Let's decrease or even elminate corporate subsidies to lower government deficit.

[Dinner]

Yet another one liner. Please, post two sentences in one post just so I know you can do it.

[DinoDoc]

Yet another one liner. Please, post two sentences in one post just so I know you can do it.

Neither the top ten overall donors nor the top ten individual donors lists shows seven of them leaning Republican. In fact, in both cases there were more Democrat-leaning donors in the top ten than Republicans! Stop lying you sad sack of crap.

[Aeson]

That was 3 sentences

[DinoDoc]

He only asked for 2. I went above and beyond the call.

[Al B. Sure!]

I'll take that over having military control over any civilian policy.

Huh? Civilian policy?

It's very simple. Who knows best about what the military requires to be operationally effective? It sure aint Congress or the voters.


Look, if you want to go and defend the position that we should make dramatic cuts to the military... if the Pentagon wants to get rid of certain expenses that lawmakers support, who is standing in the way of those cuts you want?

But the fact is that the DoD is more careful with budgeting than other branches of the federal government and our current military budget even with the wars is not really historically high on a per capita basis. It'll come down with peace. The military has already begun downsizing.

Any talk of 'significant cuts' in the military's budget sounds scary, mostly because the military is surprisingly frugal and already downsizes whenever there is peace.

You all seem to act like 'duh! Cut the military; deficit solved!'

[Al B. Sure!]

For the Marine Corps:

http://www.usmc.mil/unit/hqmc/Pages/RestoringbalanceinMarineCorps.aspx

A reduction in force structure from 202,000 to 186,800 when conditions in Afghanistan warrant

[giblets]

How is the military supposed to approach the military budget with any sort of objectivity?

[Wezil]

He only asked for 2. I went above and beyond the call.

I admire your dedication to the task. Nothing half-assed about it.

[DinoDoc]

I admire your dedication to the task. Nothing half-assed about it.

[Al B. Sure!]

How is the military supposed to approach the military budget with any sort of objectivity?

How is Congress?

It's very simple. The military knows what they need to operate effectively. They're experts in their field. Granted, you might think well they're an institution so they'll just keep demanding money but actually, historically, the military has been pretty good with downsizing and being frugal.

We have experts in the Federal Reserve having an effect (of varying degrees) on monetary policy. Isn't defense policy as, if not more, important?

[giblets]

I'm not saying we should ignore what the military thinks. I'm saying they're not the be all, end all in budgetary matters.

[Patroklos]

My big problem is with Exxon-Mobile making over $100 billion per year in profits and all the other majors also making astronomical profits wtf are we subsidizing them? Even if we only save $20-$25 billion per year that's free money so it's a no brainer. Besides, with oil continually going up they have a massive market based incentive to "drill, baby, drill" already so there is no need to put tax payer money into the equation. Either the market price justifies it or it does not besides the massive subsidies have never been proven to actually increase output by a single barrel because there is already such massive profits to be made they would have done so anyway. I say, cut the subsidies and double the royalty payment percent so the tax payers can actually make money instead of losing money on these transactions. There is hundreds of billions of dollars of profits to be made by them by making use of publicly owned resources so instead of giving that money away for nothing (net nothing as royalty payments are smaller then the subsidies given) let the ****ing public actually make some money off of the companies taking publicly owned property. Make the bastards pay because they'll still make so much off the deal they'll still end up doing it anyway.

You understand that there is a difference between profits and profit margin right? Of course you don't.

The physical dollar value of their profits is not really important to what you are talking about. We can cut their subsidies regardless, but you are not supporting that logically.

[Egbert]

How is Congress?

It's very simple. The military knows what they need to operate effectively. They're experts in their field. Granted, you might think well they're an institution so they'll just keep demanding money but actually, historically, the military has been pretty good with downsizing and being frugal.

We have experts in the Federal Reserve having an effect (of varying degrees) on monetary policy. Isn't defense policy as, if not more, important?

Cast your mind back to when you were studying finance. More particularly to the process of setting up a budget for an entity with various departments. Do you let any department (corporate division or whatever) decide how much of the budget they will have? You can't let departments/divisions help themselves whether in business or government. Add up the wants of every department and you can be confident that sum will exceed the money available.

There has to be some dipstick beancounter in the middle of it all saying "no we haven't enough money for that".

[KrazyHorse]

A few points here:

1) Yes, "corporate subsidies" (generally in the form of various tax incentives for specific activities like research&development) are bad
2) On the other hand, corporate taxes in general are extremely distortive, do not raise very much money despite very high marginal rates in the US (due in large part to all the tax incentives) and don't actually have the distributive effects that a lot of people think they do (most estimates of the relevant elasticities find that capital only bears a minority of the tax burden)
3) Given (1) and (2) I am ambivalent about closing tax loopholes/subsidies without a concomitant reduction in the headline rates. On the other hand, closing the loopholes while reducing the rates could easily increase tax hauls while also improving efficiency (no, this isn't a supply-side argument; I'm talking about a simple static analysis, although of course there would be some supply-side effect)

[KrazyHorse]

The Pentagon should be in charge of determining the defense budget since they are the only ones who are intimately aware of how much they need to maintain operational effectiveness and they have a history of being relatively responsible

You're a ****ing idiot.