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On March 30 2022 21:55 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2022 21:43 JimmiC wrote:
The problem with US school is not the existence of loans, it is the ballooning and unreasonable cost of the schooling itself. Agreed. Same as healthcare. They charge because they can. You dont have many, if any, alternatives. Its gouging plane and simple. We need some method of price controls in both industries.
What you need is good and free public alternatives to private universities and healtchare. I can't see how implementing "price control" can solve the issue.
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On March 30 2022 18:59 Zambrah wrote:
Biden proposing a 31 billion dollar military spending increase, bringing military spending up to 813b a year and 8.13 trillion dollars in normal budgetary terms.
Though we’re all instinctively thinking about what additional weapons we might buy with that money, I bet that $31B increase is less than the bloat of the cost of the VA’s office alone since last year. We could eliminate that bloated mess and be way ahead on whatever other spending priorities we want, at no cost to military priorities to boot.
Also, costs certainly went up by way more than 4 percent for just standard "cost of doing business" for defense-related expenses since last year. 4 percent won't keep up with admitted-to inflation, let alone actual inflation.
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On March 30 2022 22:21 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2022 21:55 Sadist wrote:On March 30 2022 21:43 JimmiC wrote:
The problem with US school is not the existence of loans, it is the ballooning and unreasonable cost of the schooling itself. Agreed. Same as healthcare. They charge because they can. You dont have many, if any, alternatives. Its gouging plane and simple. We need some method of price controls in both industries. What you need is good and free public alternatives to private universities and healtchare. I can't see how implementing "price control" can solve the issue.
Price controls = whole country on Medicare, Medicare only pays this price for service/drug. If you want access to US market this is the rate.
The same could be done for schools. If you want federal money, this is the max rate per credit hr. Make it work.
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We could do that. But how would the billionaires cope?
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In the Netherlands the government literally says 'this is the max price you can charge for a year of college or university tuition'.
Shockingly schools can make it work. Tho it ofcourse also requires a government that is atleast a tiny bit competent to set a realistic price.
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The unwritten rule of US lawmaking is: policy goals be damned, you are not allowed to interfere with the profits of corporations. Not that Europe is free from that but they're certainly nowhere near as brazen about it as the US.
Free healthcare? Well you're screwing over the mind-bogglingly profitable hospital & health insurance industries, so that's a no-no. Cheap education? Don't think the banks that fleece several pennies off every dollar you have to pay are going to like that very much.
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Right, but I think the implication of "normal budgetary terms" is that it's the cost over 10 years. Most of our big budget items go by 10 years, as previously mentioned.
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On March 30 2022 23:41 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2022 18:59 Zambrah wrote:Biden proposing a 31 billion dollar military spending increase, bringing military spending up to 813b a year and 8.13 trillion dollars in normal budgetary terms. And to restate for anyone unfamiliar, most everything budget wise is talked about in ten year terms, so the BBB plan would’ve been, what, 200b a year over a decade. Military budget is the one that’s talked about in yearly terms. They definitely have the money to spend on improving infrastructure and dealing with student loans, etc, don’t ever let them pretend like they don’t. https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/defense/599599-biden-to-ask-for-813-billion-national-security-budget-report?ampI’ll bet Manchin will vote yes on this! Really votes with the Democrats when it’s most important, I’m sure. Not huge to your post but 813b is .813 Trillion.
Normal budgetary terms for the US govt operate on ten year time periods, 8.13 trillion is the military budgets ten year cost assuming no additional increase (not likely lol.)
For instance, assuming the Build Back Better act would have been 2 trillion dollars (for simplicity and laziness' sake) then it'd only have been 1/4 the budget of the military over the same period of time.
I try and bring this up when discussing the military budget because I find it kind of bullshit that our absurdly bloated military budget gets to obfuscate itself behind a different timeline compared to everything else.
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For a good point of reference, we could axe the mess that is the VA's office and we could Build Back Better - with money to spare.
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Id rather gravely impact the richest portions of the military like bloated spending on private military corporations than to do anything to effect the average enlisted/officer.
