That's kinda the whole point of progressive taxation.

But then the terrorists win!

My point is this: It's easy to look at anything and say "let's cut that." But politicians have NO interest in cutting programs that benefit their voters or interest groups. That's just how it is, cutting has basically become a gamble for their jobs. Sad. A Democrat cuts military spending, come election time, his Republican opponent runs an ad saying "John Doe cut spending on expiremental sharks with lasers attached to their heads by 20% and now infinity-billion troops are dead because of him. I'm John McCain and I approve of this message."

If you want any real chance at getting more money in the system, taxing the rich is it. Plain and simple. Will there be waste? Probably. But it's ten times more likely to pump some cash into the system than cutting, which no politician really wants to do.

And history is on our side with this, taxing the rich has done more good for the economy than bad. Hello, we just did it in the 90s and things were pretty good. You might think letting the rich have their tax cuts will be good economically because they'll spend more of their money and stimulate the economy that way. You'd be wrong.

Social Security has been running a surplus for decades, which has occasionally been raided by other programs to fund their deficit spending. It will run a real deficit in 2037, but that can be fixed easily enough by raising the cap on FICA taxes.

It means switching to a pay-for-performance rather than a fee-for-service system and using the program's huge market share to negotiate pharmaceutical prices.

Put all of the insurance companies out of business!?!?! OMG!!! That sounds an awful lot like the empirically superior SOCIALISM you hear so much about.

The only thing socialism is superior at is reducing freedom

Money... change.... ohhhh these guys know how to make a slogan

how the hell is that from 2006? Change meme wasn't around yet

Yea, but a billion here and a billion there can add up to some real money. Only a bunch of sheep would sit around and say nothing about added fees or increased little taxes here and there. Admittedly there are some things that seem to get under my skin more than they should, waste and apathy top my list.

And only a fool cannot recognise that adding a fee to a phone bill is nothing more than a tax. So I guess the administration could raise money by just adding fee's to everything and you and Fly would be oblivious to the fact that it is a tax and go about your merry way.

Rumor has it this is you CRUDEFINDER. Confirm/Deny?

He IS my hero...but it should say "Foo"

I'd rather give a phone to every american citizen in the bottom 20% of wealth than spend 10 billion dollars on a missile defense system that wont work and may start WW3.

So, here's my suggestion for cutting the budget (and since it won't happen, I'm in favor of raising taxes, because that might happen).

Cut military by 50% across the board. Let the stake holders figure out how. This includes cutting the NSA and various "black" programs.

Allocate medicare resources according to the benefits they offer. No quadruple bypass for Parkinson's patients. If we splurge on expensive medical care, such as transplants, it should be for the young. (sorry)

Have a cost benefit list for drugs. Drugs with low cost/benefit ratio or that aren't much better than generics receive limited reimbursement.

Use 20% of the savings for infrastructure, paying for things like competent public defenders, and other worthwhile things that a decent society ought to have, spend the rest to reduce the budget.

See, it's not so hard.

wat

clinton campaigned on change in 92. I remember seeing "CLINTON: FOR A CHANGE" bumper stickers (red background, yellow letters) that had the Cs cleverly replaced with soviet hammer/sickles.

So just because that's the way it works, I guess we're stuck with it? No spending cuts...ever? Why not? Because politicians will lose money/votes from cutting spending? You don't think people who are advocates of the spending cuts will replace the lost money/votes?

I'm assuming I'm not alone, but I routinely donate money to politicians who's voting habits align with my interests. Right now that's not a lot of people (or money), but its all i can do to show/communicate my interests (that and voting obv).




while i agree with your logic given the framework we currently operate within (majority can legally infringe upon the rights of the minority), we are discussing the removal of money from the system...not adding money.

focus! we're only concerned with cutting spending atm...the idea of increasing taxes before balancing the budget is not a recipe for success.

Why stop there? Let's give them a car, and a luxury cruise every year. But I would like the option to opt out please.


PS: But what if it did work and made all missiles obsolete?

