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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jerome who wrote (1122)	5/7/2014 4:15:14 AM
From: Hawkmoon	1 Recommendation Recommended By Jerome Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 26769

Your staggering 1.7 trillion deficit is in a large part due to 11 years of war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, that Republicans just never got around to paying for. Likewise the Medicare Rx program that was never paid for. Well, it certainly contributed.. there is no doubt about that.. But given where the percentage of the Federal Budget that goes to DOD, versus entitlements, I think that is clear that the latter are the biggest contributor to the national debt. cbpp.org And on a GDP basis, DOD spending is pretty reasonable in comparison to past years.. (bear in mind, we also have an all-volunteer military, which means salaries are considerably higher than in the years that make up Vietnam and before and less money gets spent on new equipment and maintenance).. supportingevidence.com politifact.com Many top officials cite “personnel” cost figures that do not match up with the “military personnel” line on budget documents. For example, when Hagel said personnel consumes “roughly half” of the Defense Department budget, his figure included the salaries for about 800,000 civilian employees, which the Pentagon accounts for in the “Operations and Maintenance” side of its budget. armytimes.com In 2011, the Pentagon spent about $161 billion on personnel pay and housing, $128 billion on weapons procurement, and $291 billion on operations and maintenance— the last largely in Iraq and Afghanistan. washingtonpost.com They do a lot of finagling and creative accounting when it comes to civilian DOD employees/contractors, putting their costs into "operations" and I think that's dishonest.. IF you're a not a temp DOD employee, you should be counted as a personnel cost. Now.. when we compare DOD to GDP budgets to Health Care and entitlements, it's pretty clear that the blame is being wrongly assigned to DOD expenditures. At least, with DOD spending, there is some utility obtained (national security.. protecting economic interests.. etc).. But with entitlement spending (other than TRULY disabled, elderly, and handicapped individuals) it's hard to say what ROI the taxpayers are receiving.. Basically, I believe in Workfare, not Welfare.. for able bodied people needing assistance. Help them to be gainfully employed, even if on infrastructure and community projects, rather than just giving them money to stay home and watch TV. Somewhere I recently read that with the money the Fed spent on QE, something like 12 million jobs could have been created from 2011 and still meet salary today.. Now we have a lot of things that need to be fixed in this country and people dramatically losing their job skills. IF the gov't (read taxpayers) must assist these people, then we should be putting them to work and/or improving their job skills. We have a weak recovery, in part, because demand has been decimated. Consumers are tapped out.. over their heads in debt.. our gov't is hugely indebted.. Its time to get people back to work, even if it requires some gov't spending.. But just don't hand it out as an entitlement to able-bodied (or even people who are handicapped, yet able to perform limited work).. If anything, most SANE people want to feel useful and gainfully employed.. Hawk

To: Jerome who wrote (1122)	5/7/2014 9:04:48 AM
From: Blasher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26769

Your staggering 1.7 trillion deficit is in a large part due to 11 years of war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, that Republicans just never got around to paying for. Likewise the Medicare Rx program that was never paid for. so . . . the Democrat's continuation of the war for longer than the Republican's who started it did nothing to contribute . . . and the Democrat's exponential continuation of the Republican's over-spending did nothing to contribute either. It's just all the Republican's fault ?? WoW! . . . that's what most would call "delusional" or "biased". btw . . Obama himself said that he spent billion$ on infrastructure but got nothing done. Of course he laughed about it and the press chuckled along. aarggh! . . you have sucked me into this silly discussion again . . . I have vowed not to discuss politics with such biased people as yourself anymore. Some things I just can't let go of.