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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
They went to the proper venue to challenge the previous standard that a physical location was required to collect state taxes. Congress isn't going to clear up this issue without the court. Even if they did, the law would be challenged and teh court would have to decide how far state tax collection can reach.
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On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare.
The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market.
The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are.
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On June 23 2018 02:17 travis wrote:
Regarding the talk about the spending of tax dollars, I don't think "what percent is spent where?" is the primary issue. Certainly it does come into play, but I think the real is waste. How efficiently is the money being used? Are the expenditures reasonable in cost? Are they in the best interest of the american people?
Remember that a huge amount of the money that is pumped into the military almost immediately goes back into the economy. It is a problem, however, when big chunks of that money end up in the coffers of the wealthy, never to be seen again by the american people.
All of this is, of course, not taking into account anyone's stance on the morality of the war machine.
just because money spend on the military goes back to the economy doesn't mean there weren't more productive uses of it.
even if some of the military money makes it back to the "american people" there's still a bunch of loss involved.
what % is spent where is simply used to note that some things are out of whack with actual needs; since societies in general tend to have certain average needs (which vary ofc by circumstance, which you can account for by looking for similar circumstances). I don't think anyone claimed it was the primary issue.
all those other questions you note have also been answered (not sure if you need those, since such issues have been discussed plenty both here and elsewhere over time).
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On June 23 2018 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare. The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market. The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are.
I agree the interchangeability with which I'm using them may be confusing you; but I'm not sure how to explain it better.
The other options to spend things on don't exist, because they're not considered acceptable (and indeed may not be legal) things for the government to spend money on.
or one may have higher obligations than the others; that's not a difference in priorities, it's a difference in what has to be covered.
you're just not getting it, and I really don't know how to explain it to you better.
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On June 23 2018 02:30 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare. The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market. The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are. I agree the interchangeability with which I'm using them may be confusing you; but I'm not sure how to explain it better. The other options to spend things on don't exist, because they're not considered acceptable (and indeed may not be legal) things for the government to spend money on. or one may have higher obligations than the others; that's not a difference in priorities, it's a difference in what has to be covered. you're just not getting it, and I really don't know how to explain it to you better.
They do totally exist. Medicare and Medicaid will run out of money in the next decade. We have underfunded and staffed government agencies like the IRS and EPA. There are endless ways within the existing government where that money could be redirected. Military spending is both through the roof and lacks oversight to assure the money is not being wasted. We bought a staggering number of useless camo pants that our troops will never use.
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On June 23 2018 02:14 farvacola wrote:
What's sketchy about the ruling?
I assume this is all about the issues relating to taxing out of state purchases and the constitutional prohibitions thereof. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the topic. it's hard to explain without knowing how much of the grounding you have. (and also I haven' delved deep into this particular ruling)
what should be done is amending the constitution to account for the changing nature of, and increasing ease of, interstate trade, to allow sales taxes to feasibly be collected by states for stuff bought by people in that state.
what seems sketchy to me is they're basically trying to stretch the constitution to cover cases it really doesn't, (but many people agree it should).
it's similar to the massive degree to which the commerce clause has been stretched to ocver things far beyond what the constitution, as written, and as originally intended, should really justify.
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On June 23 2018 02:33 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:30 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare. The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market. The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are. I agree the interchangeability with which I'm using them may be confusing you; but I'm not sure how to explain it better. The other options to spend things on don't exist, because they're not considered acceptable (and indeed may not be legal) things for the government to spend money on. or one may have higher obligations than the others; that's not a difference in priorities, it's a difference in what has to be covered. you're just not getting it, and I really don't know how to explain it to you better. They do totally exist. Medicare and Medicaid will run out of money in the next decade. We have underfunded and staffed government agencies like the IRS and EPA. There are endless ways within the existing government where that money could be redirected. Military spending is both through the roof and lacks oversight to assure the money is not being wasted. We bought a staggering number of useless camo pants that our troops will never use.
please be more careful interjecting, what you're talking about is not that pertinent to the actual argument I'm having with him, nor the actual point I made, and only serves to confuse the points I was making by conflating them with different (but related) topics.
