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Ahtman: Never said it was free money but welfare is a social program by definition. Service to the county is different (not better, not worse) than "working". I "work" now and enjoy all the freedoms of a citizen, serving involves a more restrictive set of freedoms. Part of setting full freedom aside for 4-20 years is the VA benefits.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:Defense is only thing that is being run pretty darn well considering. We have the best trained, best equipped volunteer based fighting force in the world.

Yeah, you have the best trained, best equipped fighting force, because you spend somewhere in the region of ten times as much of your budget on your defence force as other countries. Spending more money means having more capability. This couldn't be more simple.

And for that matter, being the best in the world at something is not a sensible way of justifying spending. North Korea are the best in the world at parades, but no sensible person would justify the money and man hours they spend on all those parades.

The real question is what item will best improve the welfare of the country and the lives of its citizens. Up to a certain point, defence is the best priority, because the people need to be free from the threat of invasion, and in terms of economics, the country needs to be able to protect its economic interests overseas. The point is that most countries spend about 3 to 5% of GDP on defence, and find that sufficient. The US spends more than 20%.

At some point you have to wonder if that money might improve the lives of citizens and promote greater economic growth if it was instead directed towards education, or transport infrastructure?


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Monster Rain wrote:The point isn't that VA Benefits should be called welfare, but it's disingenuous to lump "Defense Spending" all together as one item, since it makes it seem like it all goes towards bullets and baby-killing.

The author isn't trying to make a point about defence being really big. I mean, by your reading the article is saying 'look how big defence is, here's a trend line that shows it used to be much bigger' which would be about the worst argument imaginable. If the author had wanted to make the that you US way overspends on defence, then they would have just shown US spending in comparison to other developed countries.

It is really interesting that so many people have jumped into a budget discussion to reflexively defend the size of the army, without even bothering to see if that's what the article was really talking about.

You're quoting me out of context from a conversation with another poster, and I'm not sure what your point is. I don't see how anything I've said could be construed as reflexively defending the size of the army.

The point of that conversation was that "defense" spending covers a wide range of things.

Monster Rain wrote:You're quoting me out of context from a conversation with another poster, and I'm not sure what your point is. I don't see how anything I've said could be construed as reflexively defending the size of the army.

The point of that conversation was that "defense" spending covers a wide range of things.

My point was that there was nothing disingenuous in the original author's decision to put defence spending in one item, because the assumed point 'defence spending is huge' was not the point the author was making. If that had been their point, then it would have made sense to compare defence to other nations, not to other points in US history when defence was much, much higher.


I apologise for making it sound like you were reflexively defending the size of the army, that was poor text placement on my part. I originally just quoted you to make a point about how the original article wasn't disingenuous, and in reading the rest of the thread while I wrote my response to you, I thought of the other point about how many people wanted to justify defence spending, even when no-one actually questioned it. I should have made it clear that part was addressed to the thread as a whole.

Part of the reason that the USA still spends so much on defense, as sebster pointed out, other nations, our allies do not spend money on thier defense in proportional % of thier GDP.

The USA is picking up the slack for just about every ally we have, both in R&D, production and boots on the ground.

Money rather spent on Education and Transportation Infastructure?

Funny you should bring that up as the Department of Education was established in 1965, and Education has had higher and higher funding every year since then. The quality of Education however has continued to drop.

The Department of Transportation was established in 1966. I don't know about where you live, but the city next door can not be bothered to fix the streets, but instead wants to spend Federal tax dollars and local tax dollars on dedicated "express" bus lanes that busses on average travel at 19mph along, while regular traffic goes at 35,mph.

These awesome dedicated bus lanes cost about 10million dollars a mile just to build. Riders to pay a "fare" actuually only pay for about 10-15% of the actual cost of the ride. The rest is paid for by everyone who drives a car and owns a business, meanwhile the deteriorating roads are adding extra wear on our vehicles suspension.

The very programs you want more money given to have exactly what you asked for, and are failing.

I am going to go back to cleaning the bathroom now, which might in fact be more pleasant.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:
Funny you should bring that up as the Department of Education was established in 1965, and Education has had higher and higher funding every year since then. The quality of Education however has continued to drop.

Doesn't account for all of it, but population increase may have a little impact here.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:cost about 10million dollars a mile just to build

I'm going to start building bus lanes.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:The USA is picking up the slack for just about every ally we have, both in R&D, production and boots on the ground.

Not so much in R&D, where the US, culturally, has been extremely opposed to buying tech from its allies, and instead insisted on going it alone.

