Explaining the Democrats????? Success (The Ugly Truth).

[_Analytics]

And?

I put in $3,000, and got back the following:

Military $810.00
Includes $20.48 for Nuclear Weapons

Medicare and Health $642.00
Includes $0.04 for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program

Social Security, Unemployment and Labor $366.00
Includes $17.78 for TANF (Welfare)

Government $135.00
Includes $0.94 for Postal Service

Veterans Benefits $132.00
Includes $10.97 for Education, Training, and Rehab for Veterans

Food and Agriculture $129.00
Includes $80.67 for SNAP (Food Stamps)

Housing and Community $117.00
Includes $10.56 for Disaster Relief

Education $75.00
Includes $0.45 for Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Energy and Environment $57.00
Includes $6.00 for Energy Conservation

Transportation $39.00
Includes $0.32 for High Speed Rail

International Affairs $36.00
Includes $0.31 for Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Science $30.00
Includes $17.70 for Space Flight Research

Interest on Debt $434.00

What we have here then, is $810 for the fundamental function of a legitimate government - the protection of its citizens from national security threat - and, roughly $1,800 eaten by the welfare state, entitlements, social security (which is essentially a welfare program), "government", interest on the debt (which Obama has flung into orbit), and "science," "energy and environment," "transportation," and "education," any of which contain both programs that could be justified, rationally or constitutionally, but all of which are riddled with pork, rent seeking, crony capitalism, and constitutional dubiousness (the departments of education and energy, respectively, shouldn't even exist at all. Nor should the EPA).

I made arbitrary (and generous) cuts to the numbers in some of these, just to be fair and allow some room for legitimate functions here, while taking account of substantial quantities of pure fraud ("Science," for example, is going to contain tens of billions of dollars of government research grants targeted at keeping the AGW gravy train on its rent-seeking and power concentrating tracks ($106.7 billion between 2003 and 2010. 72 billion just since 2008)).

It’s fascinating that you lumped the $132 in veterans’ benefits in with the welfare state rather than with the functions of legitimate government. But anyway, for the sake of argument, let’s grant you the veracity of your philosophical position and claim that national defense is the only legitimate government activity on this list.

Even granting that assumption, I still find your analysis of the federal budget absurdly hypocritical. Why? Because if you are only in favor of programs that can be rationally justified and that aren’t riddled with “pork, rent seeking, crony capitalism, and constitutional dubiousness”, you absolutely must admit that the military industrial complex sucks off of American tax payers hundreds of billions every year in pork and crony capitalism. It’s constitutional dubious because in in order to justify its own existence, the military industrial complex manipulates its puppets in Washington into a state of near-continuous military interventionism around the world when we aren’t in a declared war.

[_Ceeboo]

Hey Droopy

Nice photo of your cult leader. Are you bowing before him now?

Not only do I not bow down before "my cult leader", I didn't even vote for him!


I just thought the post was hilarious!


And I still do!


Peace,
Ceeboo

[_Analytics]

It’s fascinating that you lumped the $132 in veterans’ benefits in with the welfare state rather than with the functions of legitimate government....

...but not surprising, now that I think about it some more. After all, not only are you palpably opposed to workers in private enterprise getting the retirement benefits they are contractually owed, you are also opposed to those benefits being paid to teachers, firemen, and police officers. So it shouldn’t be at all surprising that you consider VA benefits to be unearned and undeserved pork as well.

By the way, happy Veterans Day.

[_Droopy]

Even granting that assumption, I still find your analysis of the federal budget absurdly hypocritical. Why? Because if you are only in favor of programs that can be rationally justified and that aren’t riddled with “pork, rent seeking, crony capitalism, and constitutional dubiousness”, you absolutely must admit that the military industrial complex sucks off of American tax payers hundreds of billions every year in pork and crony capitalism.

That has long been a problem (but a similar and far worse problem exists in the collapsing "green" energy sector. What do you think of that, Analytics?) and I have never supported such (and I don't know where you're getting your "hundreds of billions of dollars" figure. The entire FY 2012 defense budget is about $550 billion, so if "hundreds of billions" are fraud, waste, and abuse, that means that pretty much the entire American military budget is illegitimate. That's actually what I'd expect a Marxist to believe, and want others to believe, but excuse my dubiousness regarding your numbers. American leftists, including Obama, have long wanted to reduce the American military to a skeleton force comprised of potato guns and sling shots, and with the draconian cuts now on the horizon, and the cultural Marxist Left back in power, they will probably get that too).

It’s constitutional dubious because in in order to justify its own existence, the military industrial complex manipulates its puppets in Washington into a state of near-continuous military interventionism around the world when we aren’t in a declared war.

Excuse me but this is gelastic Marxist boilerplate liberally laced with the kind of tin foil that has graced most Marxist conspiracy theories of alleged "capitalist" control of the state since the thirties. The kind of people who actually believe this kind of bosh have no business being in power. Unfortunately, in a free society, national suicide is, indeed, an option.

[_Droopy]

It’s fascinating that you lumped the $132 in veterans’ benefits in with the welfare state rather than with the functions of legitimate government. But anyway, for the sake of argument, let’s grant you the veracity of your philosophical position and claim that national defense is the only legitimate government activity on this list.

I didn't. Had I done so, the number I got would not have been $1,800 (it was actually $1,799), but $1,932. I left that out completely.

[_Droopy]

let’s grant you the veracity of your philosophical position and claim that national defense is the only legitimate government activity on this list.

I never made that claim, and indeed, I contradict it clearly in that post.

