We can't afford to take care of all the poor people.

[Scuba]

[daleanime]

1. Major K&R

"Defense" spending needs to be cut at less in half and that money invested in our county.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

2. They will argue that the defense industry employs thousands, and they do...

So what you do is you stop funding bullets and bombs and start funding highways and bridges, this way you kill two birds, so to speak.

The ONLY people who lose out are the people who are already so rich they cant spend all their money; that we allow this current system to go on is a crime in and of itself.

[Scuba]

3. Yep, paying people to build bombs is good for the economy, for nursing and teaching not so much...

... or so say the oligarchs and their shills.

[n2doc]

4. But left unsaid is, how many would taking care of poverty employ?

Those people would be buying food, clothing, going to schools, etc., etc.

If we want to use tax money to provide jobs there are a lot of infrastructure repairs needed.....

[DesertDawg]

7. In the grand scheme of things

IF you eliminated poverty, you would also nearly eliminate unemployment. You're creating jobs refurbishing buildings and homes to house the homeless, which there alone would create hundreds of thousands of new Construction jobs. You've also created a need of people to process these peoples files to get them out of poverty, now Grocers need more employees to handle the millions of new shoppers, retail stores have to keep more seasonal employees on permanent to handle the new influx of customers. The once poor areas that now no longer are will find an increase in new businesses, which means more construction which means more construction workers which means more population growth in the areas which means grocers and retail now can open stores in those areas which creates more jobs which brings more people into the area which causes more building which causes more jobs and on....

And on.....

And on.....

But we cannot have that. When you do something like that you start lifting people UP and they start prospering. Next thing you know they're demanding higher wages and better benefits, or worse, becoming competitors.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

11. I thought tat was implied in what I wrote...You can turn the economy completely around

by taking most spent on Defense and spend it on infrastructure after you raise taxes on the wealthy and corps by about double

[1StrongBlackMan]

15. I agree; but ...

How long would it take to re-tool that engineer with the skill set to be useful in infrastructure repair?

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

16. IDK, not long or hire the engineer that is out of a job and retrain the other one.

The problem with the defense industry other than the obvious waste is the "for profit" nature of it automatically means massive fraud and theft and so on.


If we are to have ANY Defense spending it has to be in nationalized production systems.

[1StrongBlackMan]

17. Were it that simple ...

not long or hire the engineer that is out of a job and retrain the other one.

As an HR Professional, I can tell you that the skill set required for designing/building a missile is quite different from that required to bu8ild a bridge ... and there are not that readily transferable.

{Note: this is not to say we shouldn't move in that direction; but, don't under-estimate the dislocation (in terms of jobs AND people) that we are talking about.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

18. Everything is gradual, either we give most of our money to the one percent thru defense profits

or we dont.

Would take a generation to do it, as it would to raise tariffs while promoting american business to make what we dont make now

[Enthusiast]

22. PLUS ONE, a huge bunch!

[L0oniX]

12. They'd be happy if we started building the Death Star.

[AndreaCG]

19. Tacky, tacky, tacky

That should be a picture of Reagan in there, as he promoted the absurd Star Wars defense system. But no, you went for gratuitous Hillary bashing.

[L0oniX]

20. So you think an X SOS wouldn't make sure the military keeps getting way more than enough money?

[raouldukelives]

13. Hard to threaten & invade countries for corporations with highways & bridges. nt

[1StrongBlackMan]

14. While I agree that funding for bullets and bombs ...

Should be directed to butter and bridges ...

It is inaccurate to say the only ones that lose are the rich. What about the folks that design and build and test the bullets and bombs?

Living in a purplish town where the largest employer is a defense contractor that builds nothing (to my knowledge) but missiles, there is frequently such talk ... such a strategy would result in the loss of 10,000 jobs, not counting the down stream jobs.

[Johonny]

21. You could argue you wouldn't need to spend all of the 178 billion on poverty programs.

You could expand the budget with more jobs outside of the defense industry that have a higher turnover in the economy. Heck simple programs like food stamps create more economic growth. More growth is more jobs etc... It is not all a sum loss and a sum gain. The reality is as a fraction of our total budget; poverty targeting programs like infrastructure rebuilding, food stamps, housing, small business loans, would go a long way to eliminating poverty. It isn't expensive compare to our national defense. People would also add poverty itself weakens the defense of the nation anyways.

[lovemydog]

35. Yes, military is the most capitol-intensive

and least labor-intensive industry.

I'm all for retaining their employment as well. In labor-intensive work like repairing infrastructure.

Like FDR did with the WPA. Like Eisenhower did with helping build our highways.

[Avalux]

5. Yes we can, but greed is stronger than compassion. n/t

[yodermon]

6. hmm. only 178 billion to eliminate poverty?

http://fb.com/WarCosts is coming up empty for me

[TheKentuckian]

10. It does seem a sensationally low number. I'd like to see how that money would do the trick.

I'm taking it for granted it means above current expenditures but it still seems pretty optimistic and/or pretty tight on the definition of poverty.

