Oh herro

[DGFone]

If half our defense budget went directly to public schools, we'd be a totally different country, that's for sure.

Now that I agree with.

[Tabby]

^ Not even that. It will raise taxes to raise cancer research. Where will the money actually go to: First, the government will send it to a few people who will be tasked in deciding which research group that money will go to. Those people need to be paid, so you lose a lot of money there. Then, the government will watch over the money to make sure that it is used right... Except that it will involve even more government clerks getting paid, so you lose a lot of money there as well. To put it simply, if you give government money and a task to use it for, expect at most to see only half of it to be put into actual good use.

If you want to get something done, do it yourself.

There's a thing... a tax is compulsory, everybody's got to pay that certain ammount of money which, supposing it is being well-managed, would help more that a voluntary certain ammount of money people would give, cause that's also the problem, not everybody will give away their money to charity, in a tax, if there's a real democracy, the taxpayers should choose what to expend that money in, in this case, food and water, there won't be always a person giving you water and food, instead, if everybody works for it and the product of that work goes to an administrator that should distribute it in equally parts to everyone, it would work better then and everybody would be happy.

And for serious, space BS is the first thing that should be cut off by taxes. These things are by far not as important as the own population of a country. The moonlanding is nothing more than a prestige object. I wonder how many people could have gotten an decent home and food to eat for that money.

OH GOD I'VE AGREED WITH THAT LIKE FOREVER
-----

Just another thing, I think we're working over a random escenario, not over an actual country, what is all this discussion about US?, lol

[TheLionPrince]

You are talking in general over the years. We are in an economical recession. You can't just dismiss the current situation. People don't have jobs, people become poor and homeless. Don't you think if a poor person who wanted to work had the opportunity to do so, he would take that? Simple fact is that there are no opportunities when you have no money. The government without this tax is falling apart, the poverty, homeless and jobless people are at ridiculous amounts.

Yeah, I was pretty ignorant to ignore the economic recession.

And of course you tax the rich more, seriously in what kind of ''f*** the world'' state are we?

These are the yearly spendings of the US
Defense - $851 billion.
Education - $69.8 billion.
Health and Human Services - $71.7 billion.
Housing and Urban Development - $35.3 billion.
Agriculture - $21.4 billion.

Defense is more than 10 times bigger than health care. That is and will always be ridiculous!

No, you do not heavily tax the wealthy, you know the ones that supply the poor the jobs they need. Unfortunately, they can't during this Great Recession due to the economy's uncertainity.

Okay, you believe what you want about the budget, but according to usgovernmentspending.com, health care composes of 17% of the federal budget compared to defense spending equaling 14% in 2012.

And from what I'm gathering, Obamacare will not control the cost of health care for the majority, and add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget deficit. So, expect health care spending too increase even more. You happy, Woeler!

Lionking, would you change your argument at all in response to several studies which indicate that social mobility in the US is actually lower than in other parts of the world? It's actually very difficult for those born into disadvantaged situations to climb out them. I also disagree with free handouts--how about programs that create opportunities for the impoverished? That's what the war on poverty is actually about, creation of programs to give opportunities to underprivelidged Americans. Welfare gets bastardized very often as "just giving free handouts and not solving the problem" while in fact (other than unemployment benefits which I think are quite important in a time like this when, it's been said, there aren't enough jobs to go around) most of the money goes to just that, trying to create opportunities.

...the poor need to learn to help themselves.

Yikes.

Lion Prince, by the way!

I may change my opinion for now because this economy is making job opportunities scare, and with no education, zip! However, when the economy improves, and the free market can grow again, I do expect the poor to better their lot by at least applying for a job that requires their skills.

Not that you get me wrong, I'm all for the government to help those in poverty, but the poor need to learn to help themselves.

Forgive me, but is that not a little contradictory? And how are people with no homes, no water etc supposed to help themselves exactly anyway?
Wait, by "poor" do we mean like, Third World or just generally people less wealthy than us and can barely afford to pay gas bills etc?

