Ayiekie Wrote:Sorry, I disagree on pretty much every point.Wrong, wrong, wrong.
1) The US spends 20% of its reported budget (there is a huge amount of unreported discretionary spending on mercenaries and other such things) on the military, which is almost what every other country on earth combined spends. Slash that in half, and they'd still have a far bigger budget for military than any other country. Medicare and medicaid represent 23% of the same budget. There is absolutely no question that a massive slash in military funding, by itself, would fund medicare and medicaid for a long time to come.
Granted, there are cuts we can be making. For one, we need to just give up on Iraq and Afghanistan - we're unwelcome there. (Although I got half a mind that says that we need to 'repossess' all the roads and schools and other stuff we built over there if they honestly feel they don't need to pay us back for what we gave them. And I ain't talking about intangible things here.)
And Ayieke, until you can tell us exactly how the hell you would 'slash military spending' then I don't wanna hear a word about it. I'm not saying that it's not possible to do so, but if you want to cut the military budget, then you'd damn well better know how and where. And don't you DARE touch my MGIB.
Although I will agree that the mercenaries have got to go.
It will be far easier to get the medical system reformed if we can get the lobbyists for the pharmaceuticals and the insurance companies out of the way. Granted, they should be entitled to a voice, but for decades they've been taking far too much, and it's already been proven that their business practices tend to be questionable. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. This is not some children's nursery rhyme, it is fact and it is the sign of a broken economy. Cutting the military budget is not gonna help much.
However, if you can convince companies like Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grunman, Crane, etc. to quit price-gouging, then that might shave off about ten percent. (Seriously, for a valve block on the gun I worked on you could buy a new house in most places... and that's with the broken one being returned to be refurbished!)