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Q: What is the difference between the government cutting you a check for $1 and giving you a tax cut of $1?
A: Semantics

Yeah, perhaps, except that when a government collects income tax in a progressive way, some of the money collected by the government is likely to have come from someone more wealthy than you. That's kind of the point of the system, to prevent the rich from getting too rich, and use money that would have otherwise been spent on luxury for more useful projects (like the Interstate highway system). I don't think America's formerly large and prosperous middle class would have developed if the highest income tax bracket wasn't taxed at 92% from 1944 to 1964.

The problem I have with that appeal to history is that in no previous time in history has it been so easy for capital flight. Whereas in the 1930s if taxes went up you more or less had to simply grit your teeth and pay them, nowadays it's become commonplace for businesses to simply LEAVE as taxes rise. There's a reason that over half of America's Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware, the 5th-least populous state. Many of those companies were originally incorporated elsewhere, but re-incorporated later in Delaware for the various tax benefits.

Also, where are you getting your numbers? I checked two different locations (one more conservative, one more liberal), which both showed that those taxes on the highest bracket didn't really drop with any significant until the 1960s - I'm pretty sure that time frame invalidates any comparison between employment rates. You can't reasonably be saying that a drop in the top tax rate in 1964 gives data that relates to unemployment in 1936.

No, the real problem is that the we're not willing to pay for social and military spending anymore. During WWII the tax rates were at +90% and now they are at sub 40%. We were willing to pay the social and military spending then but not now. And it all boils down to the fact that very few of super-rich are willing to pay for the social and military spending that make this country what it is.

The u.s. is like the decline of Rome. Most of the budget spent on the military to little gain.

The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is overspending on the military. It's not. Don't get me wrong; yes there's lots of pork in the U.S. military budget which could be cut. But it doesn't comprise most of U.S. government spending, nor is it the cause of the U.S.'s budgetary woes. And a good part of the reason we're in the buget mess we're in now is because people like you who think that it is implement solutions which don't address the real problem.

U.S. military spending is actually one of the few parts of government spending which has been more or less steadily declining since WWII, both as a % of the budget and as a % of GDP. It started climbing after 9/11, but it's still close to the lowest it's been since WWII.

What's killing the budget (indeed, where most of the money is spent) are the social programs; specifically, medicare and medicaid. They're projected to grow so quickly that even if you stopped all military spending, dropped it to zero , all the money that saved would be eaten up by growth in medicare and medicaid within 20-25 years. In other words, in 20-25 years we would have no military, no military spending, and our budgetary problems would be the same as they are now.

The first step in fixing a problem is to correctly identify what is causing it. The Congressional Budget Office hires a lot of really smart people to do nothing but identify the causes of the budget problems, and publishes a nifty report on it about every 2 years. Please go read it. Put aside any moralistic preconceptions you may have about which parts of the budget are good or bad. Look at it purely from an accounting standpoint - which parts are decreasing and which parts are ballooning out of control? The parts that are ballooning out of control are what we need to address to fix the problem, the parts that are decreasing are a much lower priority.

You get special treatment by being allowed to make your money, and keep more of it than you would in any other country in this world. Not to mention, I'm sick of hearing the top 1% cry about their tax rate when it's a fraction of what it was historically when our country was 'booming".

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

Yes, it's been said on /. a million times before: end the freakin' wars. Stop the runaway military spending. It's that simple.

No it's not that simple. I wish the people saying this would go to the Congressional Budget Office web site and actually try reading some of the budget projections instead of parroting some line which happens to fit their worldview.

In a nutshell, U.S. military spending has more or less been steadily declining as a percentage of the GDP and percentage of the budget, up until 9/11. After 9/11 it started to tick upwards, but is still near the lowest it's been since WWII. It's actually one of the few parts of the budget which has been getting smaller over the last 50 years.

What's killing the budget are the social programs. Specifically Medicare/Medicaid, though Social Security rears its head every now and then. Medicare and Medicaid are projected to grow so much and so quickly that if we completely eliminated all military spending - dropped it to zero - within about 20-25 years the growth in Medicare/Medicaid will have consumed all of the savings.

