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I understand folks getting upset because of either ~$800m worth of DoD incompetence or ~$800m of intelligence 'black budget' funds diversion. But folks should

by malchow 11y ago

I understand folks getting upset because of either ~$800m worth of DoD incompetence or ~$800m of intelligence 'black budget' funds diversion. But folks should not forget that the entire DoD spend in the 2015 federal budget was a mere $620.5b. Compare that to Social Security + Medicare + Welfare. Those totaled $1,918.5b. That's 3x the entire Defense budget. That's where taxes are going.[1] At least DoD has to field tanks and submarines and carriers. The other guys? They move money around for a living. Be more worried about the size and propensity for graft there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_bud...

newman314 11y ago
And it's still $600+ bil. I question the need for that much military spending. And in before, the "because jobs" argument. There are plenty of other opportunities to create jobs other than military spending. Fixing our infrastructure for instance. Also, you aren't accounting for three letter agency spending...
- newman314 11y ago
  And while I'm on a roll, I wonder why there isn't a bigger fuss made over corporate taxes for large businesses vs. income tax. I don't get to take advantage of the Double Dutch etc. like a corporation would to pay much lower effective taxes. Sure seems like corporate personhood is has all the upside and none of the downside.
  - FD3SA 11y ago
    I struggle to understand why you've been downvoted for this. Perhaps HN has finally become the bastion of neo-oligarchs it purports to train? It's all high and mighty to speak of taxes, but as the esteemed commenter above states, they mostly come from the wage slaves, not the capitaled elite.
    - newman314 11y ago
      Thanks for pointing out the down vote. The thoughts I expressed above seem logical and clear to me yet I've seen very little discussion around this subject. For some reason, it seems to me that people find it acceptable for corporations to use every means possible to pay less. I sure would like the option of not paying taxes on overseas income. But yet the US government is intent on taxing all personal income regardless of locale. How is that fair or ok?
  - morgante 11y ago
    The earnings of corporations are eventually taxed. I don't see why they should be doubly taxed. If I go and perform a job, I will pay income taxes on it. If I go and hire a bunch of people, form a corporation, and perform a job, we will pay both corporate taxes and income taxes. That doesn't make sense to me and I can understand why companies go to great lengths to avoid it.
    - imgabe 11y ago
      The portion that is subject to income taxes (employee salaries) is not subject to corporate taxes. Salaries are a cost for the company and only the profits are subject to corporate income tax.
      - morgante 11y ago
        I misspoke by attributing the double taxation on earnings to "income taxes." You're right that the portion subject to income taxes is a cost, not profit. I meant the taxation of dividends, which are doubly taxed.
        newman314 11y ago
        Corporate profits are left overseas and not taxed/taxed at a very low level. You see this with Apple, Google, Medtronic etc. Taxation of dividends is double taxed if you could once to the corporation and once to the individual. Avoidance of taxation of dividends (which only a subset of companies do) is not why these corporations go to such lengths to avoid paying taxes. They do it because they don't want their profits taxed. That's my beef.
jghn 11y ago
Note that there's a lot of money spent beyond the DoD budget. As an example: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/total-us-national-security-spending.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/...
buzzdenver 11y ago
> Social Security + Medicare + Welfare. Those totaled $1,918.5b. That's 3x the entire Defense budget. That's where taxes are going. Yeah, those other guys just pay old people's pensions and health insurance (that they're been saving up for), with the occasional helping of folks who would go hungry otherwise.
- newman314 11y ago
  I'd divert some of that military spending if it means we finally get single payer healthcare. Basic healthcare can not and must not be for profit. It's crazy that it's not considered important enough to be a basic human right in 2015. Better healthcare for all also means less emergency room visits etc.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I think if you also added everything that individuals, families, and employers are paying for health insurance to the single-payer pool of taxes, the funding picture wouldn't look nearly so difficult. Sure, "taxes" go up, but we should end up with more money in our pockets in the end because we stop paying for insurance and uncovered medical expenses.
    - mgkimsal 11y ago
