Your knowledge of economics is amusing. Thanks for the laugh! :rofl:

The income tax didn't exist until 1913. But somehow we had a military before that. ;)

(Answer: income tax is not the only source of the government's revenue. It's just the largest source)

Actually, it's the largest single source - it's not the majority.

But what do facts matter?

LOL...Remember the title of this thread.

Hold on to your wallets.

we come full circle and back on topic.:rofl:

And please, let me know what made up our military in 1913 (this is almost not worth responding to since the comparison between a 1913 military and a 2007 one is RIDICULOUS).........you know, aside from the horses. Facts are military costs money, especially a volunteer based force with our levels of technology. Again, no problem here as a citizen with the majority of my taxes going to military spending.


Also, let me let everyone in on a DoD 'thing'. When the US Congress does dumb shit like blocking a war spending bill, that does NOTHING to stop a war. What occurs is installations like the Pentagon and places that remain nameless reallocate funding to the war effort. The mission is not left in the cold, however, the R&D efforts for weaponry, support, intel, body armor, things like that...lose funding. So every time a congressman say 'oh, we'll block the funding' remember what they are really blocking, the future of your troops & security in your country. You can't design reactive armor for an A1M1 over the weekend with $500.00 nor do intel collection with no bodies.


IMO, it is things like Social Security that have placed heavy tax burdens on society. Social programs and items in there category. Not to say we shouldn't have national programs, but perhaps funding them via taxes on the public is not the best course of action. Like Fred Thompson said "before you ask for a Government solution, make sure it is a Government problem".


So who relies on the US Military? See the map :rofl: (you think that is cheap?)

Last I read, we were in quite a few wars prior to 1913 and won every single one of them. So our military was not so bad.



Who's side are you arguing? :rofl:


Not to be insulting, but I see your viewpoint as extremely naive. Your viewpoint is that spending all this money on military is necessary and those who are doing the spending are doing so with the best intentions at heart.

In reality they are spending simply to spend. It is like corporate welfare with an excuse. They would simply give your tax money away to these contractors if they thought nobody would complain. But of course there would be complaints. So instead, they have to contract companies to do something. So we can always have them build another base, build more weapons, etc. And when people start to complain (like they did in the 1990s) that there is no "major threat" anymore (i.e. "cold war is over") so we should cut the military budget, a new "major threat" must be created in order to keep the budget on the rise.

They could easily have the same quality military as they do for half the money that they spend. But that is not the goal. The goal is to spend the money, not to get something for it. If the goal was really to build a good military, then the government would not allow trillions to be stolen...

http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/07-...on.cgi.24.html
Pentagon"Misplaces"2.3 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...8/MN251738.DTL
Military waste under fire - $1 trillion missing

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in325985.shtml
The War On Waste - Defense Department Cannot Account for 25% Of Funds - $2.3 Trillion


The reality is that they don't care at all about this. Their goal is to keep the money coming, not to make sure it is well spent. We have a $100-200 billion military for the bargain price of $700 billion per year. The rest of the money is simply going into the pockets of those who give large campaign contributions.

To the contrary, I think your opinion is based on a Utopian belief that somehow simply moving away from military spending removes all corruption from government and makes society better. As if the military was the problem. My opinion is that the US has done a great job of securing itself in less then 300 years by creating bases and outposts all over the world while still maintaining a non-war relationship with the majority. Not many nations can say that. And you now have added to your argument that the US wins wars..at least we agree on something. BTW, I didn't ask 'how many wars' but what we used. Huge difference.

You make the colossal assumption that simply moving the funds around makes all the difference. As if spending for nothing would not occur in nearly every other single field of work. Man I'm glad you don't pull the purse strings for the nation...we would have a land of free loaders with the government being responsible for everything in the nation at all times. Of course, it would be short lived after all the corruption takes place and you scatter for a single entity to blame for the failure.

Apparently, it's Hillary that is the "they" in Eric's diatribe:

AP Link

NO BLOOD FOR OIL! :rofl:

For those that are keeping score:

Government waste spending on military = bad

Government waste spending on socialized healthcare = good.

You can't have it both ways, Eric. Why do you assume that politicians won't be in bed with healthcare if we go socialized? You're the one that's naive. ;)

No, that is not my opinion at all. There are other areas where money is being wasted (i.e. stolen) just the same. A good example would be that Medicaid bill passed 3 years ago that stated the government could NOT use collective bargaining to get lower prices on the drugs -- basically a big handout for the drug companies.

I'm sure such things exist on almost every level right down to local governments, where the mayor gives a no bid contract to his buddy that owns the company who repairs the roads.

You are obviously always going to have some level of corruption. The problem here is the profit being made on certain things and its relation to politicians getting elected. The system we have amounts to legalized bribary of government officials.

You will notice the attempt in recent years to cut any sort of government spending that no businesses profit from. A good example of this is PBS Television, which has had its budget cut over and over and is in danger of disappearing alltogether. You can bet if there were large corporations profiting from PBS Television, they wouldn't be cutting the budget, but would instead be raising it to ridiculously high levels.

What we need is to change the election system and have publicly funded elections, and outlaw all forms of political lobbying. In fact, there are probably enough laws on the books at this time to fix the system, if the laws were only enforced.

But instead, we have a system where a politician NEEDS money from the military contractors, big oil, drug companies, and a few dozen other major lobbies if they want to have any chance of being elected and staying in office. Thus, only politicians whose policy positions will benefit those large corporations are going to ever get elected.

Whatever the solution, and we can disagree about that, the reality still exists that the military spending is $700 billion this year not because the government decided that we need $700 billion worth of military, but because that is the maximum amount they felt they could justify to the public. What they will spend it on was and will be decided afterwards, and if there is extra, it will just be given away, or be "misplaced".

And if in a couple of years, the public begins to get upset over the high military spending, there will just have to be some sort of event that will remind them why we need such high military spending. There are plenty of groups out to get us, and it will be quite easy to allow one of them to succeed.