Thread: Sounds legit - part deux

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

"proper dispersion of wealth" has nothing to do with the democratic process. By the way who, once elected, ever really gives a shit about that anyway? This whole concept of "proper dispersion of wealth" is an illusion that simply creates an elite ruling class whose power can't be challenged. THAT is not an American notion at all. Government needs to get the hell out of the way unless it is absolutely necessary. That's in short supply nowadays and it's killing our economy. I'm not talking theory or what looks good on paper. I'm talking about the reality of how things work. Everyplace that focuses on redistribution of wealth ultimately fails. Again I'll link this great discussion from Milton Friedman:

{video dribble}

As for your comments that "our defense budget is a direct correlation of our ego"... We don't need to apologize to anyone for how we spend our money. Period. Some other country doesn't like it? Fuck them. That's not ego. It's life - sometimes it sucks to be <insert third world country here>, as it were. This kind of thinking, that we somehow don't need to be better than any other country or shouldn't be anyway, this sort of guilt we see so often nowadays for even being American... Thinking naively that this is a pure and altruistic viewpoint - it's a part of the problem in this country as I see it - it does nothing to help the greater good to reinforce poor behavior in society. When someone on welfare makes more than someone working two jobs, we have a problem that government created and that government cannot solve.

Why does defense Budget not include paying the Soldiers for the work they've already done? I mean What the fuck, we can't even take care of our Troops.

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

Yes. It is small enough. I get my information from the school of common sense. Our leadership is running around threatening other countries, we're in wars or supplying weapons all over the damned place - out of necessity apparently (sigh), and you want to put troops in danger by cutting their funding? fuuuuuck that. How about we bring our people home, stop making unprovoked threats to other sovereign nations, then let's talk about cutting defense.

Yeah, fuck that war in Iraq that Bush started.

Right Laz?

Originally Posted by triggerhappy2005

Yeah, fuck that war in Iraq that Bush started.

Right Laz?

Not sure I follow your meaning. Maybe you could write more than one sentence to explain?

Originally Posted by CivilWars

I don't disagree with cutting military spending in principle, but I do question the logic of you and the one person who liked your post. In several topics here both of you have stated that GM, with annual revenue in the 150B range, was too big to fail. It was stated by many, myself included, that if GM did fail that other auto manufacturers would scoop up the parts, and continue the profitable divisions while allowing the less desirable parts to die. We were told that this would cause a ripple affect that would kill off suppliers, and thus send the country into the next great depression. Now magically we can cut over double the spending, and on products/services that no other companies are lining up to buy, and this will magically have no butterfly effect on the national job market or economy? Makes total sense to me.

We can, my opinion, cut military spending, just probably not right now. Though that isn't any different then the people saying we need to cut a bunch of government. Could we in the future? Maybe, now? Sounds like a terrible idea. If it was decided tomorrow to up and cut spending in half, it'd probably have a pretty bad effect on the economy because, well what you said. Likewise with GM, at the time they went bankrupt the effects would of seriously dented the economy when it was already a flaming shit hole. If GM failed say 2004 or 2005, I doubt there would be as much desire to bail them out, because the effect would of hurt people, sure, but things were going well enough to probably take it.

Going all the way back to tie in the cutting government, if it were 2004-2005 it'd be a good discussion to have. It is now, just now isn't the time to act on it. Private hiring has been noted as being pretty shit for the past couple years, hardly handling the amount of people looking for work already. Seems a piss poor idea to cut jobs with no-one really picking up the slack. Likewise now probably isn't the time to completely cut the military budget, fairly certain things could be done to reduce it and might be able to nick a bit here and there, but wholesale would probably go shittingly.

(And if it had to be said again, or at all, this is purely my opinion on the matter. By no means am I an economist or know any of this for certain, just speculation and thinking/typing thoughts.)

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

"proper dispersion of wealth" has nothing to do with the democratic process.

Then you are 100% ignorant to the concept in which this country was based. It always has been and always will be "He who has the gold."

I agree with you on the welfare thing, but that problem is much deeper than what you're stating.