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Member (Idle past 1436 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: American Budget Cuts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
That $325 billion you want to cut is now buying a lot of food, shoes, education for literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country. And this doesn't count the thousands more that make the food, shoes and education that would not be bought and thus lose their jobs as well. Can one really so cavalierly cause so much pain for the sake of some personal political agenda? But this works just as well as an argument for reducing the deficit by any means, not just cutting the military budget. You either have to cut government spending or raise taxes (cutting consumer spending). Either way, there's a certain amount of borrowed money that you're no longer pumping into the economy. It's not as though any of the overspent money is being thrown into a big pit, it all gets spent one way or another.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Actually a fair bit of military spending is on things that are not needed and will never be used. How many atomic bombs do we need? Stockpiles of armament that have to be disposed of because they have expired are indeed a big pit where money has been thrown. Yes, but people still get paid for making them, and then spend the money, so it's not completely a pit. It is arguably more pit-like than other forms of spending.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
What doesn't do so is the money sent to Saudi Arabia et al. for oil. What little we see of that coming back is in the form of mosques teaching a radical fundamentalist version of Islam. That we could do without. Even with money spent on foreign goods it's arguable that what goes around comes around. But yes, that's quite pit-like. I just looked it up, and apparently we have a bigger trade deficit with Ireland than with Saudi Arabia. Who knew? What the heck are we buying? Potatoes? Guinness? Feckless charm?
How about we build a bunch of nuclear plants instead? I'm with you there. So is Obama.
President Barack Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Tuesday to build the first U.S. nuclear power plant in nearly three decades [...] The government backing will go to help Southern Co build two reactors at a plant in the state of Georgia. The reactors, which some experts estimate will cost $8.8 billion, could be in service in 2016 and 2017. * President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget almost triples U.S. loan guarantees for nuclear power-plant construction, funds development of a new breed of smaller reactors and spends more on breakthrough energy research. * Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The Irish are our friends. They send us Celtic Woman. The Saudis are not our friends. They send us mosques preaching sharia, and wanting to implement it here. The Irish are just more insidious. When we let our guard down, they'll force us into strange acts of leprechaun-worship.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Just how much of the income of those who are productive do you think you and those who think like you can steal? 50%? 75%? 100%? Here's a graph of the top marginal tax rate for the past century.
Note that during the only period since WWII when the rate was lower than it is today, so was the threshold --- down to ~$50,000 in today's money. Today the threshold is seven times higher in real terms.
And have you given any thought to what will happen when those of us who are productive decide we don't want to support you and all the other leaches? No, do tell. Will it involve goosestepping and tiny mustaches?
Does the term, "Who is John Galt" mean anything to you? Yes, he's a fictional character. Back in real life any rich man who decides that he'd rather be poor so long as he can also be useless could (in my opinion, to considerable advantage) be easily replaced by someone who's less of a bloody fool. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
One of the ways that you can recognize when someone is lying about their qualifications is when they can't get the details of the lie right. Liars typically get caught up on the little things: If Barclays bank has interested overseas investors having foreign capital to bail them out rather than getting domestic bailouts from the government then this is indeed a point in favor of Barclays bank.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I did not dispute nuke plants as a option. I also admitted the bias in the green peace article. But if Nuclear power was the golden answer we would have zillions of them by now. Not necessarily. Because building nuclear power plants is not just a pragmatic but also a political question. It could perfectly well be the "golden answer" and not have "zillions of them by now" if people were not irrationally afraid of nuclear power.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Dude, bad information or not 20 years later the place is a radioactive ghost town. Sure. And in order to get Chernobyl to do that they had to deliberately push it to test it to the point of failure. And in order to do that they had to breach thirteen separate rules about how the reactor should be managed. And for that even to be possible they had to have a reactor of that particular design, because if modern nuclear reactors fail they just stop working. Now look up how many deaths in the USA have been caused by nuclear power. Now look up how many deaths have been caused in Pennsylvania alone by coalmining. I don't say that nuclear power is a silver bullet for all our energy problems, but it's certainly worth thinking about.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
There are even alternative fuels - thorium is even more plentiful than uranium, easier to get, and has a better fuel life cycle that results in spent fuel that decays in a few centuries rather than millions of years - not to mention bypassing weapons proliferation concerns. Thorium isn't economic. That's why the US has no thorium reactors. I think they have them in India, where they have more thorium than uranium. I think we should be at least researching thorium reactors for two reasons. First, to get ahead. Second, because apparently we can use thorium reactors to incinerate nuclear waste --- you can put nasty evil nuclear waste in and get low-grade nuclear waste out. Please don't ask me any technical questions about this, this is just what I understand to be true. I may be wrong, and I wouldn't really understand if I'm right, so more research is needed.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I agree. Sad that using radioactive material that produces even more radioactive material that is caustic and poisonous for thousands of years, is our last viable option. We have no choice. I live in Nevada and I would still say that you might as well stick it in Yucca Mountain. I have reservations about that, but they are purely economic, they aren't because I believe that radioactive waste can creep up on me and rape me while I sleep. Yeah, I wish that nuclear reactors didn't produce nuclear waste, but really how paranoid about it should we be?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Ever hear the phrase, "I'm from the Government, I'm here to help." Yes. I believe that it was originated with Ronald Reagan --- and delivered to farmers. Yes, farmers. Those guys. Who would then and would now scream blue murder if the government stopped helping them.
Seriously though, everyone here has a point. We know it is a reality we must live with. But hundreds or even thousands of nuclear plants dotting the country gives me cause for concern. How much time do you spend being concerned about the radioactive isotopes and carcinogens you breathe that are emitted as the result of burning coal? I haven't either, I must admit, but then I'm not the one who's worried. My own plan is to die age 60 of a heart attack.
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