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more attacks on Social Security

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funeralxempire
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23 Nov 2014, 9:14 pm

sly279 wrote:
meanwhile russia and china have increased military spending and are growing/modernizing their military force.
at the same time nato nations have been cutting budgets and decreasing.

what happen the last time we did that. hmm. 1941
we can't decrease our military to post ww1 standards like many want. that is just crazy. what we need to do instead of just cutting cutting cutting, is go in and fix the broken way the military and dod wastes money, same with fbi, cia, DHS

they all waste money to make sure they get the same ammount next year.
weapon programs for weapons we never adopt/attend to adopt. spending money on stupid stuff. starting programs just to cancel them before they finish. building ships that are outdated by the time they finish being built. just much wast could be cut without decreasing military size.


You're aware the US spends more on defence than the next 15 largest spenders combined, right?
America could cut spending to only as much as the next 10 and still have far and away the most powerful armed force humanity has ever seen.

You're right that savings can be found in those areas as well, but let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room.


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23 Nov 2014, 9:18 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
You're right that savings can be found in those areas as well, but let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

"ignore"? they're too busy WORSHIPPING said elephant. genuflecting at the altar of mammon. military worship permeates all of our culture- for example, in what other country do high school freshmen refer to seniors as "upperclassmen"? that is a direct ripoff from military school culture.



sly279
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23 Nov 2014, 9:55 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
sly279 wrote:
meanwhile russia and china have increased military spending and are growing/modernizing their military force.
at the same time nato nations have been cutting budgets and decreasing.

what happen the last time we did that. hmm. 1941
we can't decrease our military to post ww1 standards like many want. that is just crazy. what we need to do instead of just cutting cutting cutting, is go in and fix the broken way the military and dod wastes money, same with fbi, cia, DHS

they all waste money to make sure they get the same ammount next year.
weapon programs for weapons we never adopt/attend to adopt. spending money on stupid stuff. starting programs just to cancel them before they finish. building ships that are outdated by the time they finish being built. just much wast could be cut without decreasing military size.


You're aware the US spends more on defence than the next 15 largest spenders combined, right?
America could cut spending to only as much as the next 10 and still have far and away the most powerful armed force humanity has ever seen.

You're right that savings can be found in those areas as well, but let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

spending has nothing to do with effectivness. we mismanage all our money as a nation not just in dod.
we could buy millions of crappy humvess while russia buys 100k tanks does that make us the most powerful armed force?

poland had the best cavalry in ww2. we haven't kept up our nukes, we waste money on cool looking uniforms and other cool stuff. cause hey this looks cool lets spend billions on it only to realise its useless s**t. Russia spends it money on effective equipment.



auntblabby
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23 Nov 2014, 9:57 pm

sly279 wrote:
we waste money on cool looking uniforms and other cool stuff. cause hey this looks cool lets spend billions on it only to realise its useless s**t. Russia spends it money on effective equipment.

"American exceptionalism...we don't have to do things sensibly like other nations. after all, we're #1, rah rah rah...." :roll:



sly279
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23 Nov 2014, 10:00 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

I never said anything about reducing the military's size; rather, I said we should stop using our armed forces so frivolously, as we had in Iraq. Bush's war had put us into the hole by the billions of dollars, which could have been used domestically.


wasn't mainly pointed at you rather at the left's idea of budget cutting is just decreasing military size. we waste billions of stuff that looks cool meanwhile pay our troops far less then min wage and drop them on their bums when we are done using them. yeah going back to pre ww1 standards will decrease spending some but it won't do much and it won't target the real problem. we need to keep track of how our gov wastes money and cut that stuff out. but all I hear from democrats is decrease military size. not saying we should not' decrease some post war but not to pre ww1 how about pre 911, we should have a military size based off population which has increased since ww1



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23 Nov 2014, 10:04 pm

auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
we waste money on cool looking uniforms and other cool stuff. cause hey this looks cool lets spend billions on it only to realise its useless s**t. Russia spends it money on effective equipment.