This isn't a conservative problem, this isn't a liberal problem. It's a straight-up accounting/math problem, and I know most of the folks here are pretty good at math. Put aside any preconceptions you may have. Go read the the CBO report on the budget. See for yourself where the problems in the budget are.

Actually, no, it is not caused by income taxes. There is a slide in that presentation that shows some trends in effective tax rates and if anything they are lower than they have been in a long time. And when you consider that federal spending as a percentage of GDP has fluctuated around 18% and 22% for the past 30 or so years yet the debit is increasing it makes sense, flat spending but falling tax rates equals debt.

And on factories moving over seas, absolutely, that is one of the forces affecting median income. But again it is not taxes. As an engineer I've spent my share of time going over factory finances and the largest expense, and easiest to adjust through layoffs and closing factories, is head count and salaries. Companies have done a very good job of working out deals to get tax cuts both federal and state but your average U.S. worker can't do much to compete with crap wages over seas except perhaps live in a cardboard box or move the U.S. back to the old days of the company store where you pay your employer for housing, groceries, even your church.

And I probably should not say degradation of income, its more like flat income, but I'll comment on that in a response to the coward below. :)

The US is no longer a super power.

In fact, the US is the ONLY superpower in the world today.

We're no longer a nation of thinkers and doers,

Go grab some statistics about the nation today, and X years ago. With any measure you can come up with, you'll find the US is just as well off today as it was X years ago.

We tax those that work and innovate and we subsidize those that do not work and only consume.

Look up some numbers, and you'll find the US has lower taxes now, than we have through much of the nation's history.

Here's just one chart, of just one : http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates-graph.php

Federal Income Taxes on 1mil USD were 77% in 1918. Earning more than $100,000 in 1950 would result in 91% tax rates. Today, taxes top-out at a mere 35%.

. We tax those that work and innovate and we subsidize those that do not work and only consume.

Yeah, get to work you blood-sucking orphans! Stop mooching off the gub'mint!

We're doomed if entitlements aren't eliminated,

Actually, we're doomed if Medicare costs aren't brought under control. But hey, right-wing shills just want their taxes cut further, they don't want health care reform!

You are wrong.

Military spending has not "been increasing at an unsustainable rate for at least the last 30 years". In inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, it began rising in the late 70s and peaked around '86 or so and then fell until 9/11. It's been going up since then. A slightly older web page shows a fairly similar picture as a percentage of GDP. It's just that the headline dollar number gets more and more impressive as the U.S. economy as a whole gets bigger. Compared to the rest of the world by percentage of GDP, the U.S. is 27th.

And remember, the biggest components of the defense budget are operations, maintenance, and pay: roughly 2/3rds. About a third is procurement and R&D.

Also remember that military spending in Europe is lower than would otherwise be the case because they offload that expense onto the citizens of the United States. The benefits associated with being the world's only military hyperpower likely makes this a worthwhile trade. Apparently the political powers of the country think so.

If the Soviet Union was bled dry in thirty years, how much longer can the United States survive the siphoning of hundreds of billions of dollars from their economy?

Probably for a real long time. Military spending as a percentage of GDP is nothing compared to what it used to be.

I am aware of US history since the Great Depression, but I don't think you are.

Here's a chart of income inequality since World War I. Note that it begins to rise in the 1970s. Here's a chart of top marginal tax rates since the income tax was introduced. Note that the top tax on earned income drops precipitously in the 1970s.

So, yes, the current tax code is creating stratification of wealth (and therefore, societal breakdown), because it's insufficiently progressive. Your proposals make it even worse.

The U.S. government needs to learn to live on a lot less money, just like everyone else does when the economy goes sour, get it?

No. No, this is absolutely wrong. Basic macroeconomics states that the government can, when things go bad, take on debt and add money to the economy when it "goes sour", as you put it. The idea is that boom/bust cycle is smoothed out by the government filling its coffers during booms and emptying them during busts, spending against the cycle. (This is why blowing the early-2000s surplus on tax cuts for very, very rich people was a particularly bad idea.)

This is out of the Norquistian playbook--funnel cash to the very wealthy to empty out the treasury, then talk about how excessive government spending is and claim that the only solution is to cut services. An extra zero on a balance sheet is, clearly, more important than starving old people.