      I would have thought an increase in FICA by 2-3%, plus raising the FICA ceiling, would have gone a long way towards covering whatever the bill would be. As it is, for my family, we're paying an extra $5k/year for essentially the same high deductible plan we had 3 years ago. Paying that by being forced in to private insurance feels wrong - paying it via FICA (or some other more general tax) feels easier. There's still 10s of millions who have not bought in to private insurance, because the costs are still too high for them (or they opt out for other reasons), so we're still left with millions uninsured but many people paying more. "Health insurance" != "health care service" which has been the biggest problem in the debate for years.
gohrt 11y ago
Are you saying that 30% of the social welfare budget is trivial? Or that paying people to build tools of destruction+pollution is better that paying people to do nothing?
gech 11y ago
You'd have the elderly eat cat food.
- malchow 11y ago
  Are you denigrating the good middle-class Americans working honest jobs in our cat food manufacturing plants!?
tstactplsignore 11y ago
That's 1,918 billion spent on supporting families on every street, literally saving tens of thousands of lives of every day folk every year, ensuring safe retirement for millions, putting money back into the economy, and putting people back on their feet versus a "mere" 620 billion spent on a needlessly large program which kills civilians around the world and becomes a tool to be used in geopolitical engagments that arguably make our citizens more unsafe. That mere 620 billion is more than the next 7 largest millitaries spend combined. I'm not saying these programs are perfect (single payer and basic income would probably save lives and money), or that there is no need for millitary spending, but it's scary how out of touch you are to be incapable of realizing why people would be upset with 620 billion going towards killing people and not with 1,918 billion going towards saving and empowering them. Cutting defense spending in half, as unthinkable as that is in the current dominant neoconservative political climate, could free up money for rebuilding infrastructure, doubling the budgets of NSF, NIH, DOE, and NASA, and so on.
- malchow 11y ago
  Actually, the main objective of the DoD is preserving a general liberal-democratic post-war order, one which persists only because of a balletic balancing of forces. You may have policy or ideological disagreements with particular episodes or theaters, but to condemn the DoD as "620 billion going towards killing people" is. . . dumb. Or unconsidered, to be more charitable. And there's evidence that these welfare programs you seem to like are far more inhumane than they are helpful. Remember: it isn't manna from heaven. It's money from income earners. (Not "the rich," remember: it's work that is taxed, not wealth.) And economies have overcome many revolutions, from iron to industrial, without these programs. Do you have a principled reason why the information age is any different?
  - BuckRogers 11y ago
    It's rare to see a more right wing opinion being dictated in a way that is thoughtful or halfway intelligent. Yours is beyond halfway and I'm being serious.. good post. To answer your question, we need these programs because just 100 years ago some people couldn't read and write. With public education K-12 and public universities, I'm much better off than my own family 100 years ago, before the gov't started these social programs. I'm a product of public education all the way through, and I'm very thankful as it was subsidized by others. I know the program works, and I'm happy to support domestic spending. I'm in agreement with the parent though that offensive military spending (which standing armies always leads to) is flat out a bad idea and wrong[0]. My great grandfather served in WW1 in the trenches of France, fighting our homeland (Germany). His son-in-law, my grandfather, was shot multiple times over Germany in WW2 by flak as a gunner in a B24 in the Army Air Corp. He flew enough missions that his chance of surviving the war was 10%. The other was a Marine in the Pacific. But we as a family 'serve' no longer. I changed my mind about going to Iraq when one of my grandfathers told me we had 'no business being over there'. And the other said flat out, if the military comes for me, that I'm to go to Canada. I would never disobey those men which I respected so much. So for me, the principled reason would be just looking at education alone, it makes a better world for all of us. Better quality of life, more opportunities, and an advanced economy. [0]http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
SapphireSun 11y ago
I think when you put it in perspective like that it's STILL stunning. 800m is a sizable fraction of the DoD budget keeping in mind that the other stuff is maintaining a worldwide military presence on land sea and air and 800m went to a gas station.
alex_young 11y ago
Where are you getting $1.9T? The numbers you cited don't seem to back that up. Social security was $857B, but is entirely self funded through the payroll tax, Medicare was $519B, and the rest of the social safety net programs were $370B[1]. Also, I would quibble about the defense number. Missing appear to be $151B for veterans affairs (part of the price tag for our wars), and the interest on debt from past wars makes up the bulk of our interest payments of $223B. [1]http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...
heartbreak 11y ago
You summed up three budgets and then say that it's 3x bigger than another budget. Really now.

