People Believe NASA Funded As Well As US Military

QuantumG writes "An essay on the Space Review site is reporting that a just-completed study indicates the average citizen has no idea how much funding NASA gets. Respondents generally estimated NASA's allocation of the national budget to be approximately 24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%) and the Department of Defense budget to be approximately 33% (it's actually closer to 21%). In other words, respondents believed NASA's budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money. Once informed of the actual allocations, they were almost uniformly surprised. One of the more vocal participants exclaimed, 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"

Comments

Iraq War

[mrbill1234]

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.

Military budget

[MichaelSmith]

I just can't believe USA people put up with spending 21% of their national budget on the military.

Re:Military budget

[D-Cypell]

As a Brit I will hold my hands up and publically state that I do, from time to time, engage in some playful anti-americanism. I don't offer any apologises for this however, as I happen to know that many Americans engage in some playful anti-britishness (we do, after all, receive many of your syndicated television programmes here, so get to see some of it first hand).

Having said that, I do appreciate certain benefits that the US provides and, I have visited the states on several occasions (not recently, as I am disturbed by stories I have heard on border policy) and I have found that most Americans that I actually meet to be generally quite nice folks (with some exceptions, but no more than anywhere else in the world).

What irks me, and you do this in your post, is when actions made by the US are made out to be uniquely selfless and benevolent. This simply *does not happen*. No government is a charity, every penny spent must be demonstrated to serve a self interest. What tends to happen is that an action is taken that has some kind of positive secondary effect and that secondary effect is made to look like the primary motivation, but this is nothing more than a bank robber bringing statistcs on how many innocent people that the bank he robbed happened to forclose on in the previous year.

Iraq is a case in point. Weapons of mass destruction, The oppresion of Saddam, or oil revenue/security. One of these things was a primary motivation, the other two were secondary effects spun to look like a primary motivation. Perhaps I am being arrogant myself here, but I am sure that anyone sensible understands that Iraq was a war for resources. Hell, I can even say I understand that motivation (although, the cost has been far too high).

If you are going to praise the US work that goes into protecting trade routes, at least be honest and say that this is done primary to protect the interests of US corporations (and this is true even if the actual goods move between two other states) and that the whole world benefits from the secondary effect of more secure trade routes. For that, I salute you and your culture, but please don't try to make it sound like it is done from the goodness of your hearts.

Re:Military budget

[stranger_to_himself]

3. As a US citizen, I'm happy that the US has the best military in the world.

I take issue with this statement, because I know for a fact that the UK has the best military in the world.

More seriously though, everybody I know believes as a 'well known fact' that their own country's military is the worlds best. These are otherwise sensible and not particularly nationalisatic people usually capable of making objective judgements. That's a startlingly good piece of marketing however you look at it.

US military spending

[drDugan]

The amount of resources the US spends on the military is obscene, IMHO.

As I referenced in my /. post earlier this month
( here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=352789&cid=21263533 )

The US spends almost 60% of all global military spending, not counting the 2 undeclared wars, Iraq and Afganistan. That is $623 Billion out of a total of about $1.1 Trillion. The Iraq war is estimated to cost over 1.2 Trillion(ish), with about 500B spent so far. Those are direct costs - cash spent, and does not count indirect costs or opportunity costs or the human toll.

Some details can be found here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

and here

For me, I'm done keeping quiet. I'm done being polite. I'm done hoping that these wrongs will be corrected, eventually. I bring up the reality of what is happening in the US in common discussions with people. It makes people uncomfortable, as it should. Criminals are running the show, and no one has or will step to stop them. Now that the US has installed a chief lawman that is covering up past crimes, there is no more room for polite waiting and hoping things get better legally.

Not even close.

[mosb1000]

Considering that medicare has cost us significantly more during the course of the war than the war has, the money we've spent on the war is probably not enough to pay for national health care. We spend about $300,000,000,000 on medicare each year, while the total budget for the iraq war has been less than $500,000,000,000. Then again, it depends what you mean when you say "national health care". Perhaps the program you had in mind is significantly smaller medicare?