[CK_John]

8. Will that be the message of the Pope before Congress, don't feed the rabbits.

[AZ Progressive]

9. America believes that funding the MIC is more important than "rewarding the weak"

American inequality is by design, America is perhaps the most economically snobbish country in the developed world.

[Enthusiast]

23. There is no justification for this level of military spending.

There are no great navies to oppose us. There are no great armored forces to threaten us.

This nation spends money on the military like pre-WWII Nazi Germany, as if they are preparing for a world wide war of conquest. I'm not so sure there aren't some powerful players behind the scene that are preparing for just that eventuality, if they can manage to pull it off. 911 and the Iraq War were just practice.

[Scuba]

24. Gee, ya think?

[Enthusiast]

25. I have that distinct impression, yes.

It's their rhetoric. They are bad mouthing the disabled and the elderly while simultaneously supporting every military spending bill available. They are characterizing social security recipients as essentially useless eaters. This is very much like the rhetoric used by the early Nazis.

[appalachiablue]

31. Agree. The Nazi's elimination of persons considered weak and undesirable is beginning to

resemble policies condemning the poor, disabled, young and elderly in the US, by ultraconservative reactionaries, libertarians and those indifferent. Unthinkable in the wealthiest nation in the world but is it, 'when fascism comes to the US, it will be carrying an MBA and a copy of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'? Our country already fought fascism once, in Europe and it was more than enough. As a 7th Army lieutenant during WWII my father saw the final solution close up at the Liberation of Dachau, April 1945.

[Enthusiast]

36. It can creep up on the unaware as it did the hungry downtrodden German citizens.

They wanted to believe....something, even if it was wrong.

We must protect the nation from cruel words and actions. Without cruelty and intolerance Fascism cannot take root.

[appalachiablue]

39. The media propaganda in the US intentionally keeps many unaware

of systemic actions, the larger picture and symptoms like real unemployment nos., widening income inequality, homelessness, social services loss; mass incarceration, hate groups, police brutality, slow death by drug use and crime in declined communities, and now penalizing and jailing people for trivial traffic violations, debt and even truancy through private probation collection companies hired by local govts.

Liberalism's long demise added to increasing harsh economic conditions creates the opportunity for man's well known greed, cruelty and intolerance to rise. The 2008 global financial crisis was a warning, leaders failed to enact real reform. Unfortunately some can't believe until they feel the pain, and others are well shielded against it. John Maynard Keynes, at least one US Congressman and others warned that the harsh reparations placed on Germany following WWI were unfeasible and dangerous. Added to the 1929 Crash the right wing Nazis took over. Revisiting that history lately is something unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago.

[Enthusiast]

40. Thank you. Right on! nt

[woo me with science]

37. Amen.

[ladyVet]

38. Places tin foil firmly on head...

You realize all that stuff is to use on us, when we finally open our eyes and see the shite they've put us in, right? Because a few nukes will take care of anyone outside the US who would dare to attack for realz. But let's not dirty up the country, shall we? Nasty radiation = big no. Bombing a few uppity citizens = good to go.

Damn. I think there's a hole in my hat. Stupid conspiracy theory leaked in. Or did it? Hmmm...

[Babel_17]

26. A movement to reduce poverty fueled by American businesses

Of that effort we could mandate that all the clothes, food, books, housewares, bare the stamp, "Made in the USA". (And it would help get some Republicans to support it)

This would give a boost to our GDP and provide some jobs. Which provides a snowball effect, defense spending, not as much.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

http://harpers.org/blog/2007/11/eisenhower-on-the-opportunity-cost-of-defense-spending/

[Donald Ian Rankin]

27. $500 per citizen would eliminate poverty? How?

I think that number is utterly absurd - someone has just plucked a figure out of thin air and drawn it on a poster - or, more probably, one person has made up a number out of thin air, and someone else has "cited" it to justify this poster.

$178,000,000,000 works out at about $500 per person in America.

Divide that up among the poorest 10%, and you're giving them a one-off payment of $5000 each.

That certainly wouldn't hurt, but nor would it "eliminate poverty".

If you spent the entire defence budget on poverty relief, then you might be getting closer (ignoring, for now, all the knock-on effects that make that a bad idea).

But that tiny green circle is just a fiction.

[Scuba]

29. You don't just give it to people, although that would also have a multiplier effect. It's to be ...

... developing jobs and job skills, mostly, although there would be some direct payments poor people who can't work.

Here's a hint ...

[woo me with science]

28. Kick.

[woo me with science]

30. kick

[SomethingFishy]

32. But we got TANKS!

Lots and lots of tanks. Maybe homeless people can sleep in them.


I have been off the grid for a week. I get on the internet today and the first news story I see is "Senate Votes 98-1 That Climate Change isn't a Hoax".

I decided I didn't need to see any more news. We're just fucked.


K&R

[ND-Dem]

33. k&r

[WestCoastLib]

34. Time to fire up the soylent green machines i suppose