Re: Sen. Harry Reid, NV: Wildfires caused by global warming

On Oct 31, 3:24 pm, bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 29, 8:49 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Oct 28, 11:51 am, bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 28, 6:40 pm, James Arthur wrote:
On Oct 27, 4:46 pm, bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 26, 7:25 pm, James Arthur wrote:
On Oct 26, 2:29 am, bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 26, 6:06 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Oct 25, 2:52 pm, bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 25, 6:36 pm, James Arthur wrote:

[...]

James>>>>>>>>> > We've been protecting the world since WWII. That's
expensive.

Bill>>>>>>>>> But that's not where most of the money is going.

James>>>>>>>> True, now. Most of our money is presently spent on
ineffectual social
James>>>>>>>> programs.

Bill>>>>>>> Not true.

Bill>>>>>>>http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

James>>>>>> Bill, that link is just plain embarrassing--no wonder you
have such
James>>>>>> wacky, misbegotten theories.

Bill>>>>> I rather liked the way they lumped the interest on the
national debt
Bill>>>>> into military expenditure, on the not-unreasonable basis
that this was
Bill>>>>> just paying for previous wars.

James>>>> That's one of their most glaring errors--wrongly attributing
all debt
James>>>> to warfare.

James>>>> We've spent a great deal more on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid
and
James>>>> Johnson's war on poverty. Social programs have been roughly
2/3rds the
James>>>> budget for quite some time; by any fair measure, they
deserve an equal
James>>>> proportion of the debt.

James>>>> That's not opinion, that's accounting...amortization.

Bill>>> It's opinion. Your national debt has been built up over a long
time -
Bill>>> much longer than the period that you have been spending 2/3rds
of your
Bill>>> budget on what you chose to classify as social programs, and
you could
Bill>>> attribute each dollar of debt to the expenditure that incurred
it.
Bill>>> That would be a valid system of amortization, Claiming that
the debt
Bill>>> should be assigned on the basis of the way you spend money now
is not.

James>> Here you have a point--the amount of blame for any annual
deficit
James>> should be apportioned year-by-year according to each
category's
James>> proportion of that year's budget.

James>> OTOH, it's preposterous to say that all defense spending is
spent on
James>> warfare.

Huh? You want to distinguish between spending on warfare, and spending
in preparation for war?

As Clausewitz said, war is merely an extension of political activity
by other means and peace-time spending on "defence" is part of that
ploitical activity.

James>> Comparing war- and peace-time figures clearly illustrates
James>> that point. So, properly, your link should only attribute
*excess*--
James>> not all--defense spending to warfare.

Nonsense. Peace time spending is devoted to intimidating your enemies
and dissuading them from attacking you. The force that never has to
fight is extremely cost-effective.


You've contradicted yourself in just two paragraphs. First you
describe defense spending as 'preparation for war,' then here you
acknowledge that peace-time spending is the most cost-effective, most
certain way to *avoid* war.

And isn't that a good thing? Isn't this exactly what we shold be
doing? So surely you must agree that not all defense spending is for
war, but quite the opposite: much is spending to *prevent* war.

And so, this basis all by itself is enough to show it's WRONG for your
www.warresisters.org site to account all defense spending as 'war'
spending. Q.E.D.


Also, a large part of defense spending comes back as revenue -- taxes
on profits and wages -- offsetting something in the vicinity of 25-40%
of the amount actually spent. When it comes to apportioning deficits
this revenue should properly be deducted.

This is true of every other government expenditure,


Absolutely not. Defense spending generates a great deal of offsetting
revenue, as detailed above.

The poor pay essentially no federal tax at all, so the dole generates
almost no offsetting revenue...it's a straight payment from tax-payers
to tax-takers.

The remainder of the sums in question go to retired folks, who pay
much less in tax than defense workers in the primes of their careers.

Defense spending generates considerable tax revenue, these others--the
bulk of spending--do not.


so it is a complete red herring.

Anyway, the site's methods and figures being absurd on their face, I
didn't previously bother with the minutiae. Since you insist on
pressing the point, I took several hours and investigated.

I complied the following data with the most generous possible
assumptions in your favor: a) that all defense spending is for war,
and b) that defense spending does not produce any offsetting revenue.

Consider this an engineer's guide to the question; an approximation,
not perfect, but close enough for our purposes.

