Military Spending vs Welfare/Internal Spending

So what, you promote a system of "every man for themselves"?

If so, screw that. Sure maybe in the long run it will possibly give responsibility but ALOT of lives would be ruined in the process.

What if their savings went away through no fault of their own?

If they chose to not have children, they're probably getting what's coming to them. If they fail to even try to fulfill their social role, society isn't obligated to subsidize them. Just like if an adult just chooses not to work, it's natural they wouldn't be paid, or a child just chooses not to go to school, it's natural they wouldn't get a diploma. Plus people aren't islands. They have children/parents, cousins, siblings, neighbors, and etc.

edited 3rd May '11 8:26:31 PM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

"If they chose to not have children, they're probably getting what's coming to them. If they fail to even try to fulfill their social role, society isn't obligated to subsidize them. "

Oh its good to know a human's worth is if they shoot out a baby.

Oh and if they did have a child and that child cant take care of them for whatever reason (dead, mentally or physically impaired, having their own troubles) well I guess they were horrible parents and should fuck off and die then!

edited 3rd May '11 8:28:57 PM by Thorn14

Anyone who saves relatively diligently and fulfills their social responsibilities isn't going to have a serious problem. Did nieces, nephews, siblings, cousins, and of course other children all drop off the menu? It's really easier than ever, especially in today's modern economy where a reasonably diversified portfolio will really never lose all of its value. It's when people hedge all their bets on state intervention that social and family responsibilities wither away.

edited 3rd May '11 8:39:25 PM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

So if your uncle or whatever you never really knew showed up on your doorstep going "Sorry, things turned sour, can I live with you forever now?"

You'd be completely okay with it?

Also having a child is not a social responsibility. There is zero need to do so.

edited 3rd May '11 8:41:50 PM by Thorn14

Well, when I think about it, I don't think it'd come to that unless his house blew up in a catastrophic fire. More realistically, if investments go bad or work goes bad or he tries to start a business and it hits a few bumps on the way, I'd absolutely certainly throw whatever assistance I can spare in. Unless of course he was the kind of uncle who neglected his responsibilities and expected other people to fulfill theirs. Course, there's a difference from someone asking for enough money to buy a mansion, and someone asking for enough cash to get through a tough year or to help jumpstart a business.

edited 3rd May '11 8:59:03 PM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

Too bad the globe is so interconnected these days, this might not be enough. The bigger your military is, the more you need to worry about forces from outside your local area. The instant you're the strongest in a given region, you enter a larger stage.

You sure about that? Don't suppose you have anything to back that up, beyond a rather tenuous train of reasoning?

Another logic train with half the rails missing. Don't skip so many steps, you lose the reader. How does SS annihilate national wealth? Considering how wealthy the US has been since after WWII...also, how are you defining national wealth?

Got any evidence of this? Because this one, I think, is just plain not true, at least not in the universal sense that you're stating it.

Oh, now I remember you Tsu. You're like Tongpu, only your explanations don't make sense.

I'm sure that SS is 100% to blame for people's debt and lack of saving. Certainly not higher cost of living, nor irresponsible money usage, poor parenting resulting in irresponsible children, lack of understanding of credit cards, or the predatory practices of credit cards that would previously have been illegal-i.e. loansharking. Nor even the ridiculous setup of government college loans, which are designed to make you lose.

First one true, second one false. In fact, it's been the opposite for 99% of SS existence, and the former admin of SS says it's still that way. You want to know the folly of predicting what SS is doing? Look up "year SS fails" and you'll get results for just about every year between now and doomsday.

Also, how is this even different than investing people's money and giving it back to them later? Tell me one functional, external (i.e. not a matter of internal bookkeeping) difference between these two things.

Aren't you lucky? I'm sure everyone is in just as good a situation as you, and could afford to help.

Oh man, I almost forgot- why does "internal spending" translate to "Social safety nets, and nothing else"? What about internal spending on infrastructure, education, etc? Especially infrastructure, since generally speaking money spent on infrastructure actually causes a gain for the govt. in the long run.

edited 3rd May '11 9:04:11 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

SS, as socially decaying as it is, has at least been financially solvent because of the extremely high American birthrate after WW 2. Of course, that's changing today, and this whole idea of the US as a "wealthy nation" is going to be very quaint in a generation.

People have more disposable income than ever. The impulse to spend spend just dominates all because there's no sense of responsibility to others and this idea that this nebulous thing called government can always bail you out and tuck you in and make the monsters go away.

Plus, people who fancy themselves as "intellectuals" and dedicate their energies toward learning profound subjects like film studies and poetry on the back of student loans meant to be repaid certainly lose at life. That's not really a problem.