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On June 23 2018 02:39 zlefin wrote:I assume this is all about the issues relating to taxing out of state purchases and the constitutional prohibitions thereof. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the topic. it's hard to explain without knowing how much of the grounding you have. (and also I haven' delved deep into this particular ruling) what should be done is amending the constitution to account for the changing nature of, and increasing ease of, interstate trade, to allow sales taxes to feasibly be collected by states for stuff bought by people in that state. what seems sketchy to me is they're basically trying to stretch the constitution to cover cases it really doesn't, (but many people agree it should). it's similar to the massive degree to which the commerce clause has been stretched to ocver things far beyond what the constitution, as written, and as originally intended, should really justify.
You do know that farvacola is a court clerk, right? I believe for the federal court. It is safe to assume that he is familiar with the facts of the case and likely is better informed that this entire thread.
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On June 23 2018 02:30 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare. The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market. The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are. I agree the interchangeability with which I'm using them may be confusing you; but I'm not sure how to explain it better. The other options to spend things on don't exist, because they're not considered acceptable (and indeed may not be legal) things for the government to spend money on. or one may have higher obligations than the others; that's not a difference in priorities, it's a difference in what has to be covered. you're just not getting it, and I really don't know how to explain it to you better.
If two kids have allowances, and one spends half of it on candy and half of it on video games, and one spends all of it on video games, one of the kids prioritizes candy more than the other, no matter how money their parents decide to give them. Period. It seems like you think some cosmic entity might have banned kid #2 from buying candy, but I don't think that makes any sense when it comes to governments.
Governments are agents with choice. They could just say "let's spend more money on candy next year." Maybe pass a law saying they're not banned from the candy store anymore. HUD spent $31,000 on office furniture for Ben Carson. That was a choice of how to allocate their liquid funds. It might be unacceptable to voters, but it's still an available action for the government actor.
On June 23 2018 02:17 travis wrote:
Regarding the talk about the spending of tax dollars, I don't think "what percent is spent where?" is the primary issue. Certainly it does come into play, but I think the real is waste. How efficiently is the money being used? Are the expenditures reasonable in cost? Are they in the best interest of the american people?
Remember that a huge amount of the money that is pumped into the military almost immediately goes back into the economy. It is a problem, however, when big chunks of that money end up in the coffers of the wealthy, never to be seen again by the american people.
All of this is, of course, not taking into account anyone's stance on the morality of the war machine.
I think it's difficult to categorize the wastefulness of military spending. In some ways it's kind of like insurance. If you don't ever need it, all military production is a waste; other government investments have substantially higher ROI from a societal perspective than another aircraft carrier or fighter jet...but what if you need it?
There's also a weird tension here and in many other sectors where the most efficient use of the public resources and the best interest of the american people may not align at all. At which point you require some financial calculus that would probably make our contract system even more busted.
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On June 23 2018 00:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 23:53 iamthedave wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. Or maybe not build a super ultra mega triple stacked cheese aircraft carrier. I am weirdly Ok with them building aircraft carriers because they only do it to replace existing aircraft carriers. We are a trading nation and basically need a blue water navy, so it’s the high powered fighter jet that we will never use that bother me more. And the massive administrative budget that blows all equipment costs out of the water.
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-a-super-aircraft-carrier-and-an-aircraft-carrier
I get what you're saying, but the US is currently so far ahead of it's next 5 rivals and the next 2 superpowers that if the US cut military spending to nothing but maintenance costs and salary and built nothing, it would still take years for anyone to come even close to catching up.
The only nation on planet earth that has seriously thought of starting a war with the US in recent years - and I'm not sure they were actually serious - was North Korea. Which is run by actual insane people, which may or may not include the supreme leader.
The US has so many issues with so many underfunded departments, programs and institutions (the police are pretty heavily underfunded in many parts of the US, regardless of your opinion on their effectiveness), that it seems just insane to me that in a period when the US is more inward-looking, politically, than it has been in decades, it's still throwing that much money at winning phantom wars against non-existent foes that can't even be projected to exist inside a decade.
