The job of the FEDERAL government is spelled out in the constitution. Defense is its primary purpose.

Actually, that is in the Preamble to the Constitution. A document Findlaw.com states is:

...[the preamble] is not a source of power for any department of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court has often referred to it as evidence of the origin, scope, and purpose of the Constitution. ''Its true office,'' wrote Joseph Story in his COMMENTARIES, ''is to expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them.

It seems to be a wish for hawkish citizens that America was simply made for war but if you are looking to the preamble for that comfort you would be mistaken when reading it wholly.

Preamble to our constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Looks like providing for the common defense is hardly the primary given and is instead, in fourth place caught between insuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare. Hmm.. What an eye opener. Let me put a finger in that eye!

Social security, medicaid, medicare are things that are sheer re-distribution of wealth. - Draginol

And defense spending redistributes taxpayer money to Halliburton and Iraqis, I guess it simply a matter of who you wanna' look out for and what type of propaganda you'll swallow.

And defense spending redistributes taxpayer money to Halliburton and Iraqis, I guess it simply a matter of who you wanna' look out for and what type of propaganda you'll swallow.

No, that is false. My buying a stereo is not redistributing my money to Wal-Mart. It is payment for a good. Likewise, Defense spending to private companies is not a redistribution of taxpayer money. It is buying a good, or service. Even the government has to pay for that which he seeks to possess.

When I donate to a charity, that is a redistribution of my wealth as I do not receive any good or service in erturn. Some may argue we receive warm fuzzies, but that is an abstract concept, not a concrete benefit.

Deference, please do not put up propaganda charts without at least identifyng where you go them.

Deference's charts are from WarResistors.com. 

My chart came from the non-partisan annual report of the United State of America 2000 Edition.

 

And defense spending redistributes taxpayer money to Halliburton and Iraqis, I guess it simply a matter of who you wanna' look out for and what type of propaganda you'll swallow.

If you cannot understand the difference between giving money to an individual in exchange for nothing and paying money for a product or service there is just not enough common ground to debate with. Especially given that you've now started regurgitating charts from the far-left fringe site warresistors.com.  What's next? Reposting DemocraticUnderground talking points?

It seems to be a wish for hawkish citizens that America was simply made for war but if you are looking to the preamble for that comfort you would be mistaken when reading it wholly. Preamble to our constitution: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Well first off, Defense doesn't mean being a hawk. Defense means -- defense. As in, defending when attacked.

Secondly, "more pefect union" is not establishing anything.  The meaning of the preamble has been spelled out elsewhere but briefly the federal government's job is to establish a court system (the supreme court, federal court system), insure domestic tranquility means provide a means for the former colonies to interact with each other peacefully through a legislature (the two houses of congress), provide a common defense means having a military, and promote the general welfare means pooling resources for things like the Erie Canal and other projects that no individual state could have done on their own.

In terms of what could realistically be budgeted, defense is the primary purpose of the federal government. The mentions are mechanisms for the government to achieve its ends.  You may want to try reading the Federalist Papers sometimes, it kind of spells this out.

Deference's charts are from WarResistors.com. - Draginol

Umm...Yeah. Like I mentioned in post #31.

Especially given that you've now started regurgitating charts from the far-left fringe site warresistors.com. What's next? Reposting DemocraticUnderground talking points? - Draginol



Far left - what? What makes them far left? I guess you'd accuse the FCNL; an anti-war Quaker group of the same thing. Their numbers are similar to those from warresisters.



Here, go to their website.



http://www.fcnl.org



Oh, I get it, you think they are all a bunch of 'leftists' because they attempt to hold the government accountable for it's out of control spending on military projects.



I ran in to another blogger who felt the same.

Here's a fun link for you, my response to that blogger in post #21.



https://forums.joeuser.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=3&AID=127385#988742



If you cannot understand the difference between giving money to an individual in exchange for nothing and paying money for a product or service there is just not enough common ground to debate with. - Draginol



I can, and I'm calling you on your smear.



When one pays the government taxes, one is paying for the government's services. I expect an equal amount of return. I don't pay taxes simply because I love my government, no, I expect to see something of value in return - like social security benefits (common welfare, domestic tranquility), and some defense for the nation.



