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Hey, if we can stop funding the military-industrial complex first

What's the connection?

Compared to that, all the various aid programs combined amount to a drop in the bucket

Are you delusional or are you lying? Here is the 2016's budget, for example:

• Spending on Social Security, unemployment, and labor in 2016 was about 37%
• Medicare and general health spending was about 28% of all outlays
• Spending on national defense was about 15%
• All other programs (agriculture, energy, commerce and housing credit, community and regional development, etc.) made up approximately 14%

To be more wrong than you are, one would've have to claim, the Moon is made of cheese...

Moreover, unlike any charity, maintaining capable military is, actually, a government's responsibility explicitly written in the Constitution while everything else is wrong:

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

— James Madison

and nobody else will help you, either.

TFA is exactly about people helping others — saving their lives. So, you are wrong once again... How do you function day to day — or do you have a minder or something?

It scares you that officials seek to do their job effectively?

The government does not handle money effectively nor efficiently.

They are infamous for fraud and waste.

Even their so-called success is insanely wasteful in comparison to alternatives.

Why? Because their goal is political support not financial wisdom.

So before digging deeper into my pockets I want them to figure out how to manage the trillions that they are already getting. Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and most other private companies can manage to put out good products and continue to improve them year after year... and yet the government still hasn't fixed the huge pot hole on the off-ramp by my house that has been there for years. They infamously can't even put up a website to handle registrations for mandatory health care-- Google, operating on miniscule budget in comparison somehow manages to run a near monopoly on world internet searches.

Some taxes must be paid, of course!
But what if we could reduce taxes by twenty five percent and still have a surplus and still meet the government's obligations?

Maybe if it didnt all go to "defense" spending.

Here is the 2015 Federal Budget for example. The highlights:

• Social Security, unemployment, and labor — 37%
• Medicare and general health — 27%
• Military (the only government expenditure explicitly authorized by the Constitution) — 16%

Figures for 2016 aren't much different. You were saying?

But, hey, what makes you think, the tax-increases necessary for UBI will not be misspent by the same government apparatus too? No, if you feel charitable and wish to help the fellow men — do it yourself.

Maybe if it didnt all go to "defense" spending.

Here is the 2015 Federal Budget for example. The highlights:

• Social Security, unemployment, and labor — 37%
• Medicare and general health — 27%
• Military (the only government expenditure explicitly authorized by the Constitution) — 16%

Figures for 2016 aren't much different. You were saying?

But, hey, what makes you think, the tax-increases necessary for UBI will not be misspent by the same government apparatus too? No, if you feel charitable and wish to help the fellow men — do it yourself.

I would like to remind you that about a trillion dollars a year go toward "defense".

No it is actually closer to half that and if you include veterans benefits it is only about 60%. That isn't to say there isn't waste and stupid shit going on since we all should be familiar with generals and the like saying they don't want something and don't need it but congress approves money for it because it brings home the bacon to their district. Personally I think our military budget is over sized and everyone likes to complain the the US spends more than the next X countries combines on their military but unlike China or Russia we are a high cost of living country and unlike most of Europe we end up being world police. Personally I think we would be better off telling the rest of the world they need to take a bigger role in keeping the peace and dramatically scale back our forces in places like the middle east, Europe, Africa, Asia. We can't do this all at once and it needs to be done in an orderly fashion but over a 4-8 year span we could dramatically cut back.

No, sir, I'm not. Here's a citation to back up the actual (not alternative) fact I stated: http://individual-contributors...

I wonder what other contracts the government has with Google...

This lawsuit lists only one, the GSA's "Advertising and Integrated Marketing Solutions Contract", number GS07F227BA. Since it gives a contract number, we can actually reference it on a few different websites. I guess we can use the FPDS website to search for more contracts awarded to Google. ...

There's a million dollar contract for Google AdWords for the FDA, $250K awarded by the State Department for marketing its "Programs and Products", A lot of contracts by the BBG (who administers the "Voice of America" program)...Neat stuff!

Granted, I know that Google is the digital nexus of advertising online, but it still just feels a little disappointing how much of our tax money is going directly to them. (I suppose it pails in comparison, though, to other contractors like Lockheed Martin. Doing some more Googling (how ironic) seems to indicate that Google isn't even in the top 100. So I guess it's water under the bridge.

I wonder if I can find any contracts by the NSA...

