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President Obama Calls For New 'Space Race' Funding
New submitter dmfinn writes "While his union address covered a wide range of topics, President Obama made sure not to skip over the U.S.'s space program. The talking point was nearly identical to the one he gave in 2009, in which he called for space R&D spending to be increased past the levels seen during the the original cold war space race. Now, 4 years after that speech, it appears things have gone the opposite way. Since 2009 NASA has seen some serious cuts. Not only has the space-shuttle program been deactivated, but the agency was forced to endure harsh funding cuts during the presidents latter term. Despite an ominous history, it now seems that Obama is back on the space objective, pushing congress to increase non-defensive R&D spending to 3% of the U.S. GDP. It's important to keep in mind that not all of this money goes directly to space related programs, though under the proposed budget the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology Laboratories will have their budgets doubled. There will also be an increase in tax credits towards companies and organizations working on these R&D projects. Should the U.S. go back to its 'Let's put a man on the moon' ideology, or is the federal government fighting an uphill battle against newly emerging private space expeditions? Either way, the question remains whether or not Obama will act on any of the propositions."
You think that's bad? Try adjusting those numbers to account for the actual percentage of people who actually pay taxes (and how much). If you make an IT-ish salary, my guess is you owe more like $400k-$600k. Averaging it out equally across every person makes it sound almost downright reasonable.
Also, it's all kind of meaningless. Most of our debt is owed to OURSELVES.
We spend more money on the military than every other country on earth combined. This with an existing nuclear arsenal that could destroy any country 10 times over. We should be slashing military spending to the bone- its just not needed. How about reducing military spending to even just say triple what China (the number 2 country) spends? We're fucking ridiculous.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Social security is not discretionary spending, and it is not part of the federal budget. It is a separate trust fund funded by separate taxes. Even if you got rid of social security completely, unless you raise income tax, the federal budget won't be affected.
There is no reason you have to eliminate social security in order to raise the income tax rate, so the federal budget and social security are orthogonal.
Okay, so pedantically there would be a very small increase from the income tax that you would otherwise have paid on the money you paid in social security taxes, but that's such a small amount of money that it basically qualifies as noise.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That's because the President keeps spending money.
That's wrong on a lot of levels:
1. The President can't carry out any of the laws of the US without spending money, unless you somehow think that all the civil servants and soldiers and contractors are suddenly going to do things on a volunteer basis. No money for government = no government.
2. The President can't (legally) spend a dime without authorization from Congress. Congress has passed laws either allowing him or demanding him to spend exactly what he's spending.
3. Total federal spending as a percentage of GDP wase the same in 2012 as 1983 under that notorious liberal Ronald Reagan. There was a spike between 2008 and 2009 because the country's economy crashed, but it's gone down ever since.
4. Federal tax receipts are the lowest since 1945. It's not a stretch to suggest that this might have some sort of effect on budget deficits.
5. The Republicans in the House have opposed proposals by the president that involve combinations of tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the deficit. That means they're making decisions based on principles that have nothing to do with the deficit.
6. To get a balanced budget, you have to cut approximately 1/3 of the federal budget, immediately. Some math: If we completely eliminated the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Interior, Health and Human Services, Labor, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and stopped paying anyone who works at the White House, we'd still not have a balanced budget. So what would you suggest that Obama stop spending money on?
I am officially gone from
For the record, nowhere in my comment did I advocate taxing the wealthy at 100% of their income. That would be incredibly stupid, for exactly the reasons you stated. No one in their right mind would advocate a 100% income tax -- it's just that people tend to oversimplify their reasoning, like this:
"A 100% income tax is clearly worse than a 0% income tax, therefore a 0% income tax is optimal in all cases."
Just because no tax may be better than a 100% tax, it doesn't follow that the benefit of income tax decreases linearly as the income tax goes from 0 to 100 percent. There's a point somewhere between 0 and 100 percent that's optimal for the economy, and economic performance data over the last half century or so would seem to indicate that we're below that point at the moment.
Here:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/does-28-top-marginal-tax-rate-mean-175706337.html#3INcoOV
The article claims that there's absolutely no connection between a higher marginal tax rate and GDP growth. A closer look at that graph reveals that the article in question doesn't even go far enough -- If you draw a regression line in the GDP growth data (so as to smooth out the bumps of a typical economic cycle) you'll notice that overall GDP growth has actually *decreased* slightly as marginal tax rates have decreased.
If the data is any indication (and it probably is), raising taxes on the wealthy would have little or no effect on our economic growth, *and* it would be a big step toward eliminating the deficit.