It's like the difference between putting your money in a nice respectable investment bank and giving it to Bernie Madoff. There's no creation of wealth at all (like investment creates). It's just creating false gains because there are more workers (contributors) in the future than in the present. Which works fine, except when there aren't. Social security is already running a deficit, something that should balloon as the "baby boomers" retire and the worker-retiree ratio collapses. The simple lack of an upper-limit for spending, like a real investment does, is pretty much going to turn America into a second-rate economy unless they have a political revolution that ends their cult of entitlement and spending.

edited 3rd May '11 9:20:39 PM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

Sorry, but that's the dumbest thing.

Savings are not an explicit economic good. It's an economic NEED, but there's a certain point where excess savings cause more harm than good. It's called a bubble. Happens sometime. One thing that additional savings can do is inflate bubbles.

That said, I'm not in disagreement about consumer debt, however, I blame the rich...or to be more precise our cultural worship (instead of scorn) of the materially rich. Getting all up in arms when people look to emulate what is valued in our society, quite frankly, is dumb. Much better to be all up in arms over the values themselves. The US has some serious problems with consumer debt. It also has serious problems with non-consumer debt (such as health care). It also has serious problems with wages not keeping up with real inflation.

The reality is that there's more than enough savings in order to provide the needed capital. There's no shortage right now. Even after one of the biggest market corrections in a long time, it starts to go right back up again. Now, there might be problems with distribution, and there are from what I hear..but that's not necessarily something that more savings is going to fix. Or at the very least, it's very inefficient. (FWIW I support the idea of a public bank that provides low-interest loans to people opening/expanding small businesses).

Now, a switchover to a savings-based instead of a consumption-based economy might be a good thing. But you can't do these things in a vacuum. You have to understand that these things have wide spread implications. One of the things this will do, is it will eliminate the need for millions of jobs. A lot of millions. How do you think that economies should be reformed in order to prevent social chaos and the possibility of revolution?

Edit: I apologize. But this is one thing that pisses me off. If you look at charts for "disposable income" you're looking at income minus taxes. But does anybody really measure it that way? For me, and probably for everybody, your disposable income is your income, minus your taxes, minus your rent/mortgage, minus health care costs, minus insurance, minus needed transportation (as in, to get to work) DOT DOT DOT

That's your disposable income. Maybe some things are not seen in that way, maybe some people have more control over it than others. For example if you live in an area that has quality mass transit in order to get to work then you have more of a choice than someone who lives in a rural location, etc. But still. I don't think that the "proper" way of discussing disposable income tells us anything.

edited 3rd May '11 10:20:35 PM by Karmakin

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

You do realize right, that the so-called "worship" of the rich or more accurately the cultural desire to become rich is the reason why the US went from literal backwater to the world's leading superpower.

In 1800, none of the European superpowers would have anything to do with us. To them we were a footnote at best. By 1850, we had established ourselves culturally and institutionally as the land of opportunity where those who would normally have been born a slave, serf or peasant and stayed that way in the brutally oppressive climate of 19th century Europe could come here and literally turn themselves into a rich man. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people did that from 1820-1960. We rapidly expanded ourselves in territory because we as a culture wanted to be rich allowing for things like the various gold rushes, massive territorial expansions and exploration, and fostering the ability of the Industrial Revolution to take hold and explode at a rate much faster and much bigger than was happening anywhere in Europe.

At no point in that development was Eat the Rich and such idiotic class warfare ever permanently popular. Come to think of it, had we resorted to that sort of ideology I highly doubt the US would extend beyond the Appalachians, be an industrialized nation and have a first world standard of living. We'd probably still be a bankrupt, third world-esque backwater that nobody cares about.

There's that nasty habit of trying to buy things the rich have to appear rich instead of spending as you please though. At least the Eccentric Millionare (if we don't have that trope, I'm going to be disapppointed) is willing to do whatever the hell he wants with his money.

Fight smart, not fair.

Oh boy. Thanks for the disclaimer warning us of weapons-grade historical revisionism ahead. We had established ourselves culturally and institutionally as the country of the robber baron, where a poor man could rise to become wealthy by screwing over his fellow poor, and more than a few "great entrepreneurs" of the 19th century did, particularly in the railroad industry. We established ourselves as the country whose central government won the Civil War because it had regions that could leverage wage slaves and child labour to greater economic effect than the rebels could leverage actual institutionalized slavery. We established ourselves as the country that finished off its resource grab with the total subjugation of the indigenous peoples along that centuries-old war zone called a frontier, only to keep feeding our economy by ransacking the Phillipines, Mexico, and Cuba and channeling the profits into a handful of business interests. We established ourselves as the country willing to feed immigrant peasant families into that frontier until the land was developed and we could buy it out from under them for pennies on the dollar. We established ourselves as the country willing to gouge our soldiers during World War I by charging them most of their own pay for low quality materials selected by friends of the guys selling them. And we established ourselves as the world's greatest amnesiacs by institutionalizing historical myopia in our education system, to the point where people buy this narrative about the American Nation always being the greatest place on Earth to pull yourself up by your bootstraps for everyone, with not the faintest idea of what life was like before labour regulations and civil rights legislation and the freedom to organize and strike without the State Police being called in to shoot you (a function for which many State Police were originally formed).

