Feds to sue banks over fraudFollow

Over what time period? My numbers are from the CBO and show the actual amount of money spent in each area. You're taking some projected cost over some extended period of time.

We spent $700B on Social security last year. That's not the cost over 10 years, or the projected cost for the program for its entire lifetime. That's the one year cost of that one program.




My figures are directly from the Congressional Budget Office. Which is where you go if you want to know how much things actually cost the government.





I'm not insulting your intelligence. You are by not actually looking up the costs of these things and comparing them. Yes, I'm sure our efforts in the wars cost a "lot" of money. But how much is that? Can you actually tell the difference between $10B and $100B? Is there any time anyone actually directly sees things of those values? I know it's hard to comprehend, but the numbers don't lie.

And even if you know how much it costs to fight those wars, do you know how much it costs to provide social security and medicare? Can it occur to you that those cost a hell of a lot more? Yes, a hell of a lot more than what is already a hell of a lot of money! Amazing, isn't it? If you think that the costs of our defense budget is extreme, shouldn't you think more so about the costs of those social programs?

I like my new computer chair paid for with tax dollars. It vibrates and is so amazing on the lower back.

I want to give you credit for using CBO. I use them a lot myself and normally respect their findings. Unfortunately, these expenses don't count for anything off the books. You have any idea how much money is gone towards finding Bin laden alone? Black OP projects are why you hear the jokes in pop culture about 50k for a toilet seat. But because I can't prove the actual figure for Black OP projects, I'll have to settle for this graph that does a good job of explaining the fallacy of CBO's results. I realize the graph is for 2008, but keep in mind things have gotten worse, not better.

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm



You realize that Social security was paid into, right? These wars and nation building are only a drain on the country's funds. If we never stayed in Afghanistan after our initial removal of the Taliban in 2001, we wouldn't be 14 trillion in debt now. How do I know this, do the math yourself.

Here is the budget for 2012.


Defense-related expenditure 2012 Budget request & Mandatory spending[18][19] Calculation[20][21]
DOD spending $707.5 billion Base budget + "Overseas Contingency Operations"
FBI counter-terrorism $2.7 billion At least one-third FBI budget.
International Affairs $5.6–$63.0 billion At minimum, foreign arms sales. At most, entire State budget
Energy Department, defense-related $21.8 billion
Veterans Affairs $70.0 billion
Homeland Security $46.9 billion
NASA, satellites $3.5–$8.7 billion Between 20% and 50% of NASA's total budget
Veterans pensions $54.6 billion
Other defense-related mandatory spending $8.2 billion
Interest on debt incurred in past wars $109.1–$431.5 billion Between 23% and 91% of total interest
Total Spending $1.030–$1.415 trillion


Now here is a graph for the budgets from the 80's to post 9/11. Notice how low the military was during the 90's.
[img=http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending]

Just note, we'll never leave Afghanistan or Iraq. They're this generation's Korea.

If we continue to elect establishment(bought and paid off) presidents, you could be right. Perry, Romney, Bachmamn, and Obama are just a few of these names. If the FED is closed and the currency is stabilized, the debt will become a surplus in less than 8 years.

I think you're missing the value of the figures I'm using. Those are not budget projections. They are actual amount of money spent in each category for each year. That's why I don't have numbers for 2011. That year isn't done yet. There is no such thing as "off the books" in this context. If the money was spent that year, it shows up in that years spending. It may show up as a whole bunch of $50k toilet seats, but the money spent on black ops shows up in the totals. It has to. Every dollar that the Department of Defense receives is accounted for by the Treasury.




Yeah. I've seen that chart before too. See my point about Debate tactic #5. Everyone claims that the "official" numbers are really false and that their numbers are the "real numbers". But when someone claims that, it's usually because they're trying to spin something. An objective look at the chart should indicate this to you right off the bat.

The problem is that they are double counting things. As I said, some of the funding which could be associated with defense does come out of discretionary domestic budget (like veterans benefits for example). That's part of that $150B they include in the "current military" part of the chart. But then they count that again in the "past military", and then they decide to count interest on the debt as past military again (despite the fact that interest on debt shows up in another section of our budget as well). Pretty much the entire "past military" portion is BS. It doesn't count because the dollars spent paying for past military operations comes out of each years current defense and defense related domestic spending budgets. It's already accounted for. You can't count that twice.

