2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The rest of the story about Washington Post poll. [View all]PatrickforO
(14,574 posts)Allow me to explain. Most thoughtful people in the military, and their are quite a few, believe that a substantial part of this money is wasted. For instance, private companies continued to build Abrams tanks for a whole year after the Army said it did not need them, and Congress kept appropriating the money. And look at the new F35 - it still can't fly in thunderstorms, I believe. And how many billions have we poured down that rat hole so far? As Ross Perot quipped so long ago, "We can hear that giant sucking sound," as our tax money is sucked up by unnecessary military spending.
Let's be honest about what the real problem is: the military industrial complex Ike warned us about so long ago makes a profit on defense contracting. Big profits. Also, these defense contracts support a lot of jobs. If suddenly we say, 'we ain't gonna study war no more,' millions of Americans would lose their jobs and this nation would enter a very, very deep recession.
Our foreign policy is part of this MIC, as well. War does pay. Here's a quote from an article in The Nation: "This year, US Special Operations forces have already deployed to 135 nations, according to Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Thats roughly 70 percent of the countries on the planet. Every day, in fact, Americas most elite troops are carrying out missions in 80 to 90 nations, practicing night raids or sometimes conducting them for real, engaging in sniper training or sometimes actually gunning down enemies from afar."
Thus, George, it seems to me that by making your 'correction' of my term 'war spending' to 'defense' some pretty fine hairs are being split. We spend more than any other advanced nation on 'defense.' You can easily look this up. The bar graph is especially telling. My point stands: I would like to use a much greater portion of our tax money that we pay in to our government which is supposedly of, by and for us, the people, on things that actually benefit us, the people.
Now the MIC 'jobs program' is a seemingly intractable problem and I do recognize that we can't just do a cold turkey thing, but we could wean our system of military spending gradually over, say, a decade, and try to get it down to 2005 levels, then 2000 levels. Sure, conservatives will scream. But look at the fact that our defense spending has actually increased under Obama and our military is stronger than it has ever been. Ever. But STILL the Republicans are screaming about how he's 'gutted' the military. So they are gonna scream anyway.
I repeat. I want our tax dollars used for single payer. I would cheerfully bear a substantial tax increase for that because I already pay out the nose for it - called 'premiums' and 'copays.' I'd rather just pay a higher tax and not have to be wheeled on the stretcher through the accounting department first before I can get treatment.
I also want our tax money to subsidize college education for our children and grandchildren MUCH more heavily than is currently happening. Success in this endeavor can be measured by the rapid reduction in the average debt load on graduation.
And, I've paid into Social Security and Medicare full boat for over 40 years. Don't cut them. Don't reduce them. Don't raise the retirement age. Quit spending money out of the Social Security trust fund for other things. And get rid of the payroll tax cap.
So we gonna see these changes? Probably not in my lifetime, but if we elect Clinton we could have a 7-2 liberal majority on the SCOTUS for the next 30 years, which gives us a good chance to get rid of the corporate corruption that is the root cause of our government no longer being responsive to OUR needs.
Or am I wrong here?