"American exceptionalism...we don't have to do things sensibly like other nations. after all, we're #1, rah rah rah...." :roll:


its just such a waste.
everyone knew ACU wouldn't work, but hey the marines went digital and we want to have a cover all camo. then the air force did it to they got a effective camo, but were like um we want it to have airforce blue in it. cause like theres tons of environments with airforce blue lol. navy's blue camo makes sense, and the marines 2 camos work great.

anyways millions if not a billion dollars later the army admits acu didn't work and adopts multicam the uniform that won the best camo in the competition. though ideally we'd just have the army use marpat. but nooo. the branches can't wear the same camo like other nations then how could they brag about looking different.



Last edited by sly279 on 23 Nov 2014, 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

auntblabby
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23 Nov 2014, 10:06 pm

sly279 wrote:
its just such a waste.
everyone new ACU wouldn't work, but hey the marines went digital and we want to have a cover all camo. then the air force did it to they got a effective camo, but were like um we want it to have airforce blue in it. cause like theres tons of environments with airforce blue lol. navy's blue camo makes sense, and the marines 2 camos work great. anyways millions if not a billion dollars later the army admits acu didn't work and adopts multicam the uniform that won the best camo in the competition. though ideally we'd just have the army use marpat. but nooo. the branches can't wear the same camo like other nations then how could they brag about looking different.

we could save a lot of $$$$$$$$$$ by unifying our armed services.



funeralxempire
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23 Nov 2014, 10:14 pm

sly279 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
sly279 wrote:
meanwhile russia and china have increased military spending and are growing/modernizing their military force.
at the same time nato nations have been cutting budgets and decreasing.

what happen the last time we did that. hmm. 1941
we can't decrease our military to post ww1 standards like many want. that is just crazy. what we need to do instead of just cutting cutting cutting, is go in and fix the broken way the military and dod wastes money, same with fbi, cia, DHS

they all waste money to make sure they get the same ammount next year.
weapon programs for weapons we never adopt/attend to adopt. spending money on stupid stuff. starting programs just to cancel them before they finish. building ships that are outdated by the time they finish being built. just much wast could be cut without decreasing military size.


You're aware the US spends more on defence than the next 15 largest spenders combined, right?
America could cut spending to only as much as the next 10 and still have far and away the most powerful armed force humanity has ever seen.

You're right that savings can be found in those areas as well, but let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

spending has nothing to do with effectivness. we mismanage all our money as a nation not just in dod.
we could buy millions of crappy humvess while russia buys 100k tanks does that make us the most powerful armed force?

poland had the best cavalry in ww2. we haven't kept up our nukes, we waste money on cool looking uniforms and other cool stuff. cause hey this looks cool lets spend billions on it only to realise its useless s**t. Russia spends it money on effective equipment.


You're right that spending and effectiveness aren't inherently linked. That's why the first thing I'd do if I had the power to would be to order an audit of the DOD and make them justify every penny. Every dollar they can't justify gets cut. When they can start demonstrating that they're using their new budget effectively we can start discussing increasing it.

Treating the DOD like sacred cows is absurd, especially when there's people starving who could be fed with the beef.


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auntblabby
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23 Nov 2014, 10:16 pm

my time in uncle sam's army showed me vividly how much waste, fraud and general corruption is going on in there. an audit is a good start.



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23 Nov 2014, 11:15 pm

auntblabby wrote:
Humanaut wrote:
You can't have your cake and eat it too.

please diagram that for clueless me :?

Image



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24 Nov 2014, 1:50 am

Changing stuff over to automated systems is generally how all government run functions are going.

Doing disability stuff online is a million times easier for me than having to call up -- when you do, you're on hold for at least 30 minutes (not to mention the whole talking to people bit).

But hey, I'm just one person.



auntblabby
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24 Nov 2014, 2:01 am

making people of a generation with lower expectations of new-tech expertise, go through what amounts to an intelligence test, namely the correct navigation and completion of a series of online technical steps, represents a barrier to benefits. a humane system would always have a real-person backup resource in place. I found that out when I had to apply for benefits on the state health care exchange.