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On June 23 2018 02:51 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:30 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 01:37 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 00:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 23 2018 00:13 zlefin wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. I disagree that % gdp is a silly metric; I think it's a quite useful metric, albeit imperfect as most metrics are. Because it's a measure of how much the society as a whole is spending on it (on something that is in general not productive, except insofar as it prevents loss due to hostile powers). %gov't revenue is heavily distorted by how involved the government is in the market/society; i.e. how large the government is. PS shockey, I don't think anyone was making up numbers; though maybe I missed someones. good to have more fact links though. Huh. I actually prefer %government spending for all the reasons you stated; the masking goes the other way. To me the proportion of spending the U.S. government allocates to the military is heavily masked with a GDP-based metric. Say two places have the same GDP and the same % GDP military spending, but one has federal revenue of 10% GDP and one has federal revenue 5% GDP. A GDP metric implies the two countries prioritize the military the same...but the governments clearly don't, and they're the sole source of military spending. Something like healthcare, where much of the spending is private, is another matter. The reasons I stated support my point though, and don't support yours. I'd say in that case you describe the two countries do prioritize military spending the same; because as countries, that's how they allocate their overall resources. It's not that the one with smaller revenue has a higher priority on its military; it's that the government simply has fewer things to spend it on because more of the economy is privatized. this heavily relates to stuff like healthcare: if healthcare is managed via nationalized medicine, then the % of federal revenue spent on military will be a lot lower than in a plcae where healthcare is managed via the private sector. that doesn't mean a place with private healthcare cares more about the military than healthcare; it simply means they have a different setup for how they implement their healthcare. The countries may, but the governments absolutely do not. You seem to use government, society, and country interchangeably here which is baffling to me. If two entities have liquid resources and one entity spends more of their liquid resource on item A than the second entity, they are prioritizing item A higher than the second. Even if there are other entities in the market. The other options to spend things on don't go away just because one government has less overall money to spend. The choice not to have nationalized medicine (or indeed not to have better nationalized medicine) is a choice about what the government's priorities are. I agree the interchangeability with which I'm using them may be confusing you; but I'm not sure how to explain it better. The other options to spend things on don't exist, because they're not considered acceptable (and indeed may not be legal) things for the government to spend money on. or one may have higher obligations than the others; that's not a difference in priorities, it's a difference in what has to be covered. you're just not getting it, and I really don't know how to explain it to you better. If two kids have allowances, and one spends half of it on candy and half of it on video games, and one spends all of it on video games, one of the kids prioritizes candy more than the other, no matter how money their parents decide to give them. Period. It seems like you think some cosmic entity might have banned kid #2 from buying candy, but I don't think that makes any sense when it comes to governments. Governments are agents with choice. They could just say "let's spend more money on candy next year." Maybe pass a law saying they're not banned from the candy store anymore. HUD spent $31,000 on office furniture for Ben Carson. That was a choice of how to allocate their liquid funds. It might be unacceptable to voters, but it's still an available action for the government actor. Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:17 travis wrote:
Regarding the talk about the spending of tax dollars, I don't think "what percent is spent where?" is the primary issue. Certainly it does come into play, but I think the real is waste. How efficiently is the money being used? Are the expenditures reasonable in cost? Are they in the best interest of the american people?
Remember that a huge amount of the money that is pumped into the military almost immediately goes back into the economy. It is a problem, however, when big chunks of that money end up in the coffers of the wealthy, never to be seen again by the american people.
All of this is, of course, not taking into account anyone's stance on the morality of the war machine. I think it's difficult to categorize the wastefulness of military spending. In some ways it's kind of like insurance. If you don't ever need it, all military production is a waste; other government investments have substantially higher ROI from a societal perspective than another aircraft carrier or fighter jet...but what if you need it? There's also a weird tension here and in many other sectors where the most efficient use of the public resources and the best interest of the american people may not align at all. At which point you require some financial calculus that would probably make our contract system even more busted.
do you want me to explain to you why you're wrong (imo ofc, on the underlying topic which this is about, and why % of gov't spending is a worse metric than %gdp for mil spending)?
cuz it's very hard to do, and if you're not interested in understanding, and/or don't want to accept being wrong, it's not worth the large effort of doing. and I can't account for whether lurkers who are only reading would benefit from such an explanation, because they may have already understood my point.
