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

To: Doren who wrote (1370609)	8/12/2022 4:39:06 PM
From: SeachRE	Respond to of 1578006

Must read.

To: Doren who wrote (1370609)	8/12/2022 5:51:29 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Respond to of 1578006

Doren, There are a LOT of things "off budget." That's fine, but it still doesn't explain how you can arrive at a figure of $1.5 trillion per year, especially when the federal budget ranged from $3.5 trillion to $4.4 trillion over that time period (not counting 2020, which saw a big spike up because of COVID). Given that roughly over half of the federal budget is Social Security and Medicare, you're looking at a budget of somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2.2 trillion for "non-mandatory" or "discretionary" items. Defense is a major part of that "discretionary" budget, for sure, but it has always been the case even before Iraq and Afghanistan. No way you can eliminate almost all of "discretionary" spending just by eliminating the military. Besides, even in a libertarian world, government's primary responsibility is to safeguard the rights and security of its citizens. government debt spending is like a rubber band, the debt doesn't cause inflation the day they spend it, the economy stretches, the government prints money, and like a rubber band snapping back inflation eventually covers it. The Romans had the same problem. That's a load of bull. Deficit spending immediately pumps money into the economy, but there is no guarantee that the economy will grow to accommodate it. The recent spike in government spending due to COVID proves it. The federal budget jumped to well above $6 trillion from the previous year which was $4.6 trillion. Deficit spending was the highest on record. That deficit spending, i.e. spending money that doesn't exist, expanded the money supply. Inflation is the result. And THAT didn't take thirty years to show up. Meanwhile we haven't fought in any new wars since Trump took office. Brandon changed that once the war in Ukraine broke out, but before that, our military interventionism was at its lowest point in decades. Bottom line is that you can't pin all of this on the military. Tenchusatsu