We are clearly talking about the poor in America. Now, the poor in Africa and other Third World can't help themselves due to their governments being so corrupt. But, they're free to come to the U.S. if they want to get somewhere in life, at least do it legally.

Now, I don't expect any replies because we are going way off topic. If you want to reply, send me a private message, and I'll reply back as soon as I can. Please and thank you!

[DGFone]

And for serious, space BS is the first thing that should be cut off by taxes. These things are by far not as important as the own population of a country. The moonlanding is nothing more than a prestige object. I wonder how many people could have gotten an decent home and food to eat for that money.

OH GOD I'VE AGREED WITH THAT LIKE FOREVER

Unfortunately, one thing that really ticks me off is when people think that what the Moon landings did was only land some twelve people on a rock out in space. Yes, that is no small achievement, and I am ashamed to know that people insist that it's wrongful spending, but if you want to really analyze it, the landings were at the end only a side effect to what the moon landings really accomplished:

Computer technology. The Apollo missions greatly accelerated development of the integrated circuit. Now take a look at today's world. Look today at how much computers have increased the economy. Now take all those computers away (or replace them with something from 20 years ago). That multi-billion dollar industry of video games? Not here if it wasn't for Apollo. And if it wasn't for Apollo, no MLK either, just saying...

Day-to-Day space tech. Your GPS navigation system is the easiest to point at. Again, not here without Apollo. GPS is a very large and profitable industry. No Apollo? Take out that map and stop when you have no idea where you are. And you don't know what's traffic will be like... (again, computers...)

Environmentalism: "We left looking for Space. But we discovered the Earth." I don't even want to begin to imagine how much worse our ecological situation would be like if people didn't see The Blue Marble, courtesy Apollo 8. By going to the moon, we saw the Earth as it really is: a small, vulnerable spec in space. We now know that we need to take care of it, because there is no other Earth for us to go to. And guess where a lot of new 'green' tech comes from? You can't carry gallons of petrol out to space... That's right. A lot of solutions we are looking forward to stop climate change are discovered by seeing what we need to survive in space.

So don't you see, people? The moon landing are much, much more than just what happened in the 60s and 70s. They effect our very lives right now, and I will say that all of them positively. So we need more such investment - where by doing one thing, it really changes just about everything else.

[Woeler]

Apollo 11
I know that the moonlanding was a great piece of technology. All you are saying about modern computers, gps, games blahblah. Uhm hello? Apollo wasnt the first spacecraft. Spacetravel already existed and so did computers. I wonder what you have to actually back that up. Prove to me, that the fact that I am now writing this message on an ipad is due to Apollo 11. Besides, that is not even the point of this discussion, the point is that a government should care for their population FIRST, above all.

There is not even one way space travel helps solve the crisis or cares for the poor. Space is NOT more important than the people on this planet" it just isnt, there ïs no arguing needed for that.

The moonlanding is and will always be a prestige object, a 25 billion dollars spent to beat Russia in a time trail.

With all that money we could have built homes, supply food, create jobs, defeat poverty. But nope we gotta gather rocks for research that can wait. In the world and situation we live in, yes, it is indeed wrongful spending

And if I say "but without adolf hitler our infrastructure wouldnt exist"
This is true, hitler was the man to introduce us to highways that make our transport and communication as successful as it is today.

So now that I have said that, does that cancell out the bad things he did? No. Just like that even IF the moonlanding was somehow the only way to develop computer technology, it still does not cancell out the amount of people you could have given a decent life with that money.

I am not comparing Adolf to the moonlanding, I am comparing two situations.

Nasa
NASA’s $17 billion annual budget is a taxpayer black hole of astronomical proportions, providing scientists with the resulting bounty of legalized theft.

Is there really anything incredible about giving billions of dollars to a bunch of rocket scientists and telling them to have fun? It doesn’t take the aforementioned rocket scientist to know that people behave differently when they aren’t spending their own money. They will take unnecessary risks, pay themselves greater salaries, and have no way of verifying whether what they are doing is cost-effective. Private entrepreneurs who actually have to work for their money and convince others of the worthiness of their endeavors are much more honorable. They do not rely on the the coercive arm of government and do not force others to subsidize their mistakes.