by malchow 11y ago

newman314 11y ago

And it's still $600+ bil. I question the need for that much military spending. And in before, the "because jobs" argument. There are plenty of other opportunities to create jobs other than military spending. Fixing our infrastructure for instance. Also, you aren't accounting for three letter agency spending...

newman314 11y ago
And while I'm on a roll, I wonder why there isn't a bigger fuss made over corporate taxes for large businesses vs. income tax. I don't get to take advantage of the Double Dutch etc. like a corporation would to pay much lower effective taxes. Sure seems like corporate personhood is has all the upside and none of the downside.
- FD3SA 11y ago
  I struggle to understand why you've been downvoted for this. Perhaps HN has finally become the bastion of neo-oligarchs it purports to train? It's all high and mighty to speak of taxes, but as the esteemed commenter above states, they mostly come from the wage slaves, not the capitaled elite.
  - newman314 11y ago
    Thanks for pointing out the down vote. The thoughts I expressed above seem logical and clear to me yet I've seen very little discussion around this subject. For some reason, it seems to me that people find it acceptable for corporations to use every means possible to pay less. I sure would like the option of not paying taxes on overseas income. But yet the US government is intent on taxing all personal income regardless of locale. How is that fair or ok?
- morgante 11y ago
  The earnings of corporations are eventually taxed. I don't see why they should be doubly taxed. If I go and perform a job, I will pay income taxes on it. If I go and hire a bunch of people, form a corporation, and perform a job, we will pay both corporate taxes and income taxes. That doesn't make sense to me and I can understand why companies go to great lengths to avoid it.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    The portion that is subject to income taxes (employee salaries) is not subject to corporate taxes. Salaries are a cost for the company and only the profits are subject to corporate income tax.
    - morgante 11y ago
      I misspoke by attributing the double taxation on earnings to "income taxes." You're right that the portion subject to income taxes is a cost, not profit. I meant the taxation of dividends, which are doubly taxed.
      - newman314 11y ago
        Corporate profits are left overseas and not taxed/taxed at a very low level. You see this with Apple, Google, Medtronic etc. Taxation of dividends is double taxed if you could once to the corporation and once to the individual. Avoidance of taxation of dividends (which only a subset of companies do) is not why these corporations go to such lengths to avoid paying taxes. They do it because they don't want their profits taxed. That's my beef.

jghn 11y ago

Note that there's a lot of money spent beyond the DoD budget. As an example: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/total-us-national-security-spending.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/...

buzzdenver 11y ago

> Social Security + Medicare + Welfare. Those totaled $1,918.5b. That's 3x the entire Defense budget. That's where taxes are going. Yeah, those other guys just pay old people's pensions and health insurance (that they're been saving up for), with the occasional helping of folks who would go hungry otherwise.

newman314 11y ago
I'd divert some of that military spending if it means we finally get single payer healthcare. Basic healthcare can not and must not be for profit. It's crazy that it's not considered important enough to be a basic human right in 2015. Better healthcare for all also means less emergency room visits etc.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I think if you also added everything that individuals, families, and employers are paying for health insurance to the single-payer pool of taxes, the funding picture wouldn't look nearly so difficult. Sure, "taxes" go up, but we should end up with more money in our pockets in the end because we stop paying for insurance and uncovered medical expenses.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    I would have thought an increase in FICA by 2-3%, plus raising the FICA ceiling, would have gone a long way towards covering whatever the bill would be. As it is, for my family, we're paying an extra $5k/year for essentially the same high deductible plan we had 3 years ago. Paying that by being forced in to private insurance feels wrong - paying it via FICA (or some other more general tax) feels easier. There's still 10s of millions who have not bought in to private insurance, because the costs are still too high for them (or they opt out for other reasons), so we're still left with millions uninsured but many people paying more. "Health insurance" != "health care service" which has been the biggest problem in the debate for years.