If you want to refer to the payment for services as redistribution of wealth, then certainly, my government is redistributing the money I gave it to defense contractors so that they may then take it and use it for the service they are to render.



In terms of what could realistically be budgeted, defense is the primary purpose of the federal government. - Draginol



And I say no, and this time I'm not going to bother finding a link to refute your assumption. I said so, so it must be true. *sarcasm meter rising*



You may want to try reading the Federalist Papers sometimes, it kind of spells this out. - Draginol



Which is even further away from the Constitution then the Preamble to the Constitution which was your first attempt to prove your point. Forget it, I've read the Papers and they aren't our Constitution but an interesting read and footnote in history.



Well first off, Defense doesn't mean being a hawk. Defense means -- defense. As in, defending when attacked. - Draginol



What a kicker.



As reported by the Stockholm Institute



*Over two years world military spending increased by 18 per cent in real terms, to reach $956 billion (in current dollars) in 2003.



*The main reason for the increase in world military spending is the massive increase in the United States, which accounts for almost half (that's 450 billion dollars - wikipedia.com) of the world total…. In the absence of [appropriations for the new war on terror, and on Iraq].



If you're telling me we spend half the world's amount on military spending only in defense you are either deluded or a liar.



Wow, that's a lot of military spending! All on 'defense' too! Just kidding. Seriously, if we spent a fraction of that big fat American Bar of military spending on primary, secondary, or tertiary education or in helping make healthcare more affordable (domestic tranquility and general welfare) can you imagine the screaming from Halliburton and Lockheed Martin?

Can you imagine the gnashing of teeth if we spent that much money on peanut butter research? Some people (myself included) would be jumping up and down that they weren't seeing any return on their tax money and that our priorities are maladjusted.

Of course, the research arms of all the peanut butter companies would be pretty happy, and they would certainly make sure to finance plenty of candidates to ensure additional appropriations at taxpayer expense regardless of taxpayers' interests.

That's kind of messed up, don't you think?

Yes, far left.  If you don't like someone calling you out on posting far left propaganda then don't post far left propaganda.

The Quakor site you gave is more reasonable except that it doesn't include social security and lumps in veteran benefits which I think should be seperated out into its own category. And here's the bottom line on the "trust fund" debate -- I can't choose NOT to pay social security taxes and since this discussion is about taxes, anything that I am forced to pay to the government should be counted in a pie chart.

When I can opt out of social security taxes, then I won't care if it's excluded on what the government is spending money on. 

The question is - what are we getting back out of every dollar we give to the government. The chart I presented gives a much more honest answer.

As for how we spend on the military:

(from Truth in Politics)

Here's military budgets as a % of GDP. The US spends more on its military simply because it has so much more available to spend.

We spend that money so that we can take action at low casualties.  The US spent very little prior to World War II and we paid in blood in having to ramp up.  Now, we can remove regimes with relatively little loss in life.

Yes, far left. If you don't like someone calling you out on posting far left propaganda then don't post far left propaganda. - Draginol

You aren't 'calling me out' on squat, what I don't care for is you attempting to lump the sources I've provided in with DU. I've asked you to explain what you mean by far left when these groups are about accountability for military spending. As I mentioned, if we were spending this amount of money on peanut butter research, how many people would be in states of near hysteria by now?

The use of graphs detailing military budgets as part of a country's Gross Domestic Product is very clever, Draginol. In glancing at the graphs, many would breath a sigh of relief and think that we are actually spending less money on the military today then we once were and less then other countries. However, that is simply not true. We spend more money today then we ever have on the military machine and we spend more money then any other country.

Your statement;

The US spends more on its military simply because it has so much more available to spend. - Draginol

Is disturbing to me as it seems to promote the idea that if we have more to spend, we should and will do so on the military as opposed to paying down the deficet, returning the money to the taxpayer, or funneling the money to government services that will more directly aid it's citizens.

I don't understand why we would tax and spend like that when we are in a deficet. When this attitude of spending more on military because we can is applied, we understand why a large percentage of our evergrowing deficet is due to military spending.

Spending that continues to go up and up.

* For Fiscal Year 2006 it was $441.6 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2005 it was $420.7 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2004 it was $399.1 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2003 it was $396.1 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2002 it was $343.2 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2001 it was $305 billion. And Congress had increased that budget request to $310 billion.
* This was up from approximately $288.8 billion, in 2000.