Money rather spent on Education and Transportation Infastructure?

Funny you should bring that up as the Department of Education was established in 1965, and Education has had higher and higher funding every year since then. The quality of Education however has continued to drop.

The Department of Education was established in 1867, and while demoted to an office continued to exist right through until 1980, when it was made a department once more. Where this 1965 figure of yours came from is a complete mystery.

Also, are you really going to claim the quality of education is objectively lower? I mean, do you want me to go and find the figures on decline in functional illiteracy and inumeracy, or can we just write that claim of yours off as a little bit of silliness?

The Department of Transportation was established in 1966. I don't know about where you live, but the city next door can not be bothered to fix the streets, but instead wants to spend Federal tax dollars and local tax dollars on dedicated "express" bus lanes that busses on average travel at 19mph along, while regular traffic goes at 35,mph.

I was in the US until last week, the quality of your roads was in places third world. Funnily enough, despite how much everyone like to complain about your public transport, I found the subway systems in Washington and New York far better than our own, and at least the equal of Europe. And the train trip from Washington to New York was similarly of a high standard. I couldn't comment on freight rail.

But the idea that public transport and roads are in competition is just nonsense. There is no law saying spending money on one means you can't spend money on the other. If you had a couple less carrier groups floating around in the sea, you could increase the spending on each group by an immense amount.

The very programs you want more money given to have exactly what you asked for, and are failing.

Your comparisons are non-sensical, and your conclusion of 'failing', in particular, is drawn from absolutely no comparison to anything. To conclude something as having 'failed' you would need to say 'this is what it needed to have done, and instead it did this'.


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dæl wrote:I'm going to start building bus lanes.

Roads are expensive. All roads.

Singling out bus lanes alone, to try and sidestep the fact that expanding the road network in general is very expensive, is one just another of the many things wrong with the reasoning Shadowseer_Kim used in his post above.

I want to pivot the question abit, which part of the graph was Welfare exactly? Was it the Social Security and Medicare part?

I'd like to know how much the social security costs will go down after the baby boomers pass on.... they are getting close...

sebster wrote:
Roads are expensive. All roads.

Slight correction - Western roads are expensive. China has no problem producing thousands of miles of "high quality" roads for dirt-cheap, not to mention their railway network.
You have to pay for quality.

frgsinwntr wrote:I'd like to know how much the social security costs will go down after the baby boomers pass on.... they are getting close...

We first need to have the Social Security bubble from the baby boomers. We're only just at the beginning of the boomers moving into retirement.

biccat wrote:

frgsinwntr wrote:I'd like to know how much the social security costs will go down after the baby boomers pass on.... they are getting close...

We first need to have the Social Security bubble from the baby boomers. We're only just at the beginning of the boomers moving into retirement.

I thought immigration essentially solved this? I know in the UK it's saved us from bankrupcy (or at least delayed it 50 years or so), I'd assume that with America's far higher immigration rate it'd be much less of a problem?

Joey wrote:I thought immigration essentially solved this? I know in the UK it's saved us from bankrupcy (or at least delayed it 50 years or so), I'd assume that with America's far higher immigration rate it'd be much less of a problem?

Immigration hasn't solved the bubble of boomers moving into retirement age.

I guess we need those Government Death Panels after all.

Save the Country, Kill a Baby Boomer.

62' just after Bay of Pigs. I can see a spending spike from that.

dæl wrote:

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:cost about 10million dollars a mile just to build

I'm going to start building bus lanes.

no kidding; there's fortunes to be made.
Apparently that's not even the upper end. You can get from 7.3 to 15.4 per lane mile in some cases.

biccat wrote:

Joey wrote:I thought immigration essentially solved this? I know in the UK it's saved us from bankrupcy (or at least delayed it 50 years or so), I'd assume that with America's far higher immigration rate it'd be much less of a problem?

Immigration hasn't solved the bubble of boomers moving into retirement age.

But aren't there tens of millions of new young people paying taxes?

Has anyone ever thought for a moment that incompetence in both the government, military, and civilian population has managed to get a huge ton of those greens and metals flowing to all the wrong places?

I'm not aware of any change in the ratio of Social Security contributors to recipients.

Given the sharp drop we've seen in workforce participation, I don't think it's a good change, if it is there.

Easy E wrote:I want to pivot the question abit, which part of the graph was Welfare exactly? Was it the Social Security and Medicare part?

I'm guessing that ShadowseerKim is lumping the following items from the graph together as "Welfare":

Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
Safety Net

Also worth noting, for MR and d-usa, the excerpt below the graph mentions that VA benefits are included in the Defense item on the graph.