gohrt 11y ago

Are you saying that 30% of the social welfare budget is trivial? Or that paying people to build tools of destruction+pollution is better that paying people to do nothing?

gech 11y ago

You'd have the elderly eat cat food.

malchow 11y ago
Are you denigrating the good middle-class Americans working honest jobs in our cat food manufacturing plants!?

tstactplsignore 11y ago

That's 1,918 billion spent on supporting families on every street, literally saving tens of thousands of lives of every day folk every year, ensuring safe retirement for millions, putting money back into the economy, and putting people back on their feet versus a "mere" 620 billion spent on a needlessly large program which kills civilians around the world and becomes a tool to be used in geopolitical engagments that arguably make our citizens more unsafe. That mere 620 billion is more than the next 7 largest millitaries spend combined. I'm not saying these programs are perfect (single payer and basic income would probably save lives and money), or that there is no need for millitary spending, but it's scary how out of touch you are to be incapable of realizing why people would be upset with 620 billion going towards killing people and not with 1,918 billion going towards saving and empowering them. Cutting defense spending in half, as unthinkable as that is in the current dominant neoconservative political climate, could free up money for rebuilding infrastructure, doubling the budgets of NSF, NIH, DOE, and NASA, and so on.

malchow 11y ago
Actually, the main objective of the DoD is preserving a general liberal-democratic post-war order, one which persists only because of a balletic balancing of forces. You may have policy or ideological disagreements with particular episodes or theaters, but to condemn the DoD as "620 billion going towards killing people" is. . . dumb. Or unconsidered, to be more charitable. And there's evidence that these welfare programs you seem to like are far more inhumane than they are helpful. Remember: it isn't manna from heaven. It's money from income earners. (Not "the rich," remember: it's work that is taxed, not wealth.) And economies have overcome many revolutions, from iron to industrial, without these programs. Do you have a principled reason why the information age is any different?
- BuckRogers 11y ago
  It's rare to see a more right wing opinion being dictated in a way that is thoughtful or halfway intelligent. Yours is beyond halfway and I'm being serious.. good post. To answer your question, we need these programs because just 100 years ago some people couldn't read and write. With public education K-12 and public universities, I'm much better off than my own family 100 years ago, before the gov't started these social programs. I'm a product of public education all the way through, and I'm very thankful as it was subsidized by others. I know the program works, and I'm happy to support domestic spending. I'm in agreement with the parent though that offensive military spending (which standing armies always leads to) is flat out a bad idea and wrong[0]. My great grandfather served in WW1 in the trenches of France, fighting our homeland (Germany). His son-in-law, my grandfather, was shot multiple times over Germany in WW2 by flak as a gunner in a B24 in the Army Air Corp. He flew enough missions that his chance of surviving the war was 10%. The other was a Marine in the Pacific. But we as a family 'serve' no longer. I changed my mind about going to Iraq when one of my grandfathers told me we had 'no business being over there'. And the other said flat out, if the military comes for me, that I'm to go to Canada. I would never disobey those men which I respected so much. So for me, the principled reason would be just looking at education alone, it makes a better world for all of us. Better quality of life, more opportunities, and an advanced economy. [0]http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

SapphireSun 11y ago

I think when you put it in perspective like that it's STILL stunning. 800m is a sizable fraction of the DoD budget keeping in mind that the other stuff is maintaining a worldwide military presence on land sea and air and 800m went to a gas station.

alex_young 11y ago

Where are you getting $1.9T? The numbers you cited don't seem to back that up. Social security was $857B, but is entirely self funded through the payroll tax, Medicare was $519B, and the rest of the social safety net programs were $370B[1]. Also, I would quibble about the defense number. Missing appear to be $151B for veterans affairs (part of the price tag for our wars), and the interest on debt from past wars makes up the bulk of our interest payments of $223B. [1]http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...

heartbreak 11y ago

You summed up three budgets and then say that it's 3x bigger than another budget. Really now.