We "all know" that socialism is evil, and soaring taxes are the death of our economy. Yet the United States economy was perhaps strongest in the 50s and 60s, and we haven't had tax rates that high ever since. Yes, you heard me right: tax rates were HIGHEST in the 1950's and 60's. They were higher in the 1980's than they are now.

In fact, if taxes were the indicator of prosperity, then actual prosperity is virtually a reverse graph of the tax rates! It's one of those baffling facts that get in the way of the rhetoric for so many. see for yourself...

"They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."

Top marginal tax rates were around 90% during the 1950s, and 50% or higher during most of the 1980s.

The economy, and the nation, survived.

It's time to restore taxation on the aristocrats. Raise the top marginal rates, restore the inheritance tax, and tax capital gains the same as earned income.

Who is John Galt?

He's a fictional character in a sophomoric novel that takes place in a fantasy world with less relevance to our own than Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Left out this link re: marginal tax rates: http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

If you think the Democrats are going to allow government to shrink, you must be high.

Average size of the government, measured by federal spending as a percentage of GDP, during the last few administrations:

JFK/LBJ (FY 1962-1969): 18.8%
Nixon/Ford (FY 1970-1977): 19.9%
Carter (FY 1978-1981): 21.2%
Reagan (FY 1982-1989): 22.3%
Bush I (FY 1990-1993): 21.9%
Clinton (FY 1994-2001): 19.6%

That page only has figures for the first two years of Bush II: the average was 19.7%, but of course the average over his whole term would be much higher.

Now can we please stop pretending that the GOP brings about "smaller government"? It was bigger under Nixon/Ford than under JFK/LBJ, and bigger under Reagan (and still under Bush I) than it was under Carter.

If you think the Democrats are going to allow government to shrink, you must be high.

Average size of the government, measured by federal spending as a percentage of GDP, during the last few administrations:

JFK/LBJ (FY 1962-1969): 18.8%
Nixon/Ford (FY 1970-1977): 19.9%
Carter (FY 1978-1981): 21.2%
Reagan (FY 1982-1989): 22.3%
Bush I (FY 1990-1993): 21.9%
Clinton (FY 1994-2001): 19.6%

That page only has figures for the first two years of Bush II: the average was 19.7%, but of course the average over his whole term would be much higher.

Now can we please stop pretending that the GOP brings about "smaller government"? It was bigger under Nixon/Ford than under JFK/LBJ, and bigger under Reagan (and still under Bush I) than it was under Carter.

The Obama tax plan reaffirms the Bush tax cuts on all but the highest brackets past 2010; the salient change is that the $250k bracket simply returns to where it was when Bush took office: see here. In the end, the total tax rate of the country is still below where it was during the Reagan administration. It's astonishing to think we went through the first decade of expansion this century without collecting any money to pay down our debt; through the 50s, the highest brakcet had a marginal tax rate of over 90%, in order to pay down our war debt, and that was a tax code submitted by a Republican congress and signed by Eisenhower. At the time thus amounted to a huge wealth redistribution since the paper on the war debt was in war bonds, which were universally subscribed, not to mention the costs of the GI Bill and Marshall plan, which educated millions and could also be considered a form of debt repayment or infrastructure invetment.

When Hoover raised taxes in 1932, it caused a complete economic collapse of an already precarious situation.

It didn't help that he wasn't spending much; if we trim up taxation while spending gobs on infrastructure like in 1933. Of course back then, they didn't have $10 trillion in debt.

Some deficit spending...and a 94% tax rate. Seriously.

Look: I'm extremely fiscally conservative. But even I'm more than willing to grant that there's a definite balance point between anarchic free-market capitalism and nanny-state socialism: putting aside morals, too much wealth centralized in the hands of too few kills the economy because no one can afford to buy anything, while too much wealth distribution kills the economy because no one's motivated to innovate.