IcyCool wrote:

Easy E wrote:I want to pivot the question abit, which part of the graph was Welfare exactly? Was it the Social Security and Medicare part?

I'm guessing that ShadowseerKim is lumping the following items from the graph together as "Welfare":

Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
Safety Net

Also worth noting, for MR and d-usa, the excerpt below the graph mentions that VA benefits are included in the Defense item on the graph.

Well, call me pickled and thoroughly chastised. I read over that a couple of times and didn't notice. I think I let a conversation with friends IRL influence my online arguments. Thanks for pointing it out.

IcyCool wrote:Also worth noting, for MR and d-usa, the excerpt below the graph mentions that VA benefits are included in the Defense item on the graph.

Right.

My only question was "why?" A decision was made to lump some things and not others.

Monster Rain wrote:My only question was "why?" A decision was made to lump some things and not others.

It could be the way in which the funds are allocated and/or where they originate.

It could be any number of things.

All I know for sure is that I'm not sure what the point of the graph is.

I think the article and graph doesn't really have a 'point', which was part of the reason I posted it. It was a nice summary of how our spending has changed without appearing to have an agenda attached to the data that I could see at a glance. I just thought a neutral post would maybe lead to interesting discussions.

If anyone wants a comparison with modern Britain

This shows our spending in 2010-2011.

We spend more on education than defence, and 4 times as much as defence on welfare.

sebster wrote:no kidding; there's fortunes to be made.
Apparently that's not even the upper end. You can get from 7.3 to 15.4 per lane mile in some cases.

I know over here if someone is given a government contract it suddenly costs a lot more than if it was private. Does a similar thing happen over there?

Joey wrote:Slight correction - Western roads are expensive. China has no problem producing thousands of miles of "high quality" roads for dirt-cheap, not to mention their railway network.
You have to pay for quality.

China are currently building a Maglev train, thats costing a bit, and they're doing the Chinese thing and breaking the law about how close it should be to people's houses. But on the whole their infrastructure isn't the best. Hong Kong is well built though.

Monster Rain wrote:Right.

My only question was "why?" A decision was made to lump some things and not others.

I don't know how the determinations for the categories on the graph were determined. You would have to dig around on the Office of Management and Budget's site to see if you can dredge that info up. My guess would be that is how it has always been categorized.

What categories would you split Defense up into? Keep in mind that you'll need the graph to still be readable afterwards.

As to why the social programs are split up, it's entirely possible that Medicare and Medicaid were separated out because they didn't exist in every point of the timeline for the graph. Lumping them together with Social Security or Safety Net programs would have displayed a disingenuous inflation to the category. As such, separating those out provides more useful information to the reader. Also, people seem to be more concerned with specific social programs than with specific defense programs or military branches.

@Ahtman: Welfare has been quite commonly used as a pejorative by many of the conservatives that I know. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure they are representative of conservatives in general.

Edit - Here is the link to the Office of Management and Budget that was linked in the OP article: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

I am fairly certain that the "official" budget has the VA and Defense split up since they are distinct agencies. I think the author of the article combined things in the graph, probably to simplify it and make it easier to read, and the combining of some thing and not others is what MR is referring to.

d-usa wrote:I am fairly certain that the "official" budget has the VA and Defense split up since they are distinct agencies. I think the author of the article combined things in the graph, probably to simplify it and make it easier to read, and the combining of some thing and not others is what MR is referring to.

Yeesh, I clearly haven't had enough coffee. Missed this bit from the OP article beneath the graph:
Source: Office of Management and Budget

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

I'm guessing that means that the data came from OMB, and the graph was put together by Lam Thuy Vo from NPR.

At any rate, I'm not sure I see anything nefarious in the category selections for the graph. As sebster pointed out, it can't be used to rag on defense spending at all, and I'm not sure anyone could see the breakdown of social categories as "spending less on social programs". I'm pretty certain everyone agrees that we spend an increasing amount of our budget on social programs every year. The argument, I thought, was whether people thought that was a bad thing™.

Joey wrote:

biccat wrote:

Joey wrote:I thought immigration essentially solved this? I know in the UK it's saved us from bankrupcy (or at least delayed it 50 years or so), I'd assume that with America's far higher immigration rate it'd be much less of a problem?

Immigration hasn't solved the bubble of boomers moving into retirement age.

But aren't there tens of millions of new young people getting below minimum wage salaries paying taxes?

Corrected your typo.