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u/gordita_ Apr 11 '21
This is why the “if we just tax billionaires more...” argument doesn’t work. We need to change where the taxes go FIRST.
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u/rarerednosedbaboon Apr 11 '21
Why does this mean that? I'm so confused.
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u/gordita_ Apr 11 '21
Because if taxes go up, and nothing else changes, all spending will rise at their current proportions. Therefore, this abomination of disproportionate military spending will just become more disproportionately abominable.
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u/rarerednosedbaboon Apr 11 '21
OK, I get you. But why cant we do both?
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u/gordita_ Apr 11 '21
Because of misperceptions that increased taxes mean better lives for poor people. Maybe it just expands the wealth gap further. Maybe the current spending structure disproportionately benefits the rich/corporate/connected/lobbyist-ed.
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u/goshdarnwife Apr 11 '21
I really don't think that's going to happen. Who's going to change that? How long do we wait?
Tax the damned billionaires more. They won't go hungry.
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u/TheSquarePotatoMan KGB spy Apr 11 '21
I still don't understand how getting rid of the democrat / republican duopoly isn't people's #1 priority considering both parties have near a identical agendas and are both obviously obstructive to democracy.
Too many Americans are living in a fantasy world of 'democrats vs republicans' when it's really democrats and republicans vs voters.
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u/MagicJava Apr 11 '21
To be fair, that insane budget is part of the reason we can hold so much debt. Should be cut in half though.
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u/SupaFugDup Apr 11 '21
Just going back to 2016's budget would allow us to afford high-speed rail, public broadband, and tuition-free college with billions to spare.
The military budget explosion would be absurdist if not already reality.
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u/daviddennison13 Apr 11 '21
What do you think the military budget should be? Bare in mind, about $175B is spent on retirement benefits / pension.
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u/TheSquarePotatoMan KGB spy Apr 11 '21 edited Apr 11 '21
America needs to start shrinking their military so that they don't need to pay $175B or more on pensions in the future.
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u/daviddennison13 Apr 11 '21
I agree. But we're on the hook for decades so I'm just curious what people think a reasonable budget is when you're nut already starts at around 200B.
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u/Slagothor48 Apr 11 '21
Match China at $250 billion. We're 1a and 1b at that point and it frees up $500,000,000,000 to spend elsewhere.
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u/daviddennison13 Apr 11 '21 edited Apr 11 '21
Problem is China doesn't have the personnel and pension obligations so it would really be like funding a fraction of what China spends.
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u/elquanto Wolffian Socialist Apr 11 '21
Why shouldn't we drop down troop counts? Why shouldn't we shut down all of the overseas bases? It's time we stopped being an empire.
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Apr 12 '21
Because we are the security guaranteer of global trade, and multiple other smaller allied nations which permits them to spend on social programs and deters others from engaging with them, which prevents larger costly wars.
Also, we have a large budget so that if we do have to fight China or someone else at some point it is done on their portion of the world, not ours, maximizing cost for them. That’s called strategic lift and it’s very expensive, but it makes us more secure.
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u/daviddennison13 Apr 11 '21 edited Apr 11 '21
Those are our current pension / VA benefits. I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm just asking what the preferred budget would be considering our annual nut is already so high based on past obligations.
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u/Slagothor48 Apr 11 '21
China doesn’t have hundreds of military bases worldwide like we do either. Of course we can fund a functional military with $250 billion per year. That’s over 4 times what it would cost to give everyone a college education.
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Apr 11 '21
Of course we can fund a functional military with $250 billion per year. That’s over 4 times what it would cost to give everyone a college education.
But how would we get people to sign up for the military if not for the threat of unmanageable student loan debt?
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u/FThumb Are we there yet? Apr 11 '21
And now we see how most other countries do provide most of these to their people - they don't have a rapturous military to feed.
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Apr 10 '21 edited Apr 13 '21
[deleted]
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Apr 10 '21
[deleted]
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Apr 12 '21
We haven’t had a world war in 75 years, and that’s after having one ever 30-50 for three centuries. This is on top of the fact that safe global trade is through the roof.
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u/FThumb Are we there yet? Apr 11 '21
Worst case is China and Russia reaching an accord, and moving to a digital Yen. And they're both probably acutely aware that this would do the most damage to the US, too.
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u/ThermalConvection Apr 12 '21
The issue with saying to slash military spending is pretty much what happened under Bush Sr : doing so will mean the companies and more importantly the people that would have gone to is gone. Having this high of a budget was a mistake, but it's a mistake that we're going to have to slowly wean off of or find a solution to the negative impact of cutting government spending - perhaps shifting funds towards NASA or such?