During WWII, we had extremely aggressive taxes to pay for a massive war, where those taxes are going to local industries, thereby supplying tons of previously unemployed laborers jobs. That's effectively labor-based socialism. At the end of the war, Europe had bombed their industry to oblivion, while ours had just been rebuilt, so we were in a wonderful position to get rich--if we had buyers. Critically, the Marshal Plan basically amounted to international socialism, giving Europe money with which to buy American goods. They then used those goods to rebuild their own economies, giving them new income, with which to purchase American goods legitimately.

So, in summary: WWII caused domestic socialistic policies that got us out of the Depression, and the Cold War caused international socialistic policies that kept us out of it.

Can we all agree now that maybe a little wealth distribution isn't necessarily a bad thing 100% of the time?

Clinton balanced the budget but gutting the military

"Gutting" the military? During the Clinton years we still spent far and away more on "defense" than any other nation; the "defense" budget remained bloated. During the Clinton years, American military spending made up a larger percentage of the world's total military spending than it did in the Regan years.

Had we really trimmed it, we would probably have reduced the number of troops overseas. Including those in the Middle East. Like in Saudi Arabia. You know, the troops whose presence so provoked bin Laden.

If we'd really "gutted" the military, i.e. reduced it to its rightful role of defending the nation, and exerted forgein influence by economic and diplomatic means rather than by military bullying, odds are very good that no one would have been motived to hijack planes and fly them into American buildings.

This is not to say that terrorism against the U.S. was or is justified. But like any crime, it does have a motivation.

(Let me point out that if we followed the Founder's plan, we wouldn't even have a standing army. And yet, someone, serving in an institution whose very existence was opposed by the Founding Fathers, has someone come to be seen as "patriotic". Remarkable.)

Wonder who gets the blame for the intelligence failures of 2000 - 2004?

Rightfully, the guys who were at the top, who chose to ignore the completely adequate data and clear warnings they were given by the intelligence community, bear the blame.

Sadly, as another poster mentioned, "rights", once lost, are restored very slowly, if ever. Likewise, taxes rarely disappear once they are put in place. Choose your poison.

I'll take higher taxes over infringement of liberties any day. Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's: money is a government creation, and while there are practical matters and while current tax schemes are rather invasive in terms of data gathering, I don't have a problem with the fundamental idea that if you want to play the game of state capitalism with the state's counters you've got to ante up.

We can get rid of taxes as soon as we can get rid of government, and we can get rid of government just as soon as the prerequisite of "universal enlightenment" is fulfilled. In the meantime, we Americans ought to stop our famous tax whining - compared to other industrialized nations we as a whole are under-taxed.

Would I rather pay an extra thirty bucks a month in taxes, versus warrantless wiretapping? Versus illegal invasions of sovreign nations? A consistent attempt to force religion into biology classes? Attempts to criminalize medical procedures, to even re-outlaw birth control? Continual anti-gay bigotry shrouded in religious language? Ruinous borrow-and-spend policies that merely shift the tax burden on to future generations? I'd pay the extra thirty bucks and be happy.

But I wouldn't have to, since the current Democratic plan is to shift taxes off of the middle class and back on to the wealthy who have benefited from years of rule by the investment class that owns the GOP, and off of the middle class. Under Obama's proposals, a family making $66,000/year would get a tax reduction of $1,042, while a family making $604,000 a year would see a tax increase of $116,000.

Compared to the great economic boom of the 1950s, the rich are far, far, far undertaxed - under that radical leftist Eisenhower, top marginal rates were over 90%. And during the go-go early 80s it was 50%. So don't even try to play that raising the top rate back to the modest 39.6% it was during the Clinton years would ruin the economy.

Tax Freedom Day, the day where our tax obligations would be met if the taxes were collected 100% until met is April 23rd of this year.

It is hard to beleive that since the inception of the Union, that the income tax rate has gone from 1% (with only 1 in 10 claiming any income) to everyone paying around 30% (Prior to 1913 taxing income was questionable.) What went from a measure enacted in 1913 to tax the rich has turned into a measure that taxes the poor better than it does the rich.

In the other news - the defense budget is biggest since WWII.

Look at military spending as percentage of GDP. That's what makes a superpower these days. The US economy is so much larger than most others that a relatively small percentage of GDP adds up to a huge raw number.

Try Truth and Politics for some interesting charts and numbers. Take a look at this PDF from the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Division for comparisons to other countries including charts to rank by total dollars and an alphabetical list.