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On June 23 2018 02:55 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 00:00 Plansix wrote:On June 22 2018 23:53 iamthedave wrote:On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric. Or maybe not build a super ultra mega triple stacked cheese aircraft carrier. I am weirdly Ok with them building aircraft carriers because they only do it to replace existing aircraft carriers. We are a trading nation and basically need a blue water navy, so it’s the high powered fighter jet that we will never use that bother me more. And the massive administrative budget that blows all equipment costs out of the water. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-a-super-aircraft-carrier-and-an-aircraft-carrierI get what you're saying, but the US is currently so far ahead of it's next 5 rivals and the next 2 superpowers that if the US cut military spending to nothing but maintenance costs and salary and built nothing, it would still take years for anyone to come even close to catching up. The only nation on planet earth that has seriously thought of starting a war with the US in recent years - and I'm not sure they were actually serious - was North Korea. Which is run by actual insane people, which may or may not include the supreme leader. The US has so many issues with so many underfunded departments, programs and institutions (the police are pretty heavily underfunded in many parts of the US, regardless of your opinion on their effectiveness), that it seems just insane to me that in a period when the US is more inward-looking, politically, than it has been in decades, it's still throwing that much money at winning phantom wars against non-existent foes that can't even be projected to exist inside a decade.
I completely agree. I was very happen when defense spending was reigned in under Obama. I’m a big proponent of reduced spending and way more oversight over how they spend their money. The big ticket items, like aircraft carriers, are not the meat of the military’s budget however. And I feel that lack of focus is why the arguments for lowing military spending don’t gain traction. It is easy to justify better equipment. It is harder to justify an inefficient and dated payroll system that is chewing through tax dollars.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court-warrants-cell-phone-privacy.html
WASHINGTON — In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
The 5-to-4 decision has implications for all kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the ruling was limited.
“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the chief justice wrote. The court’s four more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — joined his opinion.
Each of the four other justices wrote a dissent, with the five opinions running to more than 120 pages. In one dissent, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the distinctions drawn by the majority were illogical and “will frustrate principled application of the Fourth Amendment in many routine yet vital law enforcement operations.”
“Cell-site records,” he wrote, “are uniquely suited to help the government develop probable cause to apprehend some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals: serial killers, rapists, arsonists, robbers, and so forth.”
There's also this ruling made by Supreme Court this week on data privacy. They've been pretty active it seems, especially on the digital end where we extremely need it, in my opinion.
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On June 23 2018 02:39 zlefin wrote:I assume this is all about the issues relating to taxing out of state purchases and the constitutional prohibitions thereof. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the topic. it's hard to explain without knowing how much of the grounding you have. (and also I haven' delved deep into this particular ruling) what should be done is amending the constitution to account for the changing nature of, and increasing ease of, interstate trade, to allow sales taxes to feasibly be collected by states for stuff bought by people in that state. what seems sketchy to me is they're basically trying to stretch the constitution to cover cases it really doesn't, (but many people agree it should). it's similar to the massive degree to which the commerce clause has been stretched to ocver things far beyond what the constitution, as written, and as originally intended, should really justify.
Wayfair is all about Commerce Clause precedent, and the ruling centered around fixing problems implicated by how poorly Quill and Bellas Hess' "physical presence" rule matches up with contemporary commerce that oftentimes takes place in a purely digital arena. Both Quill and Bellas Hess are, in their own way, a "stretch" of the Constitution, so it's not clear why you're standing on that point in criticism. Furthermore, reference to originalist, text-centric conceptions of the Constitution is not a self-evident basis for critique; why is updating constitutional interpretation in light of changed circumstances somehow inferior to the amendment process as a basis for legality, particularly given that interpreting the law in light of facts presented is precisely what Article III courts are supposed to do?