Link

To top it off these figures do not include the second Iraq War and Afghanistan which is estimated to cost an additional $315 billion dollars. Here is a picture of what that additional amount of money would look like.



This pile is 125 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall.

450 feet is the height of a 38-story building. It's the height of the Millenium Wheel in London. It is also the height of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and the Louisiana State Capitol Building.

If you were to stack the money in a single stack, your stack would be 19,887 miles tall, enough to wrap the Moon at its equator almost 3 times.

See the little guy and his car near the bottom?

Link


As for us seemingly spending less money then previous years on the military, Chris Hellman has noted;

...when adjusted for inflation the request for 2007 together with that needed for nuclear weapons the 2007 spending request exceeds the average amount spent by the Pentagon during the Cold War, for a military that is one-third smaller than it was just over a decade ago. - http://www.fcnl.org/now/pdf/2006/mar06.pdf

So what does all this mean? How does it pertain to my point that we aren't seeing a good return on our dollar?

Remember this?



For some reason, though we've spent more money on military spending then any of these other countries we've seen a major terrorist attack succeed on our soil.

It didn't happen to Canada, which spends the least.

If you look at all the countries on the graph, you find they've spent far less then we have on 'defense' spending and had greater success then we have.

I propose we cut our defense spending to Japanese levels and use our defense monies wisely and on a more defensive and less pre-emptive more preventive level. We don't need to play world policeman or engage in nation building as we are currently experiencing what an extremely bad decision that is.

Let's save some bucks and restore some rationality to our nation, everyone, how about it?

(Citizen)DeferenceAugust 28, 2006 18:35:08

Nice graph! Purty too! So you agree we pay ENOUGH taxes. You just dont agree on the spenditure of them? Correct?

Thanks, I think taxes could be lower and public money could be more smartly spent.

Well I can agree there.

As for lumping your source with the DU, I am talking about the content of that site. It's stats I find are incredibly dishonest and their agenda pretty fringe in my view.

I won't even touch the whole "we spend lots on the military and yet we were attacked by terrorists".  Military spending has nothign to do with the likelyhood of being attacked by terrorists (Spain spends even less than Canada and it was attacked by terrorists).

That's like saying that Microsoft spends far more on security R&D than AmigaOS but all the viruses are on Windows these days. 

Hey Col, just some more info to prove you wrong! Average price in the US for homes runs between 225K to 245K...so chew on that for awhile!

Back to this. Yes, this is correct from what I found out today. I asked the owner of three C-21 RE offices that are doing quite well and he said when I asked him today on the average for our state, that in the Southern part of the state it would be about 225K and much lower when you look at our Northern counterpart. All the action is here in the Southern part of our state being very sparse up north. I could get property on water for 45K but with no work to speak of and not alot of services it would be for those who'd want to retire with the deer and the moose pretty much.

I also went into my "under contract" files and pulled up 33 new under contracts. The areas where these homes are sold are in the busiest part of our state. Out of those 33, four were over 300K with the highest at 372K.....13 were in the 200-299K range, 15 were in the 100-199K range and one was under that with the selling price 88K. The average then was somewhere around 210-213K and this is for the most populous area here.

So I'd have to agree, there is no way 300K is the average.

So I'd have to agree, there is no way 300K is the average.

Don't worry KFC once the col has been proven wrong, he usually abandons the thread.

In the area I live 300 K is a good average.

Let’s take your 245,000 average

At 6.2% 30 year the P&I is 1,500. With taxes and Ins the monthly mortgage is 2,000 just as I said.

The point I made is correct-- The cost of housing and cars has increased far more then wages and that is the main reason why it takes two incomes in most average American Family in 2006!

The point you made is not correct because it completely ignores the fact that the average SIZE of a house today is TWICE as large as it was in 1941 in square footage. 

You're not making an apples and oranges comparison.  The cost of housing has gone up because Americans can afford larger houses than they did in 1941 and they do so because of two-income earners.

Your premise, therefore, is completely wrong. You asserted that 2 people in a family HAVE to work to afford a new home. That is not true at all.  The price for a house that is the same size as those in 1941 is half the price of the $245,000 (and I'm being generous with the price because that's at the PEEK of the housing bubble that just burst).  $120,000 houses are affordable by the average income earner in the United States.