America is and has been a great country. It has not been great because of these mythical bounties of opportunity to become the next made man; it has been great because of the efforts of its people, E Pluribus Unum, who have strived to make it a better country in spite of the guys selling that myth.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

^^^I'm not saying the rich should be scorned (One could say I'm in the middle on the issue personally, it's not how much money you make. It's how you make it AND how you use it, but I'm not one to criticize someone for having a nice house), what I am saying is that making a cultural change from a consumption based society to a savings based economy would probably have to involve that.

What most people unfortunately rely on in terms of such beliefs is thinking is the concept of the "noble poor", that is, that the downtrodden have more of a responsibility to be well..responsible than the not-so downtrodden. Not only is it unrealistic, but I think that by and large it's an immoral concept. With great power comes little responsibility, is how I like to put it. Simply not sustainable.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Well the better measure of whether your saving rate is high enough is to usually look at your investment rate. Considering that both Canada and USA have pretty piss poor investment rates, I would say that our saving rates are too low.

Government debt sucks away a lot of the possible loans that could be used by businesses to expand the economy, so one definite way to help is to cut government spending and tackle the deficit in order to eventually whittle away at the debt. This is best done during good times (like Clinton balancing the budget but unfortunately didn't get much of a chance to lower the debt).

@ Tsukubus

Pension plans have historically increased savings because they work by forcing people to put money into a pension fund which is then run by an investment board which then makes interest off the funds which is used to pay out money for those who have retired. That's how CPP works and that's how almost all pension plans work. It's why there's so many rules and regulations about their investment strategies and the types of risks they're allowed to take (since you can't have your pension tanking). Overall, the CPP has had billions in surplus year over year due to their investments and that is expected to continue. It has nothing to do with birthrate or anything since the pension is based on investments.

You complain about European VA Ts but you like GST? Err? They're the same thing.

I'm not sure if you know the definition of Keynesian theory at all beyond its name. Pensions have nothing to do with Keynesian theory at all. You could call it socialist, since it's about having the government handle a portion of our savings.

Saving rate is how much money a person puts into a bank, thereby making it available as money to be loaned out for various purposes. These are the factors that affect the decision of how much money is saved:

• Interest Rates. Higher interest rate is a positive incentive for saving money.
• Inflation rate. Higher inflation rates means money needs to be spent now because it cannot be used to store value.
• VA Ts. (Canada's VAT is GST and PST, or combined into HST) Higher consumption based taxes lower the rate of consumption and the only other thing you can do with your money is save it. Since this disproportionately hurts the poor, this is why we have GST rebates for those making under 40k household income in Canada.

Notice I didn't mention pensions? It's because they don't matter. It guarantees a minimum rate of saving, so if an individual never planned to save money anyways, this ensures that they save a small pitiful sum of money. For instance, if the pension rate makes me save 5% of my money and I was originally only going to save 1% of my money, then my total saving rate is going to sit at 5% and it would appear I save no additional money. So overall, the net effect of a pension can ONLY be an increase in the saving rate.

edited 4th May '11 8:43:08 AM by breadloaf

Oh god, I just laughed so hard I fell out of my chair.

Raw resources/materials and cheap labor. That is the ONLY reason we got there.

Also, desire to become rich != desire to act rich even though said act is beyond your means. And you can't deny that people do that.

edited 4th May '11 11:18:37 AM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Don't forget two small and unimportant events slightly helping the U.S. industry, while getting its competitors out of the game (and drawing on the other side of the Atlantic quite a few scientists and engineers). I wonder what kind of country the U.S. would have been without the two world wars (and events linked, of course). I mean, no wartime economy, no groups of nuclear physicists getting the hell away from Those Wacky Nazis, etc., etc.

This country became a superpower through WW I and especially WW II. A lot more time would have been needed otherwise to fulfill its potential. And, even so, the European powers would have veen major contenders. So, this whole exceptionalism thingie... no, doesn't stand against a realistic analysis. At least, it doesn't explain, and by far, the success of the U.S. The dream was there, and it built up a country (although with a lot of not-so-nice consequences in terms of individual poverty, relation between religion and politics, the whole Firearms thing we should really not start to argue about here, etc., etc.) far faster than anyone could have imagined. True.

What it allowed was to be in best geostrategical position to win the jackpot from the two wars while being spared from it (only a few military death and nothing else of consequence, compared to the other countries). Not the "manifest destiny" some speak about.

As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.

Someone brought up Nzazi Germany's army was much stronger due to funding.

How do you think they built that army after a depression? Because the government spent money building the economy (which included military spending).

