Cut Military or Raise Taxes, take your pick

[John F Kennedy III]

Why is it never an option to cut military spending to defense only and cut taxes?

Their damn printer must've ran out of ink, leaving that part out of the letter.

[adams101]

Why is it never an option to cut military spending to defense only and cut taxes?

Their damn printer must've ran out of ink, leaving that part out of the letter.

The problem is we have let too many "voters" being employed by the military contractors and too much money going to those contractors. They have strategically built their manufacturing plants in all the states they need political support from. This makes it appear Any Congressman that votes to cut military spending is un-employing the local voters who put him in office. Any state that starts making waves......gets a plant and is then "on the team". They pretty much have "the team" wired by now. If the state starts to move away from supporting the defense spending the contractors simply increase employment in that state. It is quite a mess.

It is cold calculating politics which are once again a problem of a highly centralized government that is out of touch with its people and a completely UNDEFINED military and foreign policy. All Washington does is say the word "terrorist" and the public showers them with billions yelling "protect us"! This is despite the fact that more people die from peanut allergies in the US than terrorism.

If you want to cut military spending you are a terrorist or someone who wants to put Americans out of work. The defense budget has become yet another corporate "BAILOUT" and corporate welfare. Federal dependancy is a plague.

[Carson]

Do you have any idea how they calculated inflation before 1913? Not that I doubt this graph; I was just curious.

No. I wouldn't see why you would have to. Money was real. It was what it was until a war came along and people wouldn't' show up unless they counterfeited some money.

Actually I read some of the Doctors stuff and his explanation years ago about how it was put together. Even then, like now, I mostly like it because it feels right. It mirrors what I've felt happen in my life time and the impression I've had of the history I've heard about.


Robert Sahr main page;

http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/node/87


2012 inflation conversion factor revision;

http://oregonfuture.oregonstate.edu/...isci/sahr/sahr


Individual Year Conversion Factor Tables ( I don't see as far back as 1913 );

http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/i...-factor-tables


Answer; Oh Yah. Here we go.

Note: In tiny type at the bottom of the chart it says,

"Calculations for 1665 to 1912 use data adapted from John J. McCusker, "How Much Is That in Real Money?," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (2001) , Table A-1.
Calculations starting 1913 are based on CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And then there is the way it goes so well with this chart I found showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average.



It trips me out that all of my life I thought the DOW meant something totally different when it went up. These two charts together really opened my eyes to the what the counterfeiting by the central banks has been doing.

Are you seeing it?

When they double the money supply by counterfeiting, sure you get twice as many dollars when you sell your stock, but they are worth half as much! Then on top of it the government that has been behind a lot of it cuts themselves in on your stuff through capital gains taxes! It's insidious. (What ever that word means.)

Anyway if your still not seeing the charts move hand in hand pretend the DOW is made up of one hundred stocks. Now divide the 13000 at the top and the 500 at the bottom by 100 by knocking off two zeros and then compare with the chart showing it now taking about 130 dollars to do what it used to take 5. Pretty darn close anyway.

Once I caught onto this it has helped me put so many pieces of the puzzle, of the way the world works, together for myself.

[jay_dub]

The situation is so bad that we likely will have to cut everything and raise taxes. It's either that or default.

We have $16 Trillion in debt. All forecasts are for increasing the debt for years to come. We'll likely hit $20 Trillion by the end of Obama's term.

In 2010, we paid over $413 Billion in interest on a debt of $13.5 Trillion.

Further increasing our debt will lead to more credit downgrades, which will result in increased interest rates. We could easily be spending a Trillion a year in interest alone by 2020. At that point there will be no debate on what we should cut. We will have lost control of our own destiny.

We need to end the Global war On Terror, the War On Drugs and the War On Our Civil Liberties. Only then will be able to fight the real enemy and declare a War On Debt.

[presence]

$663.7 billion (+12.7%) - Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)

448.8 BILLION CUTS

=================

214.9 = same Defence budget as Russia and China COMBINED http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_expenditures

[dinosaur]

The Department of Agriculture alone spends spends about 150B and only 80B of that is food stamps and about 6B in forest service.
I'm not sure where they arrive at that discrestionary vs. mandatory number.

Discretionary spending: $1.378 trillion (+13.8%)

$663.7 billion (+12.7%) - Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%-NA) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$0 billion (−100%-NA) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%-NA) – Financial stabilization efforts
$11 billion (+275%-NA) – Potential disaster costs
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other

[dinosaur]

We can let you keep about $78 billion for defense if we cut everything else to zero (keeping Social Security/ Medicare) and not worry about raising taxes.

Less money for defense than for food stamps?

[adams101]

Less money for defense than for food stamps?

The problem is both "poor" and "defense" are totally undefined. Most of the money is going to neither. Only after we as a country define these terms can we make a sensible budget. The problem is you can spend 10 times as much leaving the terms undefined. With "defense" undefined you can do anything you please with the US military and call it "defense". You can say some boogie man called a "terrorist" is chasing 300 million people here in the US and spend unlimited resources to catch ghosts. You can supply weapons to two waring factions then jump in and "save them" from each other. You can plunder foreign governments for corporate profiteering. You can antagonize countries with embargo's etc forcing them into military action just to survive. Heck, military contractor employees have to eat too so lets build a bunch more stuff we don't need. If we can't find some place to store it until it is obsolete we will give it away in foreign aid.

The same crap goes on with the term "poor" which has simply encompassed all "charity". Once you start elevating someone's standard of living it is never enough. If you say giving them $1000 a month for food stamps is good then $1200 is even better. Phones are nice things lets give them one of those. Unlimited utility usage would make them feel better. How about discounting their housing with HUD.

Mexican National citizens need food too and they will come here, lower our working wages and raise corporate profits. Heck there are people 7000 miles away nobody knows starving in foreign countries. If we feed their "poor" they will let EXXON plunder their natural resources. It is a win/win as the people get stuck with the bribery tab while the corporations get to plunder foreign oil then sell it to us under the OPEC mafia pricing. Ooops the people of that country feel they are getting screwed on that deal so we better send in the military under the "defense" budget. After all even defending corporate profiteering in foreign countries is "defending someone".

Heck, since all this charity and defense bounces back and forth so much lets just lump them in together so the taxpayers don't have to worry out what is what and we don't have to define anything. No matter what we want to do it will fall under the "no parameters" of one of them.

Where does the logic end without definition? You just can't feed, house, clothe and give cellphones to enough people. You can't raise someone else's standard of living high enough. You can't keep 6 billion people safe enough. It is just numbers on a spreadsheet. Just keep adding zeros.

[Zippyjuan]

How would you propose to answer this million (trillion, rather) dollar question Zippy?

It is incredibly difficult. If your want to balance the budget with tax increases only you would have to double the current income tax. If you want to do it by cuts only and leave off Social Security and Medicare/ Medicaid, you basically have to cut 100% of everything including defense. Neither is realistic therefor it must include everything- making changes in the social programs (any savings would come in the future on that) and you must have cuts in other things and you must raise taxes.

[Qdog]

It is incredibly difficult. If your want to balance the budget with tax increases only you would have to double the current income tax. If you want to do it by cuts only and leave off Social Security and Medicare/ Medicaid, you basically have to cut 100% of everything including defense. Neither is realistic therefor it must include everything- making changes in the social programs (any savings would come in the future on that) and you must have cuts in other things and you must raise taxes.

Ron Paul's plan seemed pretty reasonable to me. What was so difficult about that? It didn't completely eliminate the military, or put Seniors on SS out in the cold. It cut from everywhere.