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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doren who wrote (7730)	4/1/2009 3:29:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13062

We disagree. Having your own opinion is fine, but the facts are the facts. For every 12 soldiers who died from their wounds in Vietnam 11 now survive due to better medical care. Many are victims of IEDs and will require intense care and financial support for the rest of their lives. That's a vast uncalculated burden. Its large, but in the context of government spending, or even just the defense budget "vast" is an overstatement. Per year it will never be a significant fraction of the defense budget unless we slash defense budgets to a very unlikely extent, down to a small fraction of current budgets. Previous wars left far more wounded Americans. Yes the ratio of dead to wounded was shifted more towards dead, but 1 - Its a good thing that we've managed to save these people's lives, and 2 - The total number of wounded was higher in previous wars. The ratio isn't much of an issue here. If it used to be one wounded and lived for every death, and now its 11 wounded and alive for every death, but wounded is still only fraction of previous wars (and dead a small fraction) that change is good all the way around, and the future costs from caring for the injured are likely to be far lower than from previous wars. Nope. Internal dissent too. We have not waged military operations against Saudi insurgents. The cost: 400 million. Few notice these kinds of things. And there are tons. I agree. I notice them as well. And it adds up to a lot of money that many people don't notice. But its still a small fraction of federal spending. Most of federal spending is on entitlement programs. Most of the rest if on defense and interest. The defense budget contains some subsidies but it mostly isn't subsidies. Interest payments aren't subsidies. Entitlement programs can be considered personal subsidies, but they aren't corporate subsidies of the type that you have been talking about. Much of the Agriculture and Commerce departments' spending is subsidies either direct and clear subsidies, or indirect or effective subsidies. Part of Interior and other departments as well, but these departments are much smaller in budgetary terms than the large items mentioned in the last paragraph. Which doesn't mean I support most of these subsidies or think that the level isn't too high. It think the level of subsidies is too high, I'm just pointing out that most of the budget isn't properly categorized as subsidies, unless your considering social programs to be personal subsidies.