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24 Nov 2014, 3:10 am

trollcatman wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
What's the plan then ?

Perpetual debt until bankruptcy ? Use the military and take what we need ? Inflate away the debt and decimate the standard of living?

The world is not going to go on forever accepting IOU US debt paper or electronic credits for their natural resources.

Russia and China made an agreement to settle their trading in Yuan and Ruble
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/ ... 06721.html


The US debt is not that high at all. They borrow at very low interest, which means that investors find US bonds a very safe investment compared to other countries, they trust they will get their money back.
The alternatives are raising taxes or reducing government spending, which are both not good options when the economy is down already. Both will cause people to lose jobs.



We can always borrow at low rates that is what the FED does. It creates money on a ledger, "loans" it to big banks, and they turn around and buy US debt, and make a guaranteed profit. This is the inflation option. We can certainty inflate away all the debt. Though, real wages do not keep up with inflation, because inflation does not increase productivity.



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24 Nov 2014, 3:55 am

auntblabby wrote:
making people of a generation with lower expectations of new-tech expertise, go through what amounts to an intelligence test, namely the correct navigation and completion of a series of online technical steps, represents a barrier to benefits. a humane system would always have a real-person backup resource in place. I found that out when I had to apply for benefits on the state health care exchange.


I'm pretty sure they'd still have people on the phone, rather laying some off due to the majority of people being able to access online applications (and really, who doesn't have a computer with a 'net connection nowadays? It's just as hard calling up as it is typing in the web address).

I fail to see how it's an attack on social security in the US though.

They did the same thing here in Oz (a left-wing hellhole if there ever was one). You couldn't get onto people before they changed it any quicker anyway.



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24 Nov 2014, 1:01 pm

chagya wrote:

First of all we could stop stealing from the social security trust fund to use for other things. Secondly we can raise the cap on SS tax to maybe $129,000. If we at the bottom have to pay social security tax on every dollar we make then people in the upper income brackets should have to do the same. Also we can stop stigmatizing people who are on social security as if they are they enemy, calling them "takers" for receiving what was taken from their pay during their whole lifetime.


Here's the thing, nobody's stealing from the trust fund. Currently the fund is running a surplus that gets invested in US Treasury bonds with an annual return of more than $100 billion currently.
Second, there shouldn't be ANY cap on SS tax. It won't hurt those rich CEOs to pay SS tax on every dime...
3. Also, we need means testing. Those CEOs shouldn't draw anything from SS with millions in the bank.
D. With longer lifespans we're gonna hafta face the fact that we need to raise the retirement age. We simply cannot have healthy, fit people drawing off the system for 15 or 20 years...

That's really all the SS system needs.


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24 Nov 2014, 2:09 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:
trollcatman wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
What's the plan then ?

Perpetual debt until bankruptcy ? Use the military and take what we need ? Inflate away the debt and decimate the standard of living?

The world is not going to go on forever accepting IOU US debt paper or electronic credits for their natural resources.

Russia and China made an agreement to settle their trading in Yuan and Ruble
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/ ... 06721.html


The US debt is not that high at all. They borrow at very low interest, which means that investors find US bonds a very safe investment compared to other countries, they trust they will get their money back.
The alternatives are raising taxes or reducing government spending, which are both not good options when the economy is down already. Both will cause people to lose jobs.



We can always borrow at low rates that is what the FED does. It creates money on a ledger, "loans" it to big banks, and they turn around and buy US debt, and make a guaranteed profit. This is the inflation option. We can certainty inflate away all the debt. Though, real wages do not keep up with inflation, because inflation does not increase productivity.


Inflation is currently very low in the US, only 1.7%. GDP growth last quarter was 3.5%, so there is no reason why real wages couldn't go up. The federal debt is not a problem, the people threatening a government shutdown and and debt ceiling nonsense are far more frightening for investors in bonds. If the debt ceiling means loans can't be refinanced, the gov will look ridiculous. By getting rid of debt ceilings you are essentially saying "anything is on the table" like they always do when talking about the military.