Breaking out of the current frustratingly slow growth in the developed world requires a blend of short-term stimulus and longer-term restraint. Unfortunately, in Europe and the United States, we have been following these policies in reverse -- constraining public-sector spending in the near term while doing nothing effective to prevent deficits in the future.In the United States, cuts in public-sector spending have caused the loss of 550,000 public-sector jobs -- think teachers, police, and firefighters -- since January 2009, adding to the raw unemployment numbers and removing the multiplier effect that takes place when employees spend their paychecks. The result: Despite gaining private-sector jobs every month for the past 21 months as of November, we have been badly hurt by reduced public-sector spending, which has cut jobs and economic growth.
Yet my Republican colleagues have insisted on retaining all of George W. Bush's tax cuts, thus all but guaranteeing that future revenues will continue to fall far short of what is necessary to reduce U.S. debt and create the conditions for a strong recovery.
One major change that can reverse this: a substantial reduction in America's military spending. In the current fiscal year, the United States is spending upwards of $650 billion on its military, including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is far more than it spends on Medicare and, more importantly, considerably in excess of what is required for America's legitimate national security needs. Read more.....
$1.2 trillion spent for all federal welfare spending. ABout $400 billion for defense spending (not counting the war which we could stop tomorrow if we wanted to). The effect of cutting welfare spending to $0 would be a lot of people will have to get jobs and/or depend on family for help. Probably the best thing that could happen to them and the taxpayer. The effect of cutting spending is that it increases the likelyhood of war. The cost of a war in lives and dollars is just too great to risk cutting our defense. I can only conlcude that anyone who really believes cutting defense is a good idea is either naive or wants war. My advice to anyone who advocates cutting defense spending is they must spend 6 months living on the street in Detroit. If they survive that and still think cutting defense is a good idea then they are terminally stupid and shouldn't be listened to.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid that cutting defense expenditures is not possible not because of security threats but because of economic interests of these companies. If you look at their political contributions it becomes clear ( http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=D )
ReplyDeleteI am not against military spending, but I consider current US defense expenditures to be nontransparent and inefficient.
Yeah, Lets go with austerity like the EU. Then all those defense dollars can be spent at home killing americans as they riot in the streets.
ReplyDeleteBOYZ NEED TO LOOSE THE TOYS!!!
ReplyDeleteYou obviously don't know what communism is idiot. But let's keep killing people who don't even know what century it is. That will make us safe for sure. Genius.
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