My distinguished colleague from West Virginia

[OzzyKP]

btw:

[Jon Miller]

What did that chart look like 10 years ago?

JM

[Drake Tungsten]

Righties whine about pork, lefties whine about the military. Meanwhile, very few people whine about the entitlement programs that make up ~40% of the budget...

[Jon Miller]

It's because those are a good thing.

JM

[Drake Tungsten]

I fail to see how a Social Security program that is supported by the most regressive of taxes and is unlikely to pay anything back to the people in my generation who will be financing the retirement of the Baby Boomers is a "good thing"...

[Dinner]

Yes, I knew 19%-20% of the budget was the military but only about half of the military budget is for purchases or future research with the rest going to pay personal, keep up bases, and maintain extisting equipment.

That 9.5%-10% of the national budget which goes for future weapon systems is LOADED with worthless corporate pork. Examples include the Styker which was supposed to be light weight and fast so it can be air transported however it's aluminium armor was so worthless that the Pentigon forbid them from being deployed without a huge addition of armor which weighted so much the Styker can no longer be transported by air... Which was it ONLY job. Then we have the fact that the air force has repeatedly said they have more then enough C-130s and don't want any more but the Congress keeps forcing them to buy more because the factories have been strategically placed in the districts of key senators and congressmen. Or we could look at the "new" rifle the army wants to replace the M-16 which performs worse in almost every catagory and weights three times as much and costs ten times as much. It's a complete piece of ****.

That's just from memory. The defense budget is loaded with designs which don't work as advertised and will never work as planned. It is nothing more then corporate pork at its worse. Cutting this trash in half would save 5% of the over all national budget. Now that's what I call REAL savings.

[chequita guevara]

If Social Security goes, the whole system will be going with it. The problem isn't systemic, it's demographic. That problem doesn't go away just because you switch to a private retirement system from a public one. If there aren't enough people to pay into SS, then there aren't enough people to keep stocks afloat.

[chequita guevara]

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

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I fail to see how a Social Security program that is supported by the most regressive of taxes and is unlikely to pay anything back to the people in my generation who will be financing the retirement of the Baby Boomers is a "good thing"...

Social Security's regressivity was a deliberate sabotage by Republicans back in the 80's. They put an income cap where people only paid into SSI for the first $70k or so and then none of the rest of their income was taxed. Stop the free loading by removing the cap and you almost single handedly end the Social Security "problem".

[DanS]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Righties whine about pork, lefties whine about the military. Meanwhile, very few people whine about the entitlement programs that make up ~40% of the budget...

With God as my witness, I have whined about the entitlement programs with more than equal measure.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Spiff understands our political system better than a lot of Americans do...

Cuz he's a commie.

[Drake Tungsten]

With God as my witness, I have whined about the entitlement programs with more than equal measure.

God bless you, sir. You are fighting the good fight.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Social Security's regressivity was a deliberate sabotage by Republicans back in the 80's.

IIRC, Congress was controlled by the Democrats during the 80s. As much as I'd like to put the blame for things on Uncle Ron, he couldn't have achieved anything without his good buddy Tip O'Neal and Senator Keating.

God it's good to have the Dems back in. They are overdue for a good bashing on my part.

[Berzerker]

Pork is such a minute portion of government spending that the amount of attention drawn to it is hilarious.

Not true, pork is all over the place, not just a bridge in Alaska.
For example, we ship coal to Europe to provide energy for our troops when its cheaper to buy energy from the host countries. Why? Members of Congress from coal states want to soak the rest of us.

I guess it depends on how you define pork, I define it broadly - if I'm paying for stuff in your state unrelated to security, its pork. I'd also include corporate subsidies which last I heard from Cato was up around 100 billion a year. Here's another example, after hurricane Andrew hit Florida a bunch of people with construction equipment volunteered to go down and help rebuild. They were not welcomed, Florida wanted federal funds and they wanted those funds to pay union wages. Even if rebuilding aint pork, the obvious effort to soak the rest of us was pork.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I fail to see how a Social Security program that is supported by the most regressive of taxes and is unlikely to pay anything back to the people in my generation who will be financing the retirement of the Baby Boomers is a "good thing"...

Yeah, I dislike Soc Sec regressiveness. But looking at history, it definitely did good.

JM