Then I'd ship a nuclear device on a boat, put it on a truck, and blow it up in the middle of NYC. The modern nuclear threat to America is not from states (except via error, which is increasingly likely) but from stateless terrorists. Terrorists don't have ICBMs.

I'm intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I was 9

I'd do a newsletter, but I don't want the Illuminati to find me. By the way, I wouldn't cut out the NSA (although they are idiots), merely cut their funding by 50% like the rest of the military.

You obviously haven't thought this through....

First, in a previous post, you state missile defense will not work and may start WW3. But if it will not work, why would China and Russia care? They would applaud our wasteful efforts. But they are not, because they are probably decades behind on the technology and defense infrastructure to deploy such a shield. So it either works and will lead to WW3, or it won't and the nuclear powers that be wouldn't give a flying ****. I'm betting that Russia and China have better intel than you, and they seem to be objecting to the shield.

You also overlook the advantages of missiles as a delivery system. If you send a missile, it gets there in thirty minutes or less, and cannot be tampered with or stopped easily. In addition, the person deploying the missile retains control over the weapon until a few seconds before detonation if not until detonation. If your method of delivery is relying on smuggling in boats or trucks, you give up possession and most likely control of your weapon for extended periods, weeks or months, leaving the weapon exposed to a significant chance of apprehension or misuse. This method of delivery invariable will be beholden criminals and bribed custom officials. Yes a terrorist staging a single attack would probably find these risks acceptable, but a state facing a nuclear response, obviously would not.

Which brings us to the point you seem to be driving, that only non-state actors, i.e. terrorists, will deploy nuclear weapons in the future. You overlook the fact that the nuclear powers, including the US, have no real intention of disarming, and many other nations desire to join the nuclear club. We are also sure that as of this time, only states have the wherewithal to create a nuclear bomb. So for a terrorist to get one, it would need help from a state. So the reality is that any nuclear attack by terrorists would be a state sponsored nuclear attack, which brings us back to the points made in the above paragraph.

Maybe terrorists could steal a bomb or buy one, but the costs of producing a bomb are so great, that the purchase of a bomb at a fair market value is beyond the means of any known terrorist organization. So they would have to either steal a bomb, or buy one from a corrupt official. As the former is unrealistic, we only have concerns about corrupt officials selling a bomb at less than fair market value. But even this assumption seems flawed because there are plenty of state actors desperate to purchase the same from such corrupt officials, and these states can easily outbid a terrorist organization. This brings us right back to the second paragraph.

Now I am not saying it's impossible for a terrorist to get one...but it's rather unlikely

The 2037 number is based on steady economic growth. If the US economy continues to struggle or faces another major downturn then that date will accelerate very rapidly.

Yeah, but there are relatively minor changes(raising payroll tax cap, means testing, later retirement age) that can fix SS without a lot of pain to the electorate. Ditto with Medicare, we just pay doctors less and let them cry about not making their BMW payments.

Defense spending isn't like that. When you cut defense, a bunch of people lose their jobs AND your opponent gets to call you soft on terror. People don't seem to think of national security as a costly program, it's like a civic virtue.

Yeah, the military-industrial complex has the best PR in the game with a huge number of essentially built in votes from many of their employees simply acting in their own self interest.

There are some decent points here, but I think you overstate the case for missile defense. Anyway, the point isn't whether it would be nice to have missile defense in the abstract (assuming it worked; and, even if it did work, I wouldn't be surprised if $10 million or $50 million couldn't be used to design missiles that would get around it in one way or another). My point is that the money used for it could be better spent on other things. If missile defense is so great, let the military industrial complex decide not to scrap it when we cut their budget by 50%--which, obviously, will never happen (hence the need for taxing the rich. Hell, I'd be in favor of taxing the poor, but unfortunately they don't have any money).

The "surplus" has no meaning. I can explain if you're interested, but I'm not going to write it up unless you're willing to listen because I spent a long time doing it once before and the person I was arguing with just kept saying "oh, but they have a surplus, I don't know anything about accounting".