EPTNavy "ghost ships" cost 300 million dollars - Page 3
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madstarcraft
United States103 Posts
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Lucidx
United States122 Posts
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Zdrastochye
Ivory Coast6262 Posts
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Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
On July 22 2011 10:49 Blisse wrote: 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 more developed nations around 0.5 to 1%" would imply that America, as a developed nation, spends 5-10 time the average, with its 5% spending bordering on being a "army nation" 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. Why does the nation have so much army presence around the world, while RGDP hasn't changed in the last 10 years, military and defense spending has doubled 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. When two small conflicts are costing several times the price of WWII, with Billions of dollars going completely missing and unaccounted for, when anybody even getting close to defense spending is deemed "unpatriotic" while cutting healthcare is perfectly fine. Its extremely difficult to make an argument for anything besides "a government that just loves the military and doesn't care about public healthcare or even doesn't care about its people" As for the ships, they aren't up to modern specs. Is that so difficult to realize? Part of the problem is that somehow, defense contracts are working out in such a way that having built a pair of ships, the nation is PAYING MONEY to get them scrapped. That is an extremely difficult concept to realize when even half finished ships during the collapse of the soviet unit were able to be sold for millions of dollars 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. Today's wars are almost completely fought by ship and plane, the very fact that much of America's international military presence is based upon its aircraft carrier battlegroups. Any war fought with ICBMs is the very last wars humanity will ever see 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. He did neither and alienated most of the world 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. Its somewhat difficult to fight a war when a single trip of a plane (around the world), amounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel, and even then unable to be flown in sufficient numbers to inflict serious damage or to deal with even a rudimentary air force 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. CERN is a civilian and scientific research product that has nothing to do with the military, In fact, the united states scraped a similar project due to its cost and lack of practical applications Please stop accusing the government of thoughtless action before giving it some thought yourself. Thanks. please inform of yourself of some facts before ridiculing others, thanks | ||
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red4ce
United States7313 Posts
//sarcasm | ||
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Atasu
Canada98 Posts
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LilClinkin
Australia667 Posts
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Dakk
Sweden572 Posts
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Shiragaku
Hong Kong4308 Posts
It is probably a bad idea in the end in my opinion, but it would be interesting to see what possible causes it has. We need more information on this. | ||
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Casta
Denmark234 Posts
Also new equipment and discoveries cost money, you "bet" on what looks most promising, but there can never be 100% success rate. This is actually true for most funding to science and development. | ||
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KimJongChill
United States6429 Posts
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waxypants
United States479 Posts
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dogabutila
United States1437 Posts
And the stupid liberals won't let anybody touch the programs to restructure them..... | ||
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Deja Thoris
South Africa646 Posts
On July 22 2011 10:17 GigaFlop wrote: lol government. I guess as it doesn't mess with me, then it doesn't affect me. But even so, $300 million? I could live an extremely lavish life off of the bank interest from that. If you pay taxes, which you should do, or will do one day. Then it should affect you. This kind of waste is natural in big budgets but in a big place like the US military I'm willing to bet that the % is higher than that of private corporations. Also, to the OP, although this highlights an issue, it is pretty sensationalist. If the constructor of a multi-year project goes bankrupt, what exactly are you meant to do? This will inevitably cause delays and monetary loss to the military. Could the military have handled it better? No doubt. Would the "losses" have added up to many millions anyway? Yup. | ||
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primarch359
United States119 Posts
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. See that red part of the bar graph that is all the cost of Iraq and afghanistan(and libya). No where NEAR 60% and It will would cost a LOT to pull out fast becasue we would have to leave behind equipment that we would have to replace. Addtionally basing troops in oversea bases that we built 50 years ago is not at all signicantly more expensive then them sitting in domestic bases. On to the OPs content this 300 million is completly due the the fact that the Tankers mentione were built as SINGLE HULL TANKERS. ie the type of ships that cause massive ecological damage if they hit something. Once this was demonstrated by exxon valdez near the end of their contruction. All worked was stoped and then they were mothballed mostly complete with the naval reserve. To guard against the possiblity that we got into a major war and suffered major losses to our underway replenishment fleet and then the fact we are at war would override the ecological considerations of having a single hull tanker. If you want DoD spending to go down we need to kill off programs upgrading the equipment of our forces which is allready way ahead of most of the world. Stoping congresses stupidity with the second source engine for the F 35 or ending the orders of c 17s (which is allready greater than what he Airforce says we need) slowing down the rate at which we build carriers and other ships etc. simply saying end the wars and retreating our foward deployed troops is simple to say but would not have the effect you think it would. | ||