The US spends far less of the country's total buying power on defense than many other countries, and much of that is spent helping defend allies around the globe. Those allies tend to be happy for the help, although the specific methods employed often come into question.

Microsoft's (international) revenues are less than a third of a percent of US GDP. Check, that's true.

Adding Microsoft's revenues to those of two other companies can total *almost* one percent of GDP. Check, I can believe that too. Not sure why you picked 3M and P&G -- too lazy to search for a relationship. Therefore I'm simply going to assume that you picked two other decent sized but not huge companies (Microsoft is only 48th on the Fortune 500; Exxon Mobil is first with profits of about $36 billion -- i.e. almost the size of Microsoft's revenues; at #13, Berkshire Hathaway is more than twice as big as Microsoft). Combined, your three companies are smaller than Citigroup (8th on the Fortune 500). Not sure what your point was. Why combine those three companies? Is there some reason that breaking up the Microsoft monopoly would automatically affect the other two?

See http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/ full_list/index.html for Fortune 500 data.

If Microsoft's revenues went to zero, it would significantly harm the US economy. Basis? I don't believe that. Consider that defense use to make up about 6% (6.2% in 1986) of US GDP. It dropped from 4.8% to 3.7% between 1992 and 1995. In general, those were considered to be good economic years. From 1995 to 1999, it dropped a further .7% to 3%. Yet somehow, despite this, those were considered to be great economic years. The 1992-5 era is especially interesting, as spending dropped from 297 billion to 259 billion. That's about 38 billion dollars. I.e. roughly the same magnitude as Microsoft (albeit in more valuable 90s dollars rather than the relatively depreciated 2005 dollars). In other words, the defense shrinkage from 1992 to 1995 was actually larger in magnitude than Microsoft's revenues. Yet somehow the economy not only survived but prospered.

Of the twenty-nine agencies and departments listed in the 2005 federal budget, thirteen are larger than Microsoft's revenues.

Defense % of GDP from http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative- size.php
Historical budget numbers from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/ (in particular, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hi st.pdf ).

It's also worth noting that no one is talking about sending Microsoft's revenue to zero. In fact, because of the way monopolies work, the normal result would be to *increase* revenues while decreasing profits. A monopoly only produces up to the point where marginal revenue (from sales) exceeds marginal cost (of production). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly -- in particular, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e f/Monopoly-surpluses.svg/250px-Monopoly-surpluses. svg.png

The green line represents marginal revenue. The red line represents consumer demand. The blue line represents marginal cost of supply. Note that marginal revenue is positive for at least part of the distance between the monopoly quantity produced and the competitive price. Also note the yellow region. This is the area where the economy *gains* as a result of switching from a monopoly to a competitive market. It comprises the benefits of increased production minus the costs. The blue rectangle (i.e. the part above the Pc line) is gain shifted from producer (Microsoft) to consumers.

To reiterate:

1. Microsoft is not really that big a part of the US economy in terms of revenue.
2. Even if it were, no on is seriously argui

Your argument makes sense only if the rates are at the "correct" point somehow and not the cause of the problem.

is a discussion of the top marginal income tax in the last century in the US.

Compare the top rate with the wealth gap and I think you'll see an inverse correlation.

In the 50's and 60's, when everyone says the middle class was at it's best place, the rich were taxed around 90% Today its around 35% plus loophole city.

Your analogy is actually right on. You don't change the scoreboard to make your team win. We've done that and that's why there is a problem. If we put the scoreboard back where it was maybe the "teams" will be able to play fair.

Your argument makes sense only if the rates are at the "correct" point somehow and not the cause of the problem.

is a discussion of the top marginal income tax in the last century in the US.

Compare the top rate with the wealth gap and I think you'll see an inverse correlation.

In the 50's and 60's, when everyone says the middle class was at it's best place, the rich were taxed around 90% Today its around 35% plus loophole city.

Your analogy is actually right on. You don't change the scoreboard to make your team win. We've done that and that's why there is a problem. If we put the scoreboard back where it was maybe the "teams" will be able to play fair.

