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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (130179)	12/29/2000 7:19:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571455

Tim Your question was no longer significant to the discussion....it was determined that any defense system will be ineffective. That depends on what you mean by determined. Some people discussing the issue determined that but they held that opinion before the conversation started. There has been no consensus that a missle defence would be ineffective. I took my cue from the star wars people...they determined that it would be nearly impossible to defend against a massive missile assault. However in the post numbered 130155, Pete G. gives a fairly detailed account of what missiles can take out ICBMs....apparently one of them is the Nike-Zeus. I just don't want to waste time getting links for a none issue. We have no system that is active and deplyed that can take out an incoming ICBM. That's true. We can take out ICBMs, if we hit them before they launch but that generally would not be considered a defense but rather a preemptive attack. There are military types that would disagree with that statement. Who cares about GNP.....much of the $$$ made in the GNP doesn't go into the gov't's coffers. The percentage of the GNP or GDP is the important stat for determineing the burden on the economy. If we spend less on corperate subsidies or other discressionary spending the % of the budget spent on defense would go up but that doesn't mean the burden of the defense budget on the economy has increased. The payment for the star wars expenditure of $60 billion came out of the federal budget and not directly from the GNP. All the GNP is.....is a total of how much has been produced by the national economy. The budget is indirectly related...as the products are produced and sold they generate wealth for the owners and employees who, in turn, are taxed by the national gov't who then use the taxes to fund the national budget. Relating the defense expenditures to the GNP tends to dilute their impact....its how politicians sold us star wars. A more direct and more meaningful measurement is the percentage impact on the federal budget. Its in that way you can see that when defense expenditures exceed the budget number allowed, there is a direct impact/result....$$$ have to be borrowed and/or taxes raised to cover the deficit. When taxes are raised that means corporations and US citizens have less discretionary income....which is when the impact on the GNP is felt...a negative one. And while the star wars expenditures were offset by the jobs created to work on the program, its my understanding that those expenditures do not benefit the economy dollar for dollar. The bottom line is $60 billion was spent for something that was borne out of paranoia, and then was determined to be ineffective....probably whatever prototypes were produced sit rotting in some military warehouse. And we, today, are still paying for the interest on the borrowed monies spent for those prototypes. Its stuff like that that makes me want to puke. And there we so defense took up 16% of over 1 trillion dollars budgeted. And that's okay? If you do want to focus on % of the budget that much then I will mention that % of the budget spent on defense by the US has gone down a lot, and is also much less then that was spent by the USSR. (and so that we don't get in to an argument about the relevance of the % figure for the USSR, I remeind you that you brought up the argument that one country went down the tubes because of defense spedning (taht one country being the USSR) and that it could become two with what we spend on defense). Whether its dollars or percentages, the number seem very big to me but apparently not to you....I think we need to agree to disagree. The above paragraph from the book is said in a tone of sarcasm. Reagan's expenditures for defense did little to bring down Russia because it was already crumbling on its own. All the military rhetoric re Russia from the early 80's, that was coined as insider info was, in fact, bull. However, Reagan decided to take this info on face value, and build a huge arsenal of weapons.....doing his share in increasing our deficit so that now we pay 11% of over 1 trillion dollars towards interest. The Soviet Union was crumbling economicly but was still powerful militarily. The spening was justified to counter the military potential of the USSR. Also it pushed the Soviets to spend even more then they would have on the military and helped push them into thinking reform of their country was nessiary (they would need a reformed economy to be able to compete with the West), those reforms were not intended to eliminate the communist regime but they were not as easily controled as Gorbachov thought they would be. Russia's paranoia caused them to take possession of the eastern bloc countries...the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland etc. It required a great deal of $$$ or rather rubles to maintain control over these countries. It was the cost of that control, coupled with their need to maintain missiles and nuclear war devices, and to support insurgent regimes in foreign countries as well as to be first in the race to space that broke the back of their economy.....not because Reagan was scaring the bejezus out of them....they knew how easy we were.....after all, it looks like we let them have the eastern bloc countries without much of a fight. Had Reagan done just a little research he would have found out that Russia's economy was not on the level of a Japan but rather Mexico; Even more of a reason while Regan was able to chalange the USSR and help push thier system over the brink. Get it, Tim; alot of wasted $$$ was spent because of Reagan's and other presidents' paranoia and bullsh*t. Such waste..... such bullshit.....we put ancient Rome in its worst days to shame. Ancient Rome at its most decadent had its military decay, that was why it became vunerable to the invadeing barbarians. Barbarians had been at the border for hundreds of years but at the end Rome was no longer able to fight them off because Rome had become weak. Rome's military was still in place when the barbarians invaded....it was ineffective against them, because it had become corrupted and was driven only by $$$ and power. Would you not say that spending $1600 for a toilet is a sign of corruption? ted