I don't think the OP's question is so black and white. Military spending goes into the economy of a country. Still, when you face no serious threats spendning trillions on defence seems a bit silly.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Aye, short of being on the LOSING end of a land invasion, I can't really think of a scenario in which the guns/butter ratio should be over 50%, as it is in the USA now.

Oh dear. I really, honestly, thought I was going to have an interesting discussion about whether or not social safety nets erode personal responsibility and if so at what level, but instead I see you're playing buzzword bingo, regurgitating every ancient myth and falsehood about SS short of “Ponzi scheme.”

Fine, let's get this over with, from the last time this came up:

1. There is no social security crisis, but rather a $2.6 trillion surplus. So says FDR's grandson, former SSA commissioner.
2. Payouts could continue at present rates for three decades, after that, 80% of payouts could continue indifinitely with no changes to funding. To keep benefits at current levels forever, the equivalent of 3% of the federal budget would be needed, which translates to a 2% payroll tax hike.
   • Currently, the payroll tax does not apply to the rich's wage earnings beyond about the first $100,000. If the SSA had access to these wages, it would increase payroll tax revenue by _15%_.
3. Social security is not part of the budget, killing it would do nothing for the budget, payroll taxes have no impact on the budget. Any mention of Social Security in a federal budget debate is off topic by definition.
   • The SSA does not let “congress borrow” from them, what the SSA does do is use their surplus to buy T-bonds, one of the most secure investments in the world.

My opinion (and that of most politicians who aren't raging fascists) on this matter is that the least harmful taxes are “progressive” (primarily on the richest) and the most harmful taxes are “regressive” (primarily on the poor.) The reason for this is that wealth naturally accumulates (all other things being equal, if you're rich, it's easier to get richer, while if you're poor, it's harder.) Taxes on consumption and labor are EXTREMELY regressive, since if you look at the percentage of a wealthy person's income that comes from labor and the percentage of expenses that go to consumption, it's far lower than a lower-class person's.

Discouraging excess consumption is good, discouraging NECESSARY consumption (which most working class people spend everything on today) is economic suicide.

Thanks to fractional reserve banking, there is no functional difference between savings and spending, if you're not investing your money in the economy, your banker is doing it for you. Debt, on the other hand, DOES do harm to the economy compared to savings or investment, locking up capital where it can do no good and providing perverse incentives for price inflation and wage deflation.

That said, this particular line of discussion would probably be best pursued in the financial markets thread.

I honestly can't think of a single point in history where redistributing the wealth freed from eliminating useless jobs decreased living standards.

Gee, I wonder what those Square Deal, New Deal thingies responsible for ending the Gilded Age of Robber Barons, bringing the Industrial Revolution's wealth to its workers for the first time in world history, and producing the Golden Age of Capitalism in the USA was, then.

Eric,

Those wouldn't stand up to any professional army for long. Organization and cooperation on a grand scale are necessary for that sort of thing.

Of course, since we face no threats of that sort, both options offer nothing for our current global environment. Looking at the threats currently facing world peace and national security, the following seems pretty obvious:

• Quality over quantity. Focus on well equipped, well payed, well treated personnel.
• Highly mobile.
• Emphasis on intelligence and persuasion capability over brute force.
• High autonomy from strategic concerns, low autonomy from legal concerns, thus reducing the (real and apparent) conflicts of interest and ethical pliability that impede operations.
  • This cuts both ways, meaning that we must respond promptly to obligations instead of compromising international law in favor of profitable engagements, otherwise our goodwill and trust will erode.

All in all, 'sounds less like a military force and more like a combination of a well-run police force (mostly detectives and SWAT) with GI Joe…

Eric,

edited 4th May '11 7:07:29 PM by EricDVH

Since there aren't any real obligations, this further reduces cost. Pull out of any conflicts that don't benefit the country as well.

Fight smart, not fair.

^ Like? Iraq is effectively over with, the deadline for all US troops to leave Iraq is this summer according to the Bush-Maliki Security Deal of 2008. As just happened with getting Bin Laden, we can't cut and run now over Afghanistan. We went in, we now got the guy we were looking for, now let's finish the job and leave Afghanistan in a state far better than it was before we were there.

Really, there's nowhere to pull out of like a gaggle of pansies. Now if you want to argue pull all our guys out of Europe and let those pansies fend for themselves, you'll find a lot more supporters of that than pulling out of somewhere active like Afghanistan.

edited 4th May '11 8:09:40 PM by MajorTom

Sure we can.

Fight smart, not fair.

I'm told the withdrawal method is of limited effectiveness.

We should never have put anything in, if we didn't want the consequences.

Your name calling is making it hard to take anything you say seriously Tom.

Also some would argue Afghanistan is a worse place since the war.

Not sure how I feel about it honestly...

edited 4th May '11 9:57:18 PM by Thorn14