Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
Redbrickbear said:
boognish_bear said:
Is that fat **** back from Ukraine?
To his credit, at least he went over there if only to stage some photos to look like he was doing something.
None of the Slava Ukraini's on this board like Trey or ATLbear did ***** They want other people to pay for and die for their wars.
Oh, this argument? Some of us did things for this country and others you'll never see or hear about on social media. Get a job or go down and stop some brown men from entering this country (your big gripe), or patrol your neighborhood, or do anything productive instead of hiding behind the freedom and privilege others afford you as you do nothing but cowardly whine about.
I must have touched a nerve?
How am I being a coward by taking to unpopular opinion in a thread where the majority of posters would sacrifice their first born children for Israel?
I'm not the one advocating for foreign wars and more spending that has depleted the generational wealth of the vast majority of Americans.
Whatever you think you've done has probably done more harm than good. You are a dummy with an inflated sense of self-worth.
We haven't had the draft since Vietnam so no one asked you to do anything other than not make life more difficult for the rest of us... but even that seems to be too much to ask.
Well I certainly don't overinflate my worth to believe I could make yours or many others lives more difficult, although my wife might disagree.
I don't care about the popularity of your opinion. Redbrick and others express opinions different than mine, but at least there's a level of cogent rationale even if I disagree. You operate from a place of personal grievance and character anger that is hard to palate much less engage. So I'll try to do better and not take it to a more personal level and stick with the debated issues. But I'll still call a spade a spade if you put it out there.
And to get back to the issues, generational wealth has been minimally if at all impacted by government expenditures on foreign nations or conflicts within the last 50 years.
That is total bull*****
A can of coke cost 5 cents in 1970.
Inflation, caused be insane spending, is the silent killer of generational wealth.
Agree, inflation is absolutely at issue. But what you don't seem to contemplate is that discretionary spending as a whole over the years, which foreign aid falls under, has been a small contributor to deficit spending over those 50 years. It is entitlement spending which has compounded our deficits and led to the inflationary impact of our monetary policy. I keep mentioning this but no one wants to talk about it because I think no one wants to admit our "America first" part of our budget is what's drowning us.
I am support you in cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security... but those are harder cuts to make bcs Americans will directly suffer for these spending cuts.
Americans will not directly suffer if we refuse to send another $15 billion to Israel next week.
You can't say that blanketedly as it depends upon what the 15 Billion is spent on (admittedly I don't know the details). However if it involves shutting down weapons production or shuttering support operations for U.S. military personnel it could be Americans losing jobs. Reality is sometimes it's just shifting around existing resources and putting a price tag on it and we actually don't save anything on a real dollar basis. Unlike direct reduction in transfer payments from entitlements.
Weapons manufacture doesn't enrich us in any real sense. Its purpose is, or should be, to protect the productive economy. The more paper you have to spend on bullets, the less you have for bread and butter. Saving jobs has zero weight as an argument for defense spending.
Ironic as we communicate via something developed through defense spending.
You'd think you could grasp at this point we spend the paper on both without the discipline to sacrifice either. One we actually attempt to pay for, the other we just add to its cost.
I can grasp it, though I don't know where you get the idea that we're attempting to pay for either. It's all supported by borrowing to a great extent. The difference is that welfare at least has tangible benefits. The only benefit of defense is protection from threats that may or may not exist.
No, I don't think you actually grasp it. Do you know how the Federal Budget works? We have direct payroll taxes ($1.4 Trillion) for SS, Medicare, and income security that are woefully below costs. It's a $75 Trillion accruing liability. We have income and related taxes ($3+ Trillion) to pay for discretionary spending that more than covers both defense and non defense spending ($1.7 Trillion). The balance of those taxes then go to cover the massive shortfall of mandatory (entitlement) spending ($4.1 Trillion consisting mostly of SS/Med). The shortfall is then borrowed. If we cut 100% of the defense budget ($700 Billion) we would still have to borrow nearly $800 Billion dollars. That's how out of whack it is.
While there is a minimal short term benefit of the type of welfare we have institutionalized, the long term impact has been a subtle destruction of the middle class and a societal dependency that is a frightening cycle hurting Americans from an inflationary perspective which in turn puts pressure on increasing required entitlement spending. In essence, a death circle of dependency and liability.
So keep the global dominance of our military and the dollar, or the music stops and there will be no chairs to sit in for this welfare. Or we can get serious about entitlements.
Well, this is a whole new discussion. If we're going to admit that defense spending is really about propping up the dollar, then sure, I'll agree there's a short-term benefit. The problem is, it's having the opposite effect in the long term. People are starting to see that it's a bad idea to have their wealth held hostage to the whims of American policy. As for your numbers, the dollars are fungible, so we're not really saying anything different.
Defense spending is only part of the equation, and the cost piece is a minority expense of the budget. The combination of economic interests and strategic stability is what allows it to happen. Defense is only part of that, and it's been and is critical to our global position, but not that we can't argue refined policy positions.
What's for certain is that no one's being held hostage. We've fallen victim to the complacency that relative peace and prosperity provide over long periods, along with the comfort of first world lifestyles. Social economic expectations are elevated well past the struggles (effort) required to attain them. It's our moral hazard and is reflected in areas like savings rates and personal debt. And our government follows that pattern in its own fiscal behavior in the interest of assuaging their electorate.
The false dilemma is looking at foreign lands, people, or expenditures for the blame when it's our own internal reflection and evaluation that is necessary. But that's much harder than pointing a finger away from us.
