Biden wants to Raise Taxes on those making 400k or more !

[Sig]

Also, if you were in charge, would you change our strategy entirely? (e.g. cut back to 25% and not be concerned with being a supreme military power)

Yes, that!

The problem is this. You could have a strategy that gave us 80% ability to respond to anything happening anywhere with full effectiveness and the ability to respond to the other 20% with 50% effectiveness until everything else was brought to bear. That would cost about 40% of what we spend now, at my wild guess.

We insist on having a strategy that allows us to respond to 99% of the worst possible situations all happening at the worst places and the worst timing (several simultaneously). It gets asymptotically more expensive as you go past that 80% mark, so it costs twice as much to go from 90% to 95% as it cost to go from 75% to 80%. You need massive excess capacity staged all over the world for everything.

I'm OK with us being at that 80% level, I don't think we would be much less safe than we are now. Everyone else in the world, including China and Russia, are quite a bit below that 80% level for defending their homeland and at the 10% level for worldwide force projection. But this is 'murica damn it and we have to be the best times 10!

 

[They]

has anyone thought that the idea behind this thread was for the original poster to lobby support for Trump under the pretext of the unproven allegation that Biden is bad for the average American. I thought this site was purely for trading matters not veiled political promotion!

The internent is full of political troll armies these days

 

[jtrader33]

Yes, that!

The problem is this. You could have a strategy that gave us 80% ability to respond to anything happening anywhere with full effectiveness and the ability to respond to the other 20% with 50% effectiveness until everything else was brought to bear. That would cost about 40% of what we spend now, at my wild guess.

We insist on having a strategy that allows us to respond to 99% of the worst possible situations all happening at the worst places and the worst timing (several simultaneously). It gets asymptotically more expensive as you go past that 80% mark, so it costs twice as much to go from 90% to 95% as it cost to go from 75% to 80%. You need massive excess capacity staged all over the world for everything.

I'm OK with us being at that 80% level, I don't think we would be much less safe than we are now. Everyone else in the world, including China and Russia, are quite a bit below that 80% level for defending their homeland and at the 10% level for worldwide force projection. But this is 'murica damn it and we have to be the best times 10!

Man, seems crazy when you think about some of the problems we could solve overnight by freeing up those tax dollars. I'm sure there are some circular economic effects that would come along with shrinking the budget, but still.

 

[ms33]

Yeah, pay up!

 

[Arnie]

This is the total budget, not just discretionary.

 

[virtusa]

Man, seems crazy when you think about some of the problems we could solve overnight by freeing up those tax dollars. I'm sure there are some circular economic effects that would come along with shrinking the budget, but still.

some circular economic effects:

1. thousands of workers lose their job
2. subcontractors lose jobs
   
3. companies receiveing less orders will make less profit, so less taxes will be paid
4. those who lost their job will spent less, so less sales for some shops, less sales tax, less profits so less taxes paid on profits...

It is difficult to calculate the real savings, but a big chink will get lost in the negative effects.

 

[Sig]

This is the total budget, not just discretionary.

The non-discretionary portion of the budget is really irrelevant to this discussion because, as it's name so strongly implies, it's non-discretionary. It's primarily self-funded by Social Security and Medicare taxes and all those funds must then go back to SS and Medicare benefits. If we want to take non-discretionary spending into account when looking at parts of the budget we can cut or reallocate, then you're talking about cutting SS or Medicare benefits and then turning around and using the SS and Medicare funds freed up by cutting benefits for general budget purposes. I'm guessing you don't think that's tenable, certainly the vast majority of the rest the U.S. wouldn't. It's one thing to decrease benefits so that the funds stay solvent, quite another to use SS tax proceeds to pay for tanks or airplanes. The rest of non-discretionary funding is mainly paying interest on the debt. Certainly cutting the debt is under our control, although as the last 3 years demonstrated cutting taxes accomplishes the opposite. But paying interest really isn't something we can just stop doing without dire consequences, so again it's not really relevant to this discussion.

 

[Sig]

some circular economic effects:

1. thousands of workers lose their job
2. subcontractors lose jobs
   
3. companies receiveing less orders will make less profit, so less taxes will be paid
4. those who lost their job will spent less, so less sales for some shops, less sales tax, less profits so less taxes paid on profits...

It is difficult to calculate the real savings, but a big chink will get lost in the negative effects.

A lot of that depends on what percentage of the defense budget goes to defense contractor and government employee salaries and what percentage goes to really expensive raw materials and the defense industrial complex's profits. I'd guess not much, relatively, goes to the former and a whole lot to the latter.

 

[virtusa]

A lot of that depends on what percentage of the defense budget goes to defense contractor and government employee salaries and what percentage goes to really expensive raw materials and the defense industrial complex's profits. I'd guess not much, relatively, goes to the former and a whole lot to the latter.

But difficult to calculate what the real savings netto will be.

Will be impacted:

• wages
• raw materials
• investments
• profits
• suppliers
  
• etc...

Cutting the budget will create a chain reaction in the economy.


A good example is an airline going broke and causing thousands of jobs lost at suppliers.

 

[Sig]

But difficult to calculate what the real savings netto will be.

Will be impacted:

• wages
• raw materials
• investments
• profits
• suppliers
  
• etc...

Cutting the budget will create a chain reaction in the economy.


A good example is an airline going broke and causing thousands of jobs lost at suppliers.

Except an airline is producing a service of transportation that itself produces economic activity. If you're going to spend a significant percentage of your budget every year on something with just jobs in mind, you'd probably spend it all on infrastructure which itself creates significantly more economic value. Aside from keeping us safe (which I wholeheartedly support but think we're overdoing) there isn't much ultimate economic benefit to the military spending besides the spending itself.