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eNbee
Belgium487 Posts
On July 22 2011 16:47 dogabutila wrote: Oh noes, 12M / year. Guess what? In each DAY medicare is defrauded 17 times more then was 'omg' wasted on this project in a year. And the stupid liberals won't let anybody touch the programs to restructure them..... Source? You're talking about 74 BILLION dollars annually here, I have a REALLY hard time believing that... And wasn't it the liberal idea to completely restructure medicare/healthcare in the US? That seems like a very silly, partisan, unfounded comment to me all together. | ||
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dogabutila
United States1437 Posts
On July 22 2011 17:00 eNbee wrote: Source? You're talking about 74 BILLION dollars annually here, I have a REALLY hard time believing that... And wasn't it the liberal idea to completely restructure medicare/healthcare in the US? That seems like a very silly, partisan, unfounded comment to me all together. http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/medicare-fraud-costs-taxpayers-60-billion-year/story?id=10126555 The government says 60B. Some experts say it could be double that. No. They passed a healthcare bill requiring everybody to be on health insurance (among other things) it doesn't restructure medicare or medicaid at all. If you pay attention to the debt-ceiling negotiations this is one of the sticking points. Libs say they are open to restructuring medicare / medicaid but won't let any fixes go through. FYI, I'm a libertarian, and I'm not even registered to vote. Partisan? Yea right. Silly? Not when it's true. Unfounded? Just because you don't believe allegations to be true doesn't make them false. | ||
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eNbee
Belgium487 Posts
On July 23 2011 04:20 dogabutila wrote: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/medicare-fraud-costs-taxpayers-60-billion-year/story?id=10126555 The government says 60B. Some experts say it could be double that. No. They passed a healthcare bill requiring everybody to be on health insurance (among other things) it doesn't restructure medicare or medicaid at all. If you pay attention to the debt-ceiling negotiations this is one of the sticking points. Libs say they are open to restructuring medicare / medicaid but won't let any fixes go through. FYI, I'm a libertarian, and I'm not even registered to vote. Partisan? Yea right. Silly? Not when it's true. Unfounded? Just because you don't believe allegations to be true doesn't make them false. Those numbers are still staggering, I'm appalled... Thanks for providing a source! On topic of healthcare though+ Show Spoiler + (which has little to do with the OP, I know) It however still makes me a bit averse towards proposed trimming/changes to the US healthcare system by the Republican party, considering they originally opposed universal healthcare(and still do, as it's a form of the evil known as socialism?), which is/was ludicrous. All western European countries have a universal healthcare system, that is per capita, cheaper than the old/current US system, obviously that needs to be addressed, the thought that a genuine attempt to remedy that would be blocked makes me sad... Also when I say unfounded I don't mean to say what you say is false, I'm just saying I have no way of knowing whether it IS true or false, I'm just being skeptical! Sorry if I misunderstood your intentions anyhow, the internet is just filled with people sitting on bandwagons, be it left -or right-leaning, repeating what they hear, not thinking for themselves+ Show Spoiler + I'm somewhat guilty of that myself actually | ||
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dogabutila
United States1437 Posts
For example, medicaid was originally designed such that very few people could get on it. Really, back when it was first designed, the age limit to get in was small. Now, people regularly live to ages that make them eligible for it. For the budget in general, social security wasnt meant for people to live off of as people seem to think now. It was more like an additional stipend, not meant to replace private planning but to help it. The bill as far as I know didn't touch current medicare or medicaid but changed a bunch of stuff in regards to how insurance works and how things can be charged, what can be charged... a lot of regulatory stuff. Then there is a lot of stuff that is still being discovered. It was so long that people couldn't read what the bill actually really did before passing it. Government at its best huh? I think, the difference between america and europe is that in america we tend to place a lot more value on individual liberty and people resent being told what to do by the government. Atleast, I am / do. Something just strikes me as wrong when people are being forced to buy into something simply because they merely exist as people. | ||
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OsoVega
926 Posts
On July 22 2011 10:15 Crisium wrote: Ron Paul would never allow this. I disagree. The military, police, legislative branch and judicial branch have to be public and Ron Paul believes this as well. Waste and inefficiency is the nature of any public organization and while everyone wants to reduce waste and inefficiency it's just not possible to completely abolish it and things like this are bound to happen. However, what Ron Paul, if given the power, would not allow is the trillions in bailouts, the theft for social programs and socialization of things that should not be handled by the private sector. | ||
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