Oh herro

[Regulus]

If you'd much rather have a man set foot on a useless piece of space rock rather than helping thousands of people, you might want to question your own morals.

Someone has to build those rockets, you know. And guess what happens then? People get jobs. Problem solved.

No matter where money is spent it circles around through the economy anyway.

[Regulus]

It doesn't take much education to know how to screw one panel of metal to another. The thing is, robots are far more efficient nowadays. Without an education, you're screwed.

This is kinda what I meant earlier. Give a man a fish, and he'll be fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll be fed for a lifetime.

[Regulus]

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

[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.

[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.

[Azdgari]

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

[Azdgari]

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