The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Please Read: The choice 2012

If we spent the entire defense budget on the economy, in the for. Of tax cuts and regulatory roll backs, yes we would destroy their economy and win that fight. We would also weaken ourselves to the point that they could just invade and be done with the money games.

that's why I argue over that 800 a month.

I'm not saying defense couldn't use a cut, but that should come in the form of stopping operations in the Mideast. In the meantime, for our economy, the government can't spend its way to fixing the economy. That's idiotic. They need to cut taxes on businesses and ease some of the stupid EPA regulations. That will encourage new business, the return of manufacturing, and that will mean more jobs.

How likely do you thin one nuclear-armed country going to invade another nuclear-armed country? Even Khrushchev blinked.

Personally I wouldn't like to rely solely on those to deter them. They could take a few hits from nukes over there and keep on keeping on. We need conventional might to back up the WMD cards.

I think that the Chinese don't regard human life the way we do, at least those that make decisions. What's a few million people to them if they net the continental united states? They have 1 billion people living there.

Well, 1T/yr is not needed to defend against China.

Even ignoring nukes for a second, because its always possible for some future tech or situation to nullify them anyhow...... (not talking tomorrow, just in general)

China has a lot of people. China can make a huge army. However, China has thousands of miles of ocean between us and them. The idea that they could invade us is a nonstarter.

Nor would they want to.

If they were to pick a fight of that nature with the Anglos it would be with Australia, because they have lots of arable land with relatively few people, and its a lot closer.

Anyhow, the point is you can maintain a huge defence - and focus on important and relevant systems like navies and fighter planes and missiles and such - you dont need to maintain 10 Divisions of Heavy Armour ready to be used as an occupying force for whichever country we decide to topple tomorrow.

Dont forget China sit really close to Sibera, and that is a nice massive resource rich region.

I agree they would have alot of ocean to cover to invade. It would be unlikely, but so was the attack on Pearl. I also firmly believe in "better to have and not need than to need and not have" and I can tell you it usually works out in my favor. That being said, who is allied with Australia? So even if the Chinese were to go for the closer target, we'd still end up putting boots on the ground.

So in conclusion, is 1 trillion a little excessive? Yes. Does it need to be cut? Yes. Should we be wary of how much we cut? Absolutely.

Actually the attack on PH was projected pretty well, but in any case the point was we could cut a few hundred B - because we dont need a massive occupying force on standby if we simply stop invading other countries.

Any war China engaged in that we had any reason to care about, would be waged with boats and planes etc

I am glad we all agreed that cutting defense is more reasonable and cost-effective approach to reducing deficit than trying to squeeze water out of the stone by cutting basic welfare programs.

Medicare, medicare, social security (all welfare imo) = 1.6T
welfare = .47T
military = .92T

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2011_4.html

so yeah. we can probably cut our defense budget in half and defend the US, but we should cut welfare by half as well

that would add up the about 1.5T. almost enough to balance the budget!

Throw in cut corporate welfare by half into the pot and I would agree on ideological lines.

Problem is that doing so all but guaranteed to fuck the economy. Huge cuts during anemic economy will produce another recession. Huge cuts to welfare during high unemployment will fuck over tons of people. Huge cuts to military will produce even more unemployed.

Sadly, it is not as simple as "lets just cut all of it".

Best approach to cuts is to analyze how much of each dollar is get reinvested into economy (1..2..3 before Derid rages about Keynesian economics). Welfare is generally 100% spent in US. Military sending is spent as salary, but more so as contracts. There are procurement requirements for US-made, but not for everything. So I'd guess it is anywhere between 50% to 75% spent in US. Corporate tax cuts are all get reinvested overseas, I'd guess as little as 25% of it ends up stimulating US economy.

Approach I would like to see is minimal cuts to welfare (mostly drug screening and such), moderate cuts to Defense budget (mostly Army), severe cuts to all corporate welfare, end of 1% tax cuts.

Then take some of this freed capital and create tax breaks to any business that employs US workers and penalize outsourcing (i.e. if job is outsourced and resulted in a layoff you pay a penalty).

Regardless of the approach it has to be bipartisan. Ryan/Romney are incapable of bipartisanship. Obama isn't much better, but at least we only have him for only 4 more years, not 8.