We don't spend almost what the world does combined on entitlements, and most of that is paid by the people themselves for the services they receive. With Military spending, we don't tax for most of it, we take much of it from the funds payed into SS and put the rest on the national debt.
you are mistaken to assume that all borrowing goes first to military spending - Medicare draws heavily from the General Fund as well. furthermore, (again) Medicare is currently slated to collapse within the decade due to spiraling expenditures. We could cut literally every dollar from the DOD and we still could not save Medicare in it's current form. There is alot of efficiencies we could find in the DOD - we could put our military on HSA's as Indiana did, for example; or offer TSP matches instead of pensions. But even the President now agrees there is no way to tax our way to paying for Medicare.
That is why for the first time in our history we were able to give the rich tax cuts at the same time we were fighting two wars.
revenue
increased after those tax cuts, the revenue paid by the
rich increased after both of those tax cuts, and the
share of revenue shouldered by the rich
increased after both of those tax cuts. You seem to have "tax rates" confused with "revenue".
Ain't gonna happen. The seniors are the only demographic that has carried the GOP, without them they cannot win elections. That is why the GOP popularity immediately dropped when seniors learned the details of Ryan's plan.
and they seem to have liked the President's even worse. Plurality polls in favor of the Ryan Plan. Probably because they realize that the President will cut benefits for current Seniors, whereas the Ryan Plan only changes the program for those 54 and below.
Though depending on how long it takes to enact it, that may have to change. Our window of time is shrinking rapidly.
That we need to do, is the reverse of what created the SS problem. We need to drastically cut military spending and use that to repay the money taken from SS for future payments
we do not have the ability to do this. Again, if we literally cut every single dollar from the DOD, it still does not keep Social Security and Medicare alive as they are currently structured.
If more is needed raise the FICA cap as needed since those are the ones that got the biggest tax break that was enabled by taking money from the SS trust fund.
and that doesn't get us there either. As even the AARP and the President is now willing to admit.
And where you cut spending first would be where you have the biggest waste. That is the military.
that is incorrect. the biggest waste we have is in Medicare, where fraud is an entire industry. Furthermore, once you start cutting Defense to the point where they can no longer take a forward leaning posture, you run into all kinds of ugly economy-destroying secondary effects.
When that wasteful spending is cut, we can look at other less wasteful spending if you wish. If tax cuts created jobs we wouldn't have the unemployment rate we do.
tax cuts are not one-stop-shopping; but the fact is that the proposed hikes in tax rates and the proposed hikes in regulatory burdens is indeed a major reason why we have the unemployment rate that we do.
Sorry, this has been pedaled for 30 years and trickle down economics has not worked out for us. We are not falling for it any longer.
to my knowledge no one has ever argued for anything called "trickle down" economics. But in fact over the past 30 years we have seen massive explosions in wealth as nations across the globe have liberated their economies and lowered their tax rates.
I described the solution above.
no, you didn't. I might as well suggest we pay for the DOD by cutting foriegn aid or the Department of Education.
That is why we will need to start repaying the SS trust fund
the SS Trust Fund will never be repayed. There isn't enough money in
any budget for us to pay off our unfunded liabilities. There isn't enough money in the
world for us to pay off our unfunded liabilities. Our current budget assumes that by 2021 the world will be willing to turn over no less than
20% of it's GDP to fund our entitlements. That is not happening.
from cutting wasteful military spending and increasing the FICA cap as necessary. You keep forgetting it took 30 years to get our debt where it is, it is probably going to take that long to get it down.
probably.
everyone from Barack Obama to Bill Clinton to Paul Ryan to Ron Paul agree that it's the entitlements that drive our debt past the point where we become Greece. Cutting military spending to pay for it all is an aged hippy's pipe dream - simple back-of-the-envelope math reveals it to be a joke.
That is what is being discussed today by our legislators. Ultimately, the voters will decide, as it should be.
indeed.
Please name some other industrialized nations where the market approach to health care costs is working well?
:shrug: Indiana seems to have done pretty well for itself - they are
lowering costs while the rest of the nations' is jumping up rapidly.
I agree, the people will decide. We all agree we are spending too much, we just have different priorities and different perspectives of what is wasteful.
at this point it's not even a matter of priority. it's a matter of simple math. DOD spending grows geometrically; Entitlement spending grows exponentially.
But military spending and the current tax rates aren't going to destroy our economy. Entitlement spending is.
