Things like this are why it amuses me when people complain about welfare programs, social security, and medicare/medicaid as if getting rid of them would "fix" America's disgustingly huge debt.
Drop in the bucket, gentlemen. Drop in the bucket.
what are your thoughts of 300 million dollars in department of defense waste?
I am FOR government waste!
What the fuck are we supposed to say?
We're supposed to act outraged, I think. But seriously, this sounds like an unfortunate series of failures, mostly unpredictable. Two different contractors failed to build these ships.
Besides that, $300 million is essentially nothing in the federal budget. In this case, it was spent over 26 years. It's a rounding error.
Don't get me wrong. The budget, and especially the defense budget, is entirely too large. But the real issues have nothing to do with these ships. There is widespread fraud, multiple wars, expensive defense contractors doing the work regular soldiers should be doing, and brand new unnecessary contracts that cost billions.
That's not to mention other wasteful spending, rampant unemployment, and ridiculously low tax revenue.
Lets focus on real problems in the budget, not a failed Cold-War-era project.
On July 22 2011 10:08 Voltaire wrote: In my opinion the US could easily cut its defense budget by 60% by pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and vastly reducing the huge amount of unnecessary troops we have in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, among other places. This would cause no increase in threat whatsoever to the American people.
Thanks for that analysis Einstein you can hand it off to the US SecDef in the morning. Oh wait.
And what Rooster said.
Implying that this isn't a commonly held opinion in academic literature surrounding troop deployments, and that just because hawkish military planners think something is beneficial to U.S. security that it actually is.
what are your thoughts of 300 million dollars in department of defense waste?
I am FOR government waste!
What the fuck are we supposed to say?
We're supposed to act outraged, I think. But seriously, this sounds like an unfortunate series of failures, mostly unpredictable. Two different contractors failed to build these ships.
Besides that, $300 million is essentially nothing in the federal budget. In this case, it was spent over 26 years. It's a rounding error.
Don't get me wrong. The budget, and especially the defense budget, is entirely too large. But the real issues have nothing to do with these ships. There is widespread fraud, multiple wars, expensive defense contractors doing the work regular soldiers should be doing, and brand new unnecessary contracts that cost billions.
That's not to mention other wasteful spending, rampant unemployment, and ridiculously low tax revenue.
Lets focus on real problems in the budget, not a failed Cold-War-era project.
Hey, guess what happens when you have 1000 different military projects that cost "just 300 million".
The US spends right around 40% of all the worlds military spending on worthless toys that are only useful in some kind of WWII-esque ground war that will never happen in a post-nuclear world.
The U.S. spends a perfectly fine amount of money on their defense. It came out to about 5% of their GDP, which is huge value only because the U.S. has a ridiculously high GDP. Most nations have maybe 2%, the more developed nations around 0.5% to 1%, and army nations at 6% at least, up to 20%.
The U.S. has a GDP twice that of China, the next leading nation. It is almost on par in GDP with the entire European Union. Any percentage of that large GDP is going to look ridiculous.
Given the amount of presence the U.S. army has around the world, 5% is perfectly fine. The spending is increasing? Well, the GDP is also increasing. Everything is increasing.
Stop this mindless bleating that the government just loves the military, and doesn't care about public healthcare or even doesn't care about its people. These sensationalist articles try only to burn images of government corruption in your mind. Life isn't a movie.
As for the ships, they aren't up to modern specs. Is that so difficult to realize?
Today's wars are not fought by ship or plane. All I have to do is press a button and send fifty Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles at you. A ship, any ship, is much too slow to avoid any attack. The Chinese government did the same thing a while back, making a cruiser for testing purposes only, because they know ships are outdated.
Why didn't Bush just blow up Afghanistan then? Civilians. And he had to prove the WMDs or bin Laden's death. Hard to prove if you've buried everything under ten feet of rubble and dirt.
Cruisers exist for deployment only, but in a world where some planes can make intercontinental trips without refuelling, they're becoming obsolete. Do you suggest we continue a commitment for a product that's no longer of any use? You say we're wasting money not using them, well, refurnishing them would waste even more.
And continuing this long post, military R&D is a huge part of society. I did my research a while ago, and my memory is hazy, but military R&D goes into almost every facet of society. I had a professor once say he built a device intended for use at CERN, but it ended up being used in hospitals. Or something like that.
Please stop accusing the government of thoughtless action before giving it some thought yourself. Thanks.
On July 22 2011 10:37 .Aar wrote: Things like this are why it amuses me when people complain about welfare programs, social security, and medicare/medicaid as if getting rid of them would "fix" America's disgustingly huge debt.
Drop in the bucket, gentlemen. Drop in the bucket.
What? The $300 million this thread is about is the amount that is spent every hour of every day on social secutiy/medicare/medicaid. Getting rid of them would obviously fix America's debt but that's simply not practical.
fun fact: 16 trillion is more than the total GDP of the United States.
There is always more debt than there is the principle amount ( as there is always usury tacked on ), so there's more debt than there will ever be real money.
what are your thoughts of 300 million dollars in department of defense waste?
I am FOR government waste!
What the fuck are we supposed to say?
We're supposed to act outraged, I think. But seriously, this sounds like an unfortunate series of failures, mostly unpredictable. Two different contractors failed to build these ships.
Besides that, $300 million is essentially nothing in the federal budget. In this case, it was spent over 26 years. It's a rounding error.
Don't get me wrong. The budget, and especially the defense budget, is entirely too large. But the real issues have nothing to do with these ships. There is widespread fraud, multiple wars, expensive defense contractors doing the work regular soldiers should be doing, and brand new unnecessary contracts that cost billions.
That's not to mention other wasteful spending, rampant unemployment, and ridiculously low tax revenue.
Lets focus on real problems in the budget, not a failed Cold-War-era project.
Hey, guess what happens when you have 1000 different military projects that cost "just 300 million".
The US spends right around 40% of all the worlds military spending on worthless toys that are only useful in some kind of WWII-esque ground war that will never happen in a post-nuclear world.
It's been way over 40% at least a couple years this past decade, but most of it goes to other things than projects like this. Every time there's a major waste like this, it makes news (like the second engine for the F-35). Obviously waste should be eliminated, but it wont fix the defense budget.
This project is a particularly bad example of a way to trim the defense budget, since it's 26 years old. It's older than most people posting here. That's right. It was ordered with the Cold War in mind. It says almost nothing about the current defense budget, and even less about the overall federal budget.
On July 22 2011 10:49 Blisse wrote: Stop this mindless bleating that the government just loves the military, and doesn't care about public healthcare or even doesn't care about its people.
You should cross the border and check it out sometime. One of our two parties will be campaigning on repealing the only significant healthcare bill we've seen in generations. Do you know what they want to replace it with? Nothing. They've also voted to replace our healthcare system for seniors with a voucher program, leaving the elderly to pay for a significant portion of their healthcare costs on the open market.
Also, military spending as a portion of GDP isn't a particularly good measure. If the US spends twice it's nearest competitor, it's too much. There's no rational justification for spending that much.
I agree that this particular issue is being taken out of proportion, but your overall analysis is incorrect.
$300 million in military research that doesn't pan out concerns me far less than billions going to bail out companies and unions or trillions in entitlement programs run amok.
I'm not saying all defense spending is untouchable, but I would cut elsewhere first.
EPT