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United States42685 Posts
SC decision updates the definition of a Nexus for sales tax purposes. Previously the rule was that if you sell something to someone in state A but your business is based in state B and a subcontractor actually delivers it then you can argue that no business was done in state A, only a delivery that was contracted elsewhere for a transaction done online/in state B. Whatever else you feel about it people should agree that it effectively voids sales taxes for online businesses, giving them an unfair advantage. The ruling closes a loophole while we wait for Congress to act.
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On June 23 2018 03:15 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 02:39 zlefin wrote:On June 23 2018 02:14 farvacola wrote:
What's sketchy about the ruling? I assume this is all about the issues relating to taxing out of state purchases and the constitutional prohibitions thereof. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the topic. it's hard to explain without knowing how much of the grounding you have. (and also I haven' delved deep into this particular ruling) what should be done is amending the constitution to account for the changing nature of, and increasing ease of, interstate trade, to allow sales taxes to feasibly be collected by states for stuff bought by people in that state. what seems sketchy to me is they're basically trying to stretch the constitution to cover cases it really doesn't, (but many people agree it should). it's similar to the massive degree to which the commerce clause has been stretched to ocver things far beyond what the constitution, as written, and as originally intended, should really justify. Wayfair is all about Commerce Clause precedent, and the ruling centered around fixing problems implicated by how poorly Quill and Bellas Hess' "physical presence" rule matches up with contemporary commerce that oftentimes takes place in a purely digital arena. Both Quill and Bellas Hess are, in their own way, a "stretch" of the Constitution, so it's not clear why you're standing on that point in criticism. Furthermore, reference to originalist, text-centric conceptions of the Constitution is not a self-evident basis for critique; why is updating constitutional interpretation in light of changed circumstances somehow inferior to the amendment process as a basis for legality, particularly given that interpreting the law in light of facts presented is precisely what Article III courts are supposed to do?
I don't like Quill and Bellas Hess's stretching of the constitution either.
I'm not sure I can say anything useful; as you're familiar enough with the topics, that you've undoubtedly heard arguments similar to mine (and far more thoroughly done).
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On June 23 2018 03:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court-warrants-cell-phone-privacy.htmlShow nested quote +WASHINGTON — In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
The 5-to-4 decision has implications for all kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the ruling was limited.
“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the chief justice wrote. The court’s four more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — joined his opinion.
Each of the four other justices wrote a dissent, with the five opinions running to more than 120 pages. In one dissent, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the distinctions drawn by the majority were illogical and “will frustrate principled application of the Fourth Amendment in many routine yet vital law enforcement operations.”
“Cell-site records,” he wrote, “are uniquely suited to help the government develop probable cause to apprehend some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals: serial killers, rapists, arsonists, robbers, and so forth.” There's also this ruling made by Supreme Court this week on data privacy. They've been pretty active it seems, especially on the digital end where we extremely need it, in my opinion.
My view is that anything with a password or unique identifier should be treated as if it was a physical safe with a lock.
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On June 23 2018 03:34 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 03:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court-warrants-cell-phone-privacy.htmlWASHINGTON — In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
The 5-to-4 decision has implications for all kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the ruling was limited.
“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the chief justice wrote. The court’s four more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — joined his opinion.
Each of the four other justices wrote a dissent, with the five opinions running to more than 120 pages. In one dissent, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the distinctions drawn by the majority were illogical and “will frustrate principled application of the Fourth Amendment in many routine yet vital law enforcement operations.”
“Cell-site records,” he wrote, “are uniquely suited to help the government develop probable cause to apprehend some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals: serial killers, rapists, arsonists, robbers, and so forth.” There's also this ruling made by Supreme Court this week on data privacy. They've been pretty active it seems, especially on the digital end where we extremely need it, in my opinion. My view is that anything with a password or unique identifier should be treated as if it was a physical safe with a lock.
That gets real weird when you have each application on the phone having its own password and the court has to issue a warrant to each company to unlock their application. They unlock the phone and surprise, a new set of passwords and a new company that requires a search warrant. Unlock those applications, surprise, new passwords for from a difference software company.