Similarly, the whole "additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the “war on terror.”" bit makes no sense. What is that? We're just pretending that our military costs us more than we actually spend on it because we feel jilted that it cost more than some imagined promise? Um... Why? We spend each year what we actually spend each year. Just because I told you that we'd spend $500B on defense and we end out spending $600B on defense doesn't mean you get to add an extra $100B on top of that as some kind of penalty or something. We still spent what we spent.


You honestly don't read that and immediately think "This is BS"?



And? Are you saying that a dollar taken from me in the form of payroll taxes is somehow less valuable than a dollar taken from me in the form of income taxes? And let me remind you that *you* were the one who made a claim about the relative cost of our military compared to social security and medicare. Seems like a bit of a cop out to make that claim and then defend it by saying that costs for those things don't count because they're paid for with a different type of tax.



Despite your claims, you really have no clue how much we actually do spend on our military. More importantly, you seem to have no grasp of the difference in costs between our normal peacetime defense spending and spending during the last decade. Let's do some simple math:

Spending for defense in 2000 was right about $300B/year. Here's the spending for every year since then, and a figure showing the difference between that and what we spent in 2000:

 
2001	306.1   - 300 = 6.1 
2002	349.0   - 300 = 49.0 
2003	405.0   - 300 = 105.0 
2004	454.1   - 300 = 154.1 
2005	493.6   - 300 = 193.6 
2006	520.0   - 300 = 220.0 
2007	547.9   - 300 = 247.9 
2008	612.4   - 300 = 312.4 
2009	656.8   - 300 = 356.8 
2010	689.1   - 300 = 398.1 

Add all of that together and we get $2043B. That's the absolute maximum we could possibly blame on increased costs for defense. This does not take inflation into account and assumes that every single dollar of increased defense budget was involved with the "War on Terror" in some way.

I could do similar math on the "domestic" budget as well, but even if we assumed that every single dollar increase in that budget was also involved in the War on Terror (and it clearly can't have been), we still only end out with a similar total number (around $2T). Even if we assume a ridiculous interest rate, that still can't possibly account for more than about 1/3rd of our total debt.


When you actually do the math, instead of just talking about doing it, it becomes abundantly clear that defense spending cannot be blamed for our current debt problems. Want to know why? Here are those same years, but with the deficits in place and for fun I've put the results of that defense delta calculation next to each years deficit:

 
Year    Deficit    Defense difference 
2001	-32.4      6.1 
2002	-317.4     49.0 
2003	-538.4     105.0 
2004	-568.0     154.1 
2005	-493.6     193.6 
2006	-434.5     220.0 
2007	-342.2     247.9 
2008	-641.8     312.4 
2009	-1,549.7   356.8 
2010	-1,371.1   398.1 

See a problem? In no year does the difference in defense spending after 2000 (remember that's not inflation adjusted, so the real numbers should be lower) and that years total defense budget equal much less exceed the deficit for that year. In most years, especially after Obama takes office, it's not even close.


Want to still try to claim that defense is a major factor to our current debt problem? It's not. The numbers prove that it's not.

Here is the budget for 2012.

<bunch of BS>

Doesn't matter. You're tossing out projections and questionable math with assumptions which simply cannot be supported with the facts.




Yes. I'm well aware of this. I pointed this out in my own post. Defense spending in the 90s was abnormally low in terms of the broader historical context. I'll also point out that after a decade of that low military spending, we ended out with a nuclear armed North Korea, a soon to be nuclear armed Iran, and a massive growth in organized religious based terrorism culminating in the 9/11 attacks. I think it's hard to argue that we got a lot of bang for our buck by saving that money back then.

Or FED.

Look, he's going to keep using the "It's just a drop in the bucket" argument. It's ********* like him that get National Guard Armories $4,200,000 worth of Up Armored Humvees a year before the unit is deployed and none of those vehicles go with them.

That's four million dollars of tax payer money for people that won't really use them except one every few months, and left them to sit for a year.

Drop in the bucket.

I know. You're predictable.

We've switched Shadow's decaf coffee with regular. Let's see if he notices the difference...


Dude. Seriously lay off the conspiracy sites.

Edited, Sep 7th 2011 7:23pm by gbaji

Does anyone who finds shadowwhatever crazy also find George Carlin's theory that America was bought and sold long ago also crazy? I'd say he was intending the statement as a humorous observation but watching his debate on Bill Maher's show kinda makes me doubt that.