These changes will help ensure that order and decorum are preserved in the House of Representatives so lawmakers can do the people's work," a spokeswoman for Ryan said

That's rich. In case you'd forgotten, the incident that caused this is when The House went into recess rather than work on more legislation, and the minority party thought they ought to stay and get more work done. The current Congress ended up being the 3rd least productive in history (being edged out for worst only by the previous two).

So the FIFY here is "These changes will help ensure order and decorum are preserved in the House of Representatives' home districts so lawmakers can continue to not do the people's work".

... tax the rich bastards

Careful, you're revealing your ulterior motives (envy and greed).

... at a 50% tax rate

Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?

... which would benefit everyone.

The fact that you are included in the "everyone" group did not escape my notice.

That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges ...

You're so altruistic when planning how to spend other people's money.

... pay for basic research that corporations no longer do...

Because IBM (just to name a single example) isn't filing huge numbers of patents and innovations every year, right?
Also, I like how vague and condescending your term "basic research" is.

... and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.

Or we could stop giving money to foreign governments, stop handing out "free" stuff to our own citizens, stop spending fortunes on cruise missiles and drones, etc. ...

The Forbes 400 for America says that they own about $2.4 trillion. So you would have to go after a much larger number of people than that if you want to really punish those evil greedy rich people whose money we wish we had.
The federal budget is about $3.95 trillion with a deficit of $616 billion and a total debt of just short of $20 trillion.
This article gives the net worth required to be in a percentile of wealth.

Please check my math: 0.01 * 338 million = 338,000 people => 338,000 * $30,644,280 gives us a guess of their net worth being about $97,448,810,400,000 (ninety seven trillion dollars assuming that they all have about a thirty million dollar net worth).

If confiscated then that would be sufficient to pay the national debt... You were saying merely that we should tax them at higher rates (50%). It really just means taking their money over time rather than all at once.

The end effect is the same. In the long term, it would produce the following problems:
1. The rich will just leave. Nobody will sit around while most or all of their wealth is confiscated. It doesn't matter how justified you think it is, they won't just sit there and be shafted. Next year you won't have anyone to confiscate the wealth from.
2. All businesses who can possibly manage to do so will flee the country. What do you think that would do to the GDP? Do you think tax revenues would go up or down?
3. You will have set the precedent that in this country we'll just take your stuff if you have it and we want it. Talk about the destruction of Western civilization. Everything is predicated upon the notion of "ownership" in our culture, society, and civilization. If you can just take someone else's stuff because you want it (individually or collectively) then what incentive is there to work, to earn and save, to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum to get through today? Would you work for free? Would you work for subsistence wages? Would you think it was fair if most of your income were taken away from you and given to others? Why do you think anyone else would or should?
4. With the evacuation of businesses (and jobs) and the ultra-rich a power vacuum and societal upheaval will leave the country vulnerable. Probably you would get a dictator in a couple years promising to make things better and to punish those responsible... read a history book or recall your history lessons in school and you'll see how such

The top individual tax rate in the 50's was 91%, not corporate. The top corporate rate was around 50%.

You're correct. I get the two confused sometimes.

http://federal-tax-rates.insidegov.com/l/35/1950

Based on what? I hate Jeb but he is still the most likely nomination. He has a huge money advantage

Huh?

Jeb Bush net worth: $10 million (according to the article I'm linking,though I've seen lower estimates and some as high as $22 million)
Donald Trump net worth: $10 billion (again, according to the link, though this could be as "low" as $4 billion)

Even taking the highest and lowest numbers for Bush and Trump, respectively, Trump has at least 2 orders of magnitude more money.

http://presidential-candidates...

http://federal-budget.insidego...

"The U.S. government collected $80.9B in tax revenues and spent a total of $117B in its 1940 budget" So it was not 135 but 117, which is near enough but nowhere near the inflation adjusted number. I call BS on that because an inflation adjusted number for 135 would be around 10 billion 1940 dollar.

By the way the number is confirmed by government spend in % of GDP : it was 10% in 1940 a year which was *specially* suspiciously used, and it was between 16% and 22% ever since after WW2. The fact that in percentage GDP it stayed stable or had barely growth completely destroy the original argument.

The reaction to this seems to fall along political lines. I've seen a number of columns from conservative authors...

I'm not sure if you read slashdot, because there was an article posted last week from a left-leaning writer / psychologist basically saying these kinds of hobbies are bad:
http://games.slashdot.org/stor...

In fact, the "men are failing to grow up" is a common theme in many feminist circles, which are largely characterized as "liberal". Example: http://time.com/179/men-are-ob...