What ever happened to calling it "universal health care" or "socialized medicine". Calling it "national health care" almost makes it sound noble and patriotic. If it's a social program, what's so wrong with calling it what it is? Once we have it, it's more likely that we will refer to it with swear words anyway, just as we would any other government program or agency. Maybe we should just call it "bitch care" or "fucking shit" right now and get it over with.

Fun times will be had by all.

yes "protection"

[QuantumG]

much like Al Capone provided to Chicago in the 20s.

Re:At this point, you are correct

[mc moss]

Although we will be fine for the near future, anything can happen. Don't believe America is an empire that can last forever.

Re:At this point, you are correct

[vertinox]

There is no desperate need to balance the budget, and the deficit is certainly not "killing" America....At the height of our debt-to-GDP ratio, after World War II, the federal debt was over 200% of our GDP, yet we survived.

Actually, the reason that worked out is that the US was the only industrialized nation that didn't have her infrastructure hosed by war or owed another nation (looking at you UK which did just finally pay off their WWII debt to the US just recently) and the only other nation that was comparable industrial capacity wise was the USSR which was in its Stalinist era which didn't need a real GDP to get things done (Need a public project done? Thats what millions of German Pows and Russian prisioners for! No need to pay anyone)

Anyways, the point being is that the reason the US could afford to have such big debts is that there was no other player in town when it came to currency. You might as well be trading in gold because the US dollar pretty much was the life blood of Marshall Plan postwar Germany and Japan.

Secondly, the US produced more oil than it consumed and exported more products than any other nation (actually back then the US was a major exporter in oil) so it could deal with such large debts.

The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market.

I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but unless we actually do something about our foreign energy addiction, debt, and weakened dollar we will have problems economically. Big energy exporters like Russia and cheap goods manufacturers like China will be the winners of the 21st century.

I'm sure some of you are saying "But with a weakened dollar, it will make US goods more desirable on the foreign market!". Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper. Secondly, America has burned a lot of its goodwill overseas and most foreigners are currently frowning on US good due to political reasons.

Again this of course leads to the issue with energy imports. If Chinese goods were more expensive and it pushed for more manufacturing in the US it would still be at weakened pace due to the fact that energy costs of production, transportation, and wage inflation due to the fact it now costs more to ship and have people drive to get to the stores will mean the economy will be up the creek with a paddle of a while.

Again, we'll live and it won't be a place of anarchy but until we do something about the strength of the dollar and energy costs then things will be rather troublesome for a while.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

[icebrain]

"so why not build new F15's, which are STILL better than anyone else's shit"

Not really. The Russian Su-27 and family are very close in capability to the F-15. Electronics-wise, they're a bit behind, but the airframes are about on par with current US aircraft. In exercises held recently, Indian Su-30s beat US F-15s pretty soundly.

The Typhoon, while a little smaller than the F-15, is just as (if not more) maneuverable, and has newer avionics and systems. It will eventually carry the Meteor, which outranges any current US missile.

The French Rafale is similar.

There's only so much an airframe can do for you. And even if everyone is still not caught up, what's to say that they won't in the next five or ten years? Do you wait till everyone's caught up with you before you start working on new technology? No, because everyone else will pass you in the time it takes to get everything rolling. You have to stay ahead of the game.

Re:And that is the problem

[HuguesT]

It's not that bad, really. The ol' USA is still the #1 economy, everyone wants to do business with US-based companies. No one in their right mind wants China to be the next superpower.

A slightly less gung-ho attitude towards world matters would probably be enough to restore confidence, love and trust with the US. In other words, don't start a war with Iran and North Korea right now. Try to fix Iraq by actually rebuilding infrastructure there instead of sending more soldiers. Even support *some *UN decisions perhaps?