And it is this system of private enterprise that the government discourages most. When the government taxes income, it taxes success. When the government prevents competition, it prevents progress. When the government regulates, it discourages innovation.

The billions of dollars that get funneled into the black hole that is NASA are siphoned off from the productive private sector. However interesting one finds space travel, one must recognize that forcing other people to pay for one’s interests and hobbies is wrong.

So let me see. You are against raising taxes to help out the people who really need it, but you support wasting taxes on things like this. That contradiction is as big as it gets.

Certainly there are positive effects Nasa has brought to us, we now have a lot of photo's about celestial bodies, and new information about the planets close by. But it is impossible to ignore the heavy burden imposed upon the citizens of the United States. I can think of plenty of better ways to spend $17 billion a year.

Please don't come with the ''learning about god's creations, learning about ourselves and the history of our solar system, propelling humanity in to the future''. Any defense of a government-run space agency holds no water unless authority for such an initiative can be demonstrated. Look at history and you will see that Private enterprises will always do better than government created enterprises. Also, a private enterprise is not at the expense of the people.

So, is the knowledge we have gained about pluto and mars, the neighboring galaxies and the moon worth $17 billion a year? Perhaps. Is it worth taking $17 billion in taxes from U.S. citizens each year by force? Absolutely not.

The rest

Wake up, an realise in what horrible situation we are in, not only you, also we in Europe. Only diffence being that we actually spend the money on helping our people. Also, these space and defense thingies cause you a state debt of a massive 15.8 trillion dollars.

I'm pretty sure this whole space-travel joke is off the table, so now we can focus on the things that we really need.

You happy, Woeler!

in general, yes.

[Azdgari]

Nope, you're promoted, Lionking.

You can't argue the effects of Obamacare on the budget. You can check ten economists and get ten different numbers. I've heard cut the debt by 400 billion, I've heard increase by a trillion. Clearly, nobody knows, so there's not much point trying to argue numbers on that front.

No, you do not heavily tax the wealthy, you know the ones that supply the poor the jobs they need. Unfortunately, they can't during this Great Recession due to the economy's uncertainity.

The cornerstone of conservatism, based around the belief that billionaires are more interested in creating stable jobs for people rather than building mansions and Lambourghinis. Especially in todays world of trust fund babies, do you really think those economics work? Even if they did (which I don't think they do), with taxes on the rich already -historically- low, how can you justify not raising their taxes a bit when our country is in need?

I do expect the poor to better their lot by at least applying for a job that requires their skills.

Since we have poor people even in booming economies, clearly it's not that easy to get a job, especially if, like most poor people, you have no skills.

Now, the poor in Africa and other Third World can't help themselves due to their governments being so corrupt. But, they're free to come to the U.S. if they want to get somewhere in life, at least do it legally.

Yikes.

[Woeler]

However, when the economy improves, and the free market can grow again, I do expect the poor to better their lot by at least applying for a job that requires their skills.

I would like to add that the economy won't improve as long as the US is at war. Millions in the US without health care, jobs or access to education must watch as this government squanders over 450 million dollars a day on war. The billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior.

This ridiculous war is a factor that kills the economy dramatically. If only all that money would have been used to help the economy, care for the people, provide everyone with jobs, education and healthcare. And that is not the only thing we lose, We lose limbs, endure trauma and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag-draped coffins lowered into the earth.

We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land and not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify.

We are clearly talking about the poor in America. Now, the poor in Africa and other Third World can't help themselves due to their governments being so corrupt. But, they're free to come to the U.S. if they want to get somewhere in life, at least do it legally.

The ignorance..... It burns!

[Azdgari]

And the world calls upon the US to intervene in Syria...

[Woeler]

And the world calls upon the US to intervene in Syria...

And the US won't, which proves my point again because there is nothing useful in Syria. The ruling class is not interested.

They know that if they do, it will be an economic suicide mission

[Azdgari]

Indeed, but it certainly doesn't seem like anybody else in the world is going to step up, does it?