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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (748907)	10/23/2013 1:52:51 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573434

>> That's right, most of it is going toward entitlements. Because we have created an entire voting bloc that is dependent on them, and we have been ever since the New Deal. You'd better watch out making comments like that. Someone might confuse you with Mitt Romney...

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (748907)	10/23/2013 3:11:58 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573434

Yet where is that money going? Well, given the possible threats $830 billion for the military is vast overkill. Before we start taking money from the retired, we should address that first. The vast majority of the entitlements you complain about is for old people. "Time to get to work, granny! Else Tenchu's taxes might go up!" usgovernmentspending.com

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (748907)	10/23/2013 7:23:03 PM
From: SilentZ	Respond to of 1573434

>Our federal budget is $4 trillion. Most people can't even imagine how to spend a billion dollars, much less a trillion. And no one can really contemplate 300-350 million people. Yet that's what we have. >That should be enough money to fund every "infrastructure" project in America four times over. Yet where is that money going? >That's right, most of it is going toward entitlements. Because we have created an entire voting bloc that is dependent on them, and we have been ever since the New Deal. They're called old people. Who can't work or have worked their entire lives and they should be able to retire. . Without Social Security, 50% of senior citizens lived in poverty. Now they're the least impoverished age group. And then there's Medicare and Medicaid. They keep people alive. Now, if you believe these things are wrong or less important than infrastructure, then that's your right. But it also means you're either a dick or not living in the real world. You're living in some sort of Randian utopia where just by working hard enough, everyone can, if they want to, save enough to retire at 65, or they just have to keep working until they die. But that's not the real world. Most people are just scraping by, and frankly that's pretty much always been the case, and can just barely pay their bills. We're living in a world where the average person that's about to retire has $31,000 in savings. You can say, "Well, fuck them. They didn't work hard enough." and plunge 40% of the population into poverty and tell them to fend for themselves, or you can have Social Security and Medicare, which have been INCREDIBLY successful. And then, of course, there's the military, which is 21% of the budget... >This is not "economically stimulative" by any measure whatsoever. Well, it isn't because it's pretty static. But if it were introduced out of nowhere, it would be. >Yet here you are telling me that budget prioritization shouldn't matter, despite you advocating the expansion of the biggest welfare state in history. Huh? If I desperately need a car to get to work, but if I buy a car, I won't be able to eat for a week and I'll die, I'm using the money that I have to buy food and I won't buy a car until somehow I can scrape the money together, which might take months. The car would advance my life, but food would keep me alive. To put food first isn't a lack of priorities. -Z