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Except that the constitution doesn't state anything about education, and defense accounts for nearly 50% of the federal budget. Cutting all the fat and ineffici

Except that the constitution doesn't state anything about education, and defense accounts for nearly 50% of the federal budget. Cutting all the fat and inefficiency does not address the root problem, health care costs and defense spending. If you don't want huge taxes you can't have a military this size, and I haven't a clue on how to fix health care.

fallentimes 18y ago
Right, which is where it's certainly open to debate. I interpret general welfare to include things like education and infrastructure since virtually everyone benefits from them in some form or another. As for defense...if we focused on "defense" instead of "offense" that 50% could be sliced in half if not quarters. Think of how much money not invading Iraq would have saved us. There's no reason our defense budget needs to larger than the next 25 countries combined. As for healthcare...I'm with you man - not a clue.
helveticaman 18y ago
I agree, but want to underline that the military is pretty efficient. You CAN get fired from the military if you screw up, and compared to the armed forces of other empires, the US armed forces do a pretty good job of kicking ass when there's ass to be kicked, and doing pretty good research (ARPANET, jet travel, Manhattan project).
- jshen 18y ago
  um, have you ever been in the military? I was in the army for 4 years, you can't really get fired. You have to do somethign way over the line to get kicked out. Out of many hundreds of people I knew only a handful got kicked out. The vast majority of those failed drug tests, usually twice. One guy got kicked out for sexually abusing a few women (sneaking into their rooms at night while they were sleeping and ...). And I think I knew one that got kicked out for being too fat (but I knew a lot of people that were too fat and never got kicked out. Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day. We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.

fallentimes 18y ago

Right, which is where it's certainly open to debate. I interpret general welfare to include things like education and infrastructure since virtually everyone benefits from them in some form or another. As for defense...if we focused on "defense" instead of "offense" that 50% could be sliced in half if not quarters. Think of how much money not invading Iraq would have saved us. There's no reason our defense budget needs to larger than the next 25 countries combined. As for healthcare...I'm with you man - not a clue.

helveticaman 18y ago

I agree, but want to underline that the military is pretty efficient. You CAN get fired from the military if you screw up, and compared to the armed forces of other empires, the US armed forces do a pretty good job of kicking ass when there's ass to be kicked, and doing pretty good research (ARPANET, jet travel, Manhattan project).

jshen 18y ago
um, have you ever been in the military? I was in the army for 4 years, you can't really get fired. You have to do somethign way over the line to get kicked out. Out of many hundreds of people I knew only a handful got kicked out. The vast majority of those failed drug tests, usually twice. One guy got kicked out for sexually abusing a few women (sneaking into their rooms at night while they were sleeping and ...). And I think I knew one that got kicked out for being too fat (but I knew a lot of people that were too fat and never got kicked out. Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day. We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.