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I wasn't trying to refute your larger point that quoting some arbitrary part of a government's total % of GDP spending is mostly meaningless. I was saying that

by avar 8y ago

I wasn't trying to refute your larger point that quoting some arbitrary part of a government's total % of GDP spending is mostly meaningless. I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong, because that part of the budget is meaningfully broken down into discretionary and non-discretionary spending. You can decide to scale active military personnel up and down, you can't (as easily) decide to stop paying military pensions. > [...]defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to do[...] So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task.

rayiner 8y ago
> I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong In the above, the "discretionary" qualifier is being applied to "federal spending" not "military spending." > So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task. The upstream comment is arguing that too much is being spent on defense by pointing to defense spending being a high percentage of discretionary federal spending. It is meaningful to discuss whether too much is being spent on the military. But it's misleading to make that argument by pointing out that the part of the government that's meant to provide for defense (and little else) spends a large fraction of its budget on defense. It's like the statement that "44% of Americans pay no federal income tax." That statement is technically true, but calculated to mislead because it ignores that most of the total tax burden is not "federal income tax." Likewise, more than 80% of total governmental spending is not "federal discretionary spending."

by avar 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

> I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong In the above, the "discretionary" qualifier is being applied to "federal spending" not "military spending." > So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task. The upstream comment is arguing that too much is being spent on defense by pointing to defense spending being a high percentage of discretionary federal spending. It is meaningful to discuss whether too much is being spent on the military. But it's misleading to make that argument by pointing out that the part of the government that's meant to provide for defense (and little else) spends a large fraction of its budget on defense. It's like the statement that "44% of Americans pay no federal income tax." That statement is technically true, but calculated to mislead because it ignores that most of the total tax burden is not "federal income tax." Likewise, more than 80% of total governmental spending is not "federal discretionary spending."