As for the size of US "defence": It uses more than even at the coldest of the cold war. And to what ends?

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative- size.php

America is broke. America is deeply in debt.

These two are not the same. America is one of a few developed countries not to have an economy driven by exports. Almost all of our competitors - Canada, Japan, and especially China run a large trade deficit with us. The US economy is dominated by household consumption and business growth. The large profits made by our partners have to go somewhere. They can invest in overcapacity, or real estate speculation (China doesn't have a functional stock market), or stick the cash in a matress - or they can buy US treasuries. They love 'em! So we in the US get large investment inflows and low interest rates. The fun will end once these exporters realize they are getting ripped off!

America sells protection. Luckily protection frequently breeds violence which calls for protection.

Yep, and a lot of the world needs it. It isn't a big percentage of GDP (

Unfortunately the tax base in America isn't up to the job.

This suggests otherwise.

The short term policies driving markets that push pollutants and climatic change will be changed, at best surperficially, because alternatives require recognizing that America is broke. And waking from the American dream will be a nightmare.

Why so pessimistic? The climate will change with or without industrial civilization. We are in an interglacial period. It should be warming. This isn't necessarily bad. In much of the world there will be increased crop yields.

Sorry if I came off as a bit hostile, but I've been in a hundred arguments where people mistakenly identify various interpretations of military spending to justify the amount of expenditure in the States, particulary with outdated information. As I pointed out in the last post, the site you referenced claimed that the US currently spends around $277 billion, but the figure is, in fact, closer to $453 billion, strictly for the military alone as of 2004. Even in 2002, the total amount spent on defense funding and homeland security agencies (I don't believe this takes into account undisclosed funding for CIA/NSA/FBI, but I could be wrong) was $596 billion. So, one problem is that the GDP figures only take into account military expenditures and don't count funding given to the NSA and CIA for their covert ops, shill operations, and so on. The GDP is just a poor measure of defense funding in the United States, where we have a huge number multinational corporations that make the GDP skyrocket; other countries do not; there is just no other first world country that has the amount of profiteers and corporate giants that we do; not even close. Even if you go to per capita with updated figures, we spend per capita on the military branches alone more than any other nation, with Israel coming somewhat close (Update the figures from here to the $453 billion of 2004 and you have a per capita military expenditure of around $1,850).

Even in the 2004 federal budget, military spending that is disclosed to the public (not counting all the CIA and NSA bullshit, and all the other shadow-ops shit) was nearly 20% of all federal spending; the only thing the federal budget spends more on is Social Security. So no, it's not small potatoes compared to medicare (11.7%), or social welfare (8.4%), or medicaid (7.9%), or anything else, not to mention when compared to the rest of the world.

And no, the elected Republicans are not indistinguishable from socialists, which is why more and more americans are finding themselves below the poverty line; they are far from socialist in any respect, unless you count meddling in people's lives when not asked to, but that's more of a totalitarian/authoritarian aspect.

So, let me get this straight. You are saying that in 1981, the USSR was doomed. How old are you? were you even alive in 1981? Did you hear about the Moscow Olympics of 1980?

Maybe I'm buying into undeserved hype, but when I think back to the beginning of the 1980's, I remember a very strong USSR which was very much the threat to the world stage and to the US in general. Maybe it was all a sham, but me and the rest of the American Public don't recall it that way.

Even if you believe Scott Shane, this doesn't answer the question of Why the Soviet Economy was crumbling. "But it's the specter of SDI that apparently had become a major fixation in the minds of both the Soviet strategic defense hierarchy as well as Gorbyachev himself." from "The Fall Of The Soviet Union: Whys And Wherefores" http://www.raleightavern.org/lovell.htm kinda points towards Reagan's SDI as one of the reasons for this Economic collapse. Another point made was that something like 15-16% of Russia's GNP was being spent on defense by the end of the 1980s. by contrast we were spending something like 5-6% of our GDP http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative- size.php and http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russi a/mo-budget.htm.

so, care to say that the USSR was going down anyhow? It sure didn't feel like that to me in 1981.

Ira

The US spent approximately 15% of its GDP on healthcare in 2003, and about 3% on military spending in 2003.

