drug dealers make alot of money, but pay no taxes, might as well tax them on their diamond encrusted hot rods
im not sure what you are trying to say here...that we dont spend alot on defense? 1 $928.5 billion in defense spending 2 $898 billion in health care expenditures 3 $787.6 billion in pensions 4 $464.6 billion in welfare spending 5 $250.7 billion on interest payments 6 $151.4 billion in other spending including basic research 7 $140.9 billion for education 8 $104.2 billion for transportation 9 $57.3 billion in protective services such as police, fire, law courts 10 $29 billion in general government expenses
Other mandatory, defense, and discretionary spending add up to only slightly more than the deficit. What's left to cut?
So do a decided majority of Americans. Polls have consistently favored raising taxes on the rich (or just letting the "Bush" tax cuts expire)/returning the income tax levels to where they'd been, closing tax loopholes, AND cutting spending. But our government officials on both sides of the aisle are bought and paid for by the same rich people, so understandably thats been off the table. So has cutting military spending. are americans for raising taxes to pay off the deficit? are americans for cutting military spending? STOMP
Gee, what country has the most progressive tax system among developed countries in the world? But, by all means, tax the "rich" more. And for the record, the next time our president claims he has income he doesn't need, why doesn't he write a check for that amount to the US Treasury?
Bottom line, our budget problems don't get solved without attacking entitlements. What's wrong with setting the retirement age for everyone who is 55 and under as five years under the average life expectency? So if it's 74, you work until you're 69, if it's 78, you work until you're 73. The idea we get a paid vacation at the end of our lives is just silly.
I asked what the response to that chart was. Specifically, how "the US has chosen to put its money into military and spies, and not the needs of its people." The chart shows pretty clearly that we've cut military spending from ~15-20% of GDP to ~5%, and then spent those cuts and much more on other "spending for the people." Whether it's a "need" or not is another discussion. And (this is a total nitpick, and I don't mean to derail), but DoD spending was cut to 553B for FY2012 budget, and 118B more if you include overseas contingency operations (more than just, but including, Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya). Nowhere close to 928B. Once again, you can cut the entire DoD and still not cover your SS/M/M overruns.
gee what country has the highest population of those developed nations? and the worst health care? and middling education stats? and shitloads of homeless? lower third infant mortality rates? lower third life expectancy? and highest defense budget? why, the greatest country on earth, thats who! USA! USA! USA!
the defense budget has been shrinking, but is still light years ahead of the rest of the world, we bought all the bombs and tanks we needed during the bush money grab, now we can coast on that for a few years
what does population have to do with tax rates, and whether or not the "rich" are being taxed enough? you're blaming poor education on not taxing rich people enough? Don't property taxes get based off of the value of the home, and go towards local education? This logic seems to advocate to be like those other countries and drop tax rates on the "rich", so that we'll get down to Swiss and French levels of mortality and homelessness. And I'm not sure about any other countries than France and Italy on there, but there's a 20% tax on every single thing you buy, which might go a long way towards how they can pay for their social services. Even the poorest homeless guy has to pay 20% when he buys a dollar-menu burger at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure you're not advocating that, though. "Fuck what the trends are, what the data says and how we're comparing apples to sewer sludge...let's just tax rich people without thinking about it! Oh yeah, and cut defense...that'll solve the problems!"
lol, im not blaming anything on anything, where are you getting this nonsense? the us has a worse infant mortality rate than cuba. if you want to make it seem like im arguing with you ... whatever, i guess you are kinda defensive about defense, appropriate