[_MeDotOrg]

...The differences between the political mechanisms of ancient Athens and those of America today do not erase the similarities of mentality and sensibility popular rule creates in its citizens. Most important is the way democracy leads to radical egalitarianism: the belief, as Aristotle put it, “that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

...Traditionally democracies have been faulted precisely for this tendency to use the power of the state to redistribute wealth and so erase the most glaring difference among citizens, that between the rich and the poor.

...Of course, people voted for reasons other than economic self-interest and the promise of more benefits to come. But thousands of attack ads turning Romney into the Grinch who wanted to steal the perpetual Christmas of entitlements paid for with other people’s money, along with the promise to make the “millionaires and billionaires” pay their “fair share,” were enough to make millions of voters ignore Obama’s manifest economic malfeasance, even as fiscal disaster looms ever closer. The ancient critics of Athenian democracy wouldn’t be surprised.

...No one, honorentheos, not bc, not me, not any conservative intellectual, pundit, academic, or grassroots activist of which I'm aware (save for some within the inside-the-beltway-conservative pundit culture) has any illusions at this point that rational, civil, serious, critical debate of opposing viewpoints between the Left and those who oppose it is any longer possible.

Your argument begins in ancient Greece, stating that the inherent defect of democracy ("democracy leads to radical egalitarianism") is something which we have been aware of for over 2,000 years. Yet only now, after the re-election of Barack Obama, is it time to confront this defect.

Droopy, what I ask here are not rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't understand your perspective:

Why? Why only now do we confront a defect that has had (with apologies to Karl Marx) the ring of historical inevitability about it for 2,000 years?

Why should we struggle with the ponderous, slow-moving, unwieldy and high-maintenance form of government like democracy? I would answer that democracy is the embodiment of a simple idea: sovereignty resides with the people. But If you believe that the masses, following their basest instincts, will inevitably exercise that sovereignty in a way that leads to the destruction of the state, why bother with that form of government to begin with?

It seems to me that implicit in your view is a profound cynicism about the capacity of people for rational self-government. It's hard for me to understand how someone could believe the United States could be a 'shining city on a hill' and simultaneously be marching, with historical inevitability, towards its own destruction.

If you honestly believe that democracy will inevitably fail because of the base instincts of the masses, why trust the masses with democracy in the first place?

[_Drifting]

Of course, people voted for reasons other than economic self-interest and the promise of more benefits to come. But thousands of attack ads turning Romney into the Grinch who wanted to steal the perpetual Christmas of entitlements paid for with other people’s money, along with the promise to make the “millionaires and billionaires” pay their “fair share,” were enough to make millions of voters ignore Obama’s manifest economic malfeasance, even as fiscal disaster looms ever closer. The ancient critics of Athenian democracy wouldn’t be surprised.

Is that all it took to shatter Romney's credibility in the eyes if the overwhelmingly vast numbers of Americans who voted against him?
A few lousy ads and a bit of scaremonging.

That's a fragile candidacy right there...

[_Analytics]

Even granting that assumption, I still find your analysis of the federal budget absurdly hypocritical. Why? Because if you are only in favor of programs that can be rationally justified and that aren’t riddled with “pork, rent seeking, crony capitalism, and constitutional dubiousness”, you absolutely must admit that the military industrial complex sucks off of American tax payers hundreds of billions every year in pork and crony capitalism.

That has long been a problem (but a similar and far worse problem exists in the collapsing "green" energy sector. What do you think of that, Analytics?) and I have never supported such (and I don't know where you're getting your "hundreds of billions of dollars" figure. The entire FY 2012 defense budget is about $550 billion, so if "hundreds of billions" are fraud, waste, and abuse, that means that pretty much the entire American military budget is illegitimate....

If you include the base budget, “overseas contingency operations”, FBI counter-terrorism, the CIA, the NSA, international affairs, defense-related expenditures from the energy department, homeland security, and defense-related spending by NASA, the total is over $800 billion a year. Throw in VA benefits and interest on money borrowed to pay for various undeclared wars, and the total is well over a trillion every year.

Before world-war II, the military-industrial complex didn't exist. Since then, we feed it hundreds of billions every year. This is in spite of the fact that the biggest threat our nation faces isn't a military attack by another nation, but rather our own spending bankrupting us. Military spending is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Military spending is orders of magnitude bigger than green-energy spending, and whatever alleged problems with crony-capitalism exist in the green-energy sector, the problems with defense crony-capitalism are orders of magnitude larger.

[_honorentheos]

I put in $3,000, and got back the following:
Military...$810.00

Medicare and Health....$642.00

Social Security, Unemployment and Labor...$366.00

Government...$135.00

Veterans Benefits... $132.00

Food and Agriculture...$129.00

Housing and Community...$117.00

Education...$75.00

Energy and Environment...$57.00

Transportation...$39.00

International Affairs...$36.00

Science...$30.00

Interest on Debt...$434.00

What we have here then, is $810 for the fundamental function of a legitimate government - ... and, roughly $1,800 eaten by the welfare state...

For starters, it helps if we keep on topic. The topic, so we remember, is about tax spending and it's distribution among households. Keep your numbers above in mind because they are useful for the discussion.

The Tax Foundation article from 2004 (a Bush year, by the way) cited in your rant is worth looking through. (Link provided in my previous post) In particular I'd like to draw your attention to Figures 30 and 31 on page 70.

Since we're having a discussion where we're supposed to be listening to one anothers points, I'll just ask you: do you think those tables tell us anything worth noting in relation to this topic?

Also, what is the appropriate metric for measuring the effectiveness of tax spending distribution and why? The Tax Foundation suggests one, but I think it's flawed. But I don't want to argue against it if you don't share their view.