Healthcare:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/costgrowth/

Military:
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative- size.php

(ahem colossal military budget)

This always bugs me when I see it. In 2001, US military spending was at an all time low of 3.0% of the GDP. Even with the "huge" increases since 9-11, we are up to a whopping 3.7% of GDP (reference). If you really want find extra money in the budget, convince the politicians to quit funding their pork projects. (Note: fat chance on that.)

I would like to second this in relation to slashdot there are many seemingly informed people (well, as far as a slashdot reader can be held over an average person re: science) who simply refute the science entirely, even refute that we should be "taking out insurance" on the risk.

We know it isn't going to be "day after tommorow", but it could have serious economic consequences for many regions and disrupt food supply etc. Maybe that isn't worth eating solar powered cooked tofu yet, but I think it's worth putting a hell of a lot of seed money into solutions which will provide us with neat tech anyway.

And re: the "why not nuclear?" crowd, I have only this to say:

I know the technology is perfectly safe, but that's not my objection it's to do with disposal of waste. Why do you trust corporations and government to dispose of radioactive waste? They are two of the most dodgy institutions of all time who have a track record in messing simple things up let alone complex ones.

I say more R&D $$ to scientists working on solar, tidal, hydrogen and wind tech and make up the gaps in current production with limited and pre-existing nuclear.

The US government spends around 300 billion in peace time (i.e. before Iraq) on it's military budget. You could solve world hunger and the energy crisis with half that and still have enough money to kick China's ass in a hot war twice over, why are you so beholden to the military industrial complex one of your own presidents warned you about in his final speech.

This stuff would be easy, I don't know why people are so allergic to it. Because they like to beat up on lefty straw-men protesters who they see as being unscientific? I don't know, but what I do know is there are good reasons to take action and they aren't based on saving the tofu birds from being unable to hug trees, it's purely a risk assesment which says:

"hey, that money the most polluting nation on earth spends to keep safe, well it won't keep them safe if there is a food shortage and a heap of wars due to climate change, so they should put some of that security money into stopping climate change.... and it will be money well spent because all the science points to it being a pretty big security issue."

I keep hearing of all these slippery slopes. We never seem to slide down any of them though. Perhaps it is tin foil hat material.

Are you serious?

Take a look at nearly any section of the U.S. code and you'll see thousands of examples of slippery slopedom. Let's see...

Gun control. We went from the Constitution's 2nd amendment, written at a time when the citizens had far more firepower and advanced weaponry than the government and guaranteed that the Federal government had no authority to limit that right to the recently expired federal ban on scary-looking weapons.

Copyright law. We went from a reasonably short period of protection (14 years with an optional additional 14 years, which both encouraged authors and musicians to keep creating AND benefitted the public) to the extension of copyright to an absurd "author's life plus seventy years" for individuals. Or there's the lovely DMCA which specifically prohibits me from mucking about with the innards of my own personal, private property.

Even more ironic, the government is fighting for exactly the same right that they've taken away from the citizenry with the DMCA:

"'circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." ( Source)

That's precisely what they're trying to do by forcing back-doors. My emails are protected by copyright. More importantly, they're private communications and not subject to unwarranted search and seizure (that pesky fourth amendment). Still not convinced that we've been veritably skiing down some slopes yet? How about...

Income Tax: We started out with sales/manufacturing taxes, flirted with an income tax during the civil war, then got rid of it entirely, and declared it unconstitutional (which it was until the 16th amendment), then put it back.

But even in 1913, most people had no tax burden, and the very richest were taxed at an insanely low rate. If you had earned income over $500,000 in 1913 dollars your tax rate was 7%. Compare that to the rate in 2003: 35% if you made $311,950.

I'd like to visit the slope you live on, because the one I seem to be living on is more slippery than a California hillside in the rainy season.

The US definitely has the largest military budget, by a massive stretch. See the first link from google I found as an example.

What other military, or coalition of militaries, represents a threat to a military that size? Who are the Americans thinking they need to defend themselves from?

When folks from other countries say that both parties in the US are right-wing, this is what they mean. A portion of those dollars are what could have been their education and health systems, still leaving them with a military equal to any possible coalition of forces.