=======
RESULTS, adjusted to 2004 dollars per the Consumer Price Index data:
=======
(view tables in Courier font)

Historical Budget Data from Congressional Budget Office (1).
Inflation adjustment figures per US Bureau of Labor Statistics'
Consumer Price Index data (2)

TOTAL EXPENDITURE, 1962-2004, (all figures in 2004 dollars)
===========================================================
Social Security 12,541 x 10^9 dollars
Medicare 5,079 "
Medicaid 2,432 "
Income Security 4,301 "
Other Retirement
and disability 4,099 "
Defense 15,699 "
------
TOTAL of above 44,151 "

TOTAL, all outlays,
for all purposes 62,269 "

PUBLIC DEBT 1962-2004, (all figures in 2004 dollars)
==========================================================
Total debt, 1962 $1,552 "
Total increase in debt,
1962-2004: $8,554 "

Total portion of increased debt apportionable
to defense (3): $2,096 "

==========
CONCLUSION
==========
Even if we assume all debt existing in 1962 was war debt, and all
defense spending since 1962 has been for warfare, the two together are
about $3,600 x 10^9, roughly 1/3rd of the current U.S. national debt.

So: attributing 80% of the interest on the national debt to past
warfare--or even defense spending--is WRONG.

No, it is just a point of view.


No it's not a point of view--either the money was spent on war or it
wasn't.

Using the exact method you proposed as fair, and with all
assumptions(*) in your favor, I've shown that not more than 1/4 of the
increase in U.S. debt since 1962 could possibly be attributed to
defense spending, much less 'war' spending.

Further, lumping in the prexisting debt of 1962 and treating all of it
as due to 'war', not even 1/3rd of the current U.S. debt is due to
past warfare.

Therefore, Warresisters' attributing 80% of all debt to past warfare
is WRONG. By your standard the correct figure is not more than 1/3rd,
and more accurately should be much less. Again, Q.E.D.


(*) Crazy, super-generous assumptions especially crafted for Bill
Sloman: all defense spending is for war, defense spending produces no
offsetting revenue, and the entire U.S. national debt in 1962 was due
to past warfare.


US spending on "defence" has been
disproportionately high for a long time now. Spending as much as the
combined total of the ten runner-ups in the defence spending stakes
isn't defensible,

Thank you for making my (much) earlier point: We've been supplying the
defense of many other countries with our troops. Naturally that costs
more, and they'll spend less because of it.

And much of it was *peace* spending, well-spent. (**)

(**) (How many wars have been fought in Europe post-WWII? How many
countries (Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslavakia,
Lithuania...) were subjugated by foreign powers in that time? And,
how many under U.S. protection were subjugated?)


and if you hadn't done it your national debt
wouldn't have increased at all.


Again you contradict yourself, acknowledging that money we spent
defending cold-war Europe and beyond has added to our debt. By your
reckoning, more than anything else.

By my reckoning, if we hadn't embarked on Johnson's 'war on poverty'
we'd have saved far more that just our entire national debt: we'd have
saved its horrendous human toll. Many who are now destitute,
illiterate tax-takers would be tax-payers, happier, and adding their
vitality and energy to the nation instead of weighing it down.


All the social expenditures in your budgets are cheese-paringly mean,

That's irrational--the spending you describe as "cheese-paringly mean"
is twice the amount you've just called "disproportionately high," and
"[in]defensible."


so attributing 100% of the increase in the national debt to your one
blatant extravagance seems entirely defensible to me.


No, if money was not spent on war and is deliberately portrayed as
'spending on war', that's called 'lying,' a criminal accounting
offense for a public or private enterprise's books.


Best Regards,
James Arthur

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Bush has screwed the economy for a long time was --->Re: Mortgage Meltdown
    ... The only part that you left out was the consequence of the neoconservative energy strategy which led us down the path to the disaster in Iraq and which not only wasted our military but will have added $1T to the national debt by the time we are finished. ... The national debt is simply a promissory note issued by the Federal Government so that they can borrow money. ... The Iraq war will cost us half the IOUs that the government owes Social Security. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Bush has screwed the economy for a long time was --->Re: Mortgage Meltdown
    ... The only part that you left out was the consequence of the neoconservative energy strategy which led us down the path to the disaster in Iraq and which not only wasted our military but will have added $1T to the national debt by the time we are finished. ... The national debt is simply a promissory note issued by the Federal Government so that they can borrow money. ... The Iraq war will cost us half the IOUs that the government owes Social Security. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Bush has screwed the economy for a long time was --->Re: Mortgage Meltdown
    ... The only part that you left out was the consequence of the neoconservative energy strategy which led us down the path to the disaster in Iraq and which not only wasted our military but will have added $1T to the national debt by the time we are finished. ... The national debt is simply a promissory note issued by the Federal Government so that they can borrow money. ... The Iraq war will cost us half the IOUs that the government owes Social Security. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Sen. Harry Reid, NV: Wildfires caused by global warming
    ... Johnson's war on poverty. ... budget for quite some time; by any fair measure, ... Your national debt has been built up over a long time - ... a large part of defense spending comes back as revenue -- taxes ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Sen. Harry Reid, NV: Wildfires caused by global warming
    ... attributing all debt ... You want to distinguish between spending on warfare, ... war is merely an extension of political activity ... Defense spending generates much more offsetting tax revenue. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)