Also severe, severe oversight to justify what theyre spending all that fuckin' money on because the military sure seems like a money-black-hole atm.
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On March 30 2022 23:56 Zambrah wrote:
Id rather gravely impact the richest portions of the military like bloated spending on private military corporations than to do anything to effect the average enlisted/officer.
The biggest wastes of money always use "the common man" as a human shield while siphoning the vast majority of the money into the pockets of corporations. Best to watch for where bloat is growing rather than what seems feel-good.
I wouldn't be surprised if the record showed that spending on mercenary companies like Blackwater was far more efficient than spending on the VA's office. That's not at all to detract from the scumminess of mercenaries / PMC's in the first place, but mercenary companies do serve an important purpose and you know what you're paying for with them.
The realities of feel-good budget cuts differ heavily from what-actually-works budget cuts. Cutting the VA's office would cut the waste but doesn't feel good; that's a good corporate hostage-taking operation for you.
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If we properly implemented universal healthcare we could gut the VA pretty easily. I think any hesitancy about hitting the VA comes from a place that knows we're not going to implement any kind of functional healthcare system to fill the gaps being left behind. But in theory, yeah, it would be a great place to start. In fact, I see very little reason not to gut the VA and implement UHC in the same motion. And then start charting the nebula that is military spending at large.
But then again, I'm not an insurance company or a military contractor, I'm sure they see plenty of reason to change nothing.
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On March 31 2022 00:19 NewSunshine wrote:
If we properly implemented universal healthcare we could gut the VA pretty easily. I think any hesitancy about hitting the VA comes from a place that knows we're not going to implement any kind of functional healthcare system to fill the gaps being left behind. But in theory, yeah, it would be a great place to start. In fact, I see very little reason not to gut the VA and implement UHC in the same motion. And then start charting the nebula that is military spending at large.
But then again, I'm not an insurance company or a military contractor, I'm sure they see plenty of reason to change nothing.
Yeah, I’d be more down for gutting the VA if people had general access to healthcare and education and help with housing and such.
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On March 30 2022 21:43 JimmiC wrote:
The problem with US school is not the existence of loans, it is the ballooning and unreasonable cost of the schooling itself.
When those loans have conditions that look like the ones they try to sell you past midnight on sports television they are certainly part of the problem...
Student loans are nothing unheard of elsewhere in the world. But the US is pretty unique in the awfulness of the conditions, while they are usually interest-free everywhere else.
and then we haven't even talked about the gigantic scale of those loans... just the conditions...
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On March 31 2022 00:19 NewSunshine wrote:
I think any hesitancy about hitting the VA comes from a place that knows we're not going to implement any kind of functional healthcare system to fill the gaps being left behind.
The fact that it is morally hard to hit is exactly why it makes for such a great place to hide bloat and corporate rent-seeking. You can spend an inordinate amount of money and bury any critic under the faux outrage of "but think about the veterans!" In truth, though it would be best to solve the big issues of our time (healthcare, housing, tuition costs) before ending sweetheart benefits to veterans, even a "let the problem solve itself" approach is probably better than the logical evolution of the status quo. That is, boundless growth that has already ballooned to a quarter of all military expenses versus a far smaller fraction than that a decade ago.
Not that pumping the VA's office does a whole lot of good for national security these days. We're at the most optimistic going to spend another Afghanistan on Afghanistan veterans through the VA's office, and we didn't even win that one.
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You won't find any argument from me on that. I'm all too comfortable with identifying when cheap moral pretexts are being used to justify corporate greed and shitty, harmful laws.
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It just comes off as another libertarian "eliminate the IRS" style policy that no one takes seriously because of how much of a political and practical disaster it would be.
You're wildly underselling how much misery and waste a "let the problem solve itself" "solution" entails. the problems with the VA's cost bloat is a result of any sort of reform that would have been implemented if we didn't exist in a state of one party actively wanting things to get worse and the other desperately trying to keep the lights on.
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EPT