Congress needs to make rules for these portable computers we carry around that protect user privacy form the police trying to dodge the rules, while also providing a clear path through the courts to get the data off these phones. Ideally the rules should be created so neither law enforcement or the tech world are completely happy with the law.
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On June 22 2018 22:49 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 22 2018 19:19 iamthedave wrote:
I don't understand the US's blindness when it comes to defense spending. Every single time I hear one party or other whinging about not having enough money for something, I think 'can't you just knock a billion off your defense spending?'
That is just grotesque. Is America literally planning to invade earth? Who is America defending against?
I understand the financial incentives and the like, because there's so many other businesses that benefit. But don't the American people recognise that this is just a stupidly pointless waste of money? While I'd agree that defense spending is too high, defense spending is typically viewed in % of GDP terms. 2% is the NATO min target IIRC. Raw $$ matter too, but it's not odd that a large economy like the US outspends smaller economies. ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/XxqaAHt.png) Long-term, defense is a shrinking part of the budget. Typically people use past spending as a reference point to gauge if spending is 'high' or 'low'. In that context it's not hard to see why a lot of people would see current spending as 'low'. Very biased graph there. Ignore everything before 1990. Ofcourse spending is high during the Cold war, its not a reference point you want to use. So the much shorter graph now has a spike for when the US was engaged in 2 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and you get the current point which is about normal for a non war period (based on the other non war period, prior to 2005 And one can very much argue that the US's normal non war spending is way higher then it needs to be.
"biased" graph? The data is what the data is. You're looking at a 60 year period. It's not like it cherry-picks a particular decade. If you'd like we can start in either the 40's or 50's when spending was higher.
On June 22 2018 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:
%GDP is a really silly metric for how much of a government's resources are spent on the military anyway. It's far more relevant to examine % of government revenue spent on the military. E.g. a country with a tax base of 2% GDP that spends 2% of their GDP on the military is a horrific one.
Unless you have a privatized military, but fortunately we're not there yet.
For reference, the U.S. spends ~20% of its federal budget on the military. North Korea spends ~20% of its GDP on the military, and since they're a command economy that's basically 20% of their federal budget (well, at least in 80s the state expenditures were ~75% of the GNP, so let's be charitable and say that's 27% of their federal budget).
Or how many jets you'd have to not build to forgive an entire generation's student loans, that's a nice metric.
% of GDP would be better than % of budget. GDP is a factor of income per person and number of people. As the population rises, you'd figure more people devoted to defending that larger population. And, as incomes rise you'd have to spend more $$ just to recruit soldiers.
% of budget is rough, as different countries spend different proportions of GDP through the government. Different countries spend differently at a National vs state or local level.
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On June 23 2018 03:46 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2018 03:34 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2018 03:13 ShoCkeyy wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court-warrants-cell-phone-privacy.htmlWASHINGTON — In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
The 5-to-4 decision has implications for all kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the ruling was limited.
“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the chief justice wrote. The court’s four more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — joined his opinion.
Each of the four other justices wrote a dissent, with the five opinions running to more than 120 pages. In one dissent, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the distinctions drawn by the majority were illogical and “will frustrate principled application of the Fourth Amendment in many routine yet vital law enforcement operations.”
“Cell-site records,” he wrote, “are uniquely suited to help the government develop probable cause to apprehend some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals: serial killers, rapists, arsonists, robbers, and so forth.” There's also this ruling made by Supreme Court this week on data privacy. They've been pretty active it seems, especially on the digital end where we extremely need it, in my opinion. My view is that anything with a password or unique identifier should be treated as if it was a physical safe with a lock. That gets real weird when you have each application on the phone having its own password and the court has to issue a warrant to each company to unlock their application. They unlock the phone and surprise, a new set of passwords and a new company that requires a search warrant. Unlock those applications, surprise, new passwords for from a difference software company.
I see no problem with this. I think this is how it should be. The fact that phones act as focusing points for many things should not imply those things can not be distinct and separate. Someone having access to my phone should not mean they have access to my various authenticators, bank stuff, work email...everything. You could say many people's entire lives are on their cell phones. One size fits all would be VERY bad.
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EPT
