I think that alone would be a significant indicator of American misspending.

Congress Again Buys Abrams Tanks the Army Doesn't Want
https://www.military.com/daily-news/201 … -want.html

Everything You Need to Know About the “Digital” “Catapults” Donald Trump Thinks the Navy Doesn’t Need
https://slate.com/technology/2017/05/do … -what.html -

President Trump wrote:

You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.”

It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–“Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.
[…]

Further, Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer points out that this proverbial ship has already sailed, even if the USS Ford hasn’t. “Experts say it’s virtually impossible to sort out how to replace the existing EMALS system with the old steam-powered system, and that could cost billions of dollars,” Gramer writes. In other words, Trump’s attempt to save money could cost the military dearly, even as it restricts its capacity for technological development in other ways.

Singer echoed many of these concerns in our conversation. “For people who know this topic of defense acquisitions one of the reasons you get escalating costs is when you change the requirements and designs midstream, and that’s exactly what [Trump’s] proposing to do here,” he told me. Moreover, he noted, “This is inappropriate, and an amazing level of micromanagement that would have Republican defense wonks apoplectic if Obama had done it.”
Gives me a headache.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
yes, but you see, $4 trillion dollars for a war and a gigantic military budget really aren't so bad. there is nothing else that money could have been spent on, instead. it's only several thousand dollars per american over x years. it's negligible. never mind that a several thousand dollar medical bill would ruin most middle-class american households. it's important that people like Jay can get heavily discounted education and can safely delude themselves at the taxpayers' generosity.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Aren't the US armed forces being force-fed equipment they don't want? I think that alone would be a significant indicator of American misspending.

Congress Again Buys Abrams Tanks the Army Doesn't Want
https://www.military.com/daily-news/201 … -want.html

Everything You Need to Know About the “Digital” “Catapults” Donald Trump Thinks the Navy Doesn’t Need
https://slate.com/technology/2017/05/do … -what.html -

President Trump wrote:

You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.”

It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–“Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.
[…]

Further, Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer points out that this proverbial ship has already sailed, even if the USS Ford hasn’t. “Experts say it’s virtually impossible to sort out how to replace the existing EMALS system with the old steam-powered system, and that could cost billions of dollars,” Gramer writes. In other words, Trump’s attempt to save money could cost the military dearly, even as it restricts its capacity for technological development in other ways.

Singer echoed many of these concerns in our conversation. “For people who know this topic of defense acquisitions one of the reasons you get escalating costs is when you change the requirements and designs midstream, and that’s exactly what [Trump’s] proposing to do here,” he told me. Moreover, he noted, “This is inappropriate, and an amazing level of micromanagement that would have Republican defense wonks apoplectic if Obama had done it.”
Gives me a headache.
Yep. The military contractors got smart a long time ago and disbursed their manufacturing over many congressional districts. Any time the military wants to cut a weapons system the plant floods their local congressman with Do Something calls and the weapon system lives another day. There are thousands of Abrams tanks sitting in the Nevada desert because the plant in Lima, Ohio is in a swing state.

Last edited by Jay (2020-03-07 05:05:31)

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i said all of that above in my post about the military-industrial complex and the political rigging of the F-35. but then you retorted that america is hardly some militarist state? seems like your defence spending and the close embedding of arms companies, the DoD and elected representatives says otherwise.
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
Fighter jets like the F-35 and high tech drones are not built primarily with deployment in 'dustbowls' in the Middle East in mind. Or to fund the military industry for that matter. Maintaining escalation dominance in the 21st century is a real strategic concern and is keeping a lot of R&D going.

Having said this I agree that the US military budget is disproportionate and that too much money is sunk into far too expensive defence contracts. Partly because of fuckups in the department of defence, green-lighting concepts without enough consideration coupled with bad project management, causing exorbitant cost overruns, such as has been the case with the F35. The political maneouvering and internal bickering at the top of MoDs/DoDs is also ensuring the continued investment in and deployment of capabilities whose continued relevance in the theater of war of the future is very questionable at best. It's become clear that training exercises have sometimes even been skewed or handicapped to ensure favourable outcomes to justify future investment, which is the worst of all. Honestly reminiscent of countries building battleships on the eve of WW2.

Not all of it the fault of departmental heads or generals, the political class sometimes have vested interest in pushing certain products/policies unto the military to appease the industrial base. Because of what Jay pointed out above, which you can also see happening in Europe, though to a lesser extent and with different dynamics (between EU countries rather than among states).

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