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Everyone just glazed right over the point of my post. I am talking about a temporary fix, while we work on both lowering our demmand for oil, and our dependancy on oil from other countries. Yes, the roads will have to work on less money, but I know in NY there are road projects that have been going on for years with little progress (government waste example #1) While road work in Texas that I have seen has made huge progress in less time.
You asked me what useless government programs there are? I already gave you the example of the endowment for the arts-type programs that we subsidize every person who wants to call himself an artist. Other examples? Well, as much as I am all for exporing space, we spend hundreds of billions in trying to get a remote controlled car onto mars to look for signs of water from a couple million years ago.
How about repealing the Davis-Bacon act, which in effect brings the cost of any federal construction projects up about 40%? (ie. the guy that runs a caulking gun on a road project, his cost is determined to be worth $33 an hour in NY, yeah right)
I am not talking purely about useless programs, I am talking about the money given to states that is wasted. We have all heard of the rediculous uses of government funding like $1.5 million for a statue of a Roman god in Alabama. Or $489,000 for ??swine waste management? in North Carolina.
If you think that the government is not wasting our money for useless programs, your are a very uninformed person, but I don't think anyone in here is that stupid... -Nick
"Moore has also accused the American people of being the stupidest, most naive people on the face of the Earth. And after last weekend, he's got the box office numbers to prove it!"
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Quote:
Other examples? Well, as much as I am all for exporing space, we spend hundreds of billions in trying to get a remote controlled car onto mars to look for signs of water from a couple million years ago.
"100s of billions" my ass. Maybe over the last 20 years.
NASA's budget fluctuates between 6 and 8 billion. The Coast Guard (another wholly under-funded government agency) has a bigger budget than they do.
The Mars Rover projects only cost a few hundred million.
What they accomplish with that is money well-spent in my book. They're probably one of the single most efficient government organizations as far as direct results from money invested.
The Endowment for the Arts is just tens of millions a year. A teeny tiny pittance in government terms. And yeah, it sometimes goes to bad use, but more often than not is goes towards the creation of beautiful art that will hopefully be more remembered by future generations than some of the other blights we've put upon the world.
Yes, all that stuff adds up to a bit of money, but it's not nearly as much money as you think it is. Evidenced by my previous post regarding decreasing gasoline taxes in which you thought removing social programs would somehow help. You couldn't save 5 cents a gallon on gas by removing every social program in the country.
Like most hardcore conservatives you think that ending social programs or various other programs (like NASA apparently) will be a huge boon to our budget -- when they make up a TINY portion of the overall federal budget (I don't count Social Security or Medicare budgets, as they are most definitely not going away by choice). No different than the Liberals calling for less military spending who don't think about the implications therein or just how much money that it actually would make.
You want to call for something -- call for less government spending period. I don't hear you, or most hardcore conservatives, complaining about government over-spending, yet we spend more just on Interest on our National Debt than we do on all the social programs in the country combined and then some. And that has absolutely no benefit at all, it's just flushed down the drain.
We overspent more this year than the budget for social programs. Meaning that if you took every last one of them away we'd still not have broke even for the year.
Or go after the huge "Discretionary Spending" black hole of money -- as much as 20% of the federal budget that isn't even 'budgeted' at all.
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Originally posted by sigma:
"100s of billions" my ass. Maybe over the last 20 years.
The Mars Rover projects only cost a few hundred million.
Yes, this rover project cost $400 million, the whole project is budgeted at $600 billion.
Article
Originally posted by sigma:
The Endowment for the Arts is just tens of millions a year. A teeny tiny pittance in government terms. And yeah, it sometimes goes to bad use, but more often than not is goes towards the creation of beautiful art that will hopefully be more remembered by future generations than some of the other blights we've put upon the world.
Nope, sorry, their budget is getting ready to go up to $140 million.
Article 2
Maybe you think that its is money well spent, I don't like the idea of funding artists livings so they can make art for a living. If you can't make a living off of it, its a hobby and you need a real job, and make your art on the side.
Originally posted by sigma:
Yes, all that stuff adds up to a bit of money, but it's not nearly as much money as you think it is. Evidenced by my previous post regarding decreasing gasoline taxes in which you thought removing social programs would somehow help. You couldn't save 5 cents a gallon on gas by removing every social program in the country.
Again, we need to do something right now as gas prices climb to $4/gal in some places!!! You are quite good at bringing up counterpoints to anything and everyting I say, so what do you propose we do about gas prices RIGHT NOW? We are not in a situation in this country to lower our demmand substantially, so what should we do???
Originally posted by sigma:
Like most hardcore conservatives you think that ending social programs or various other programs (like NASA apparently) will be a huge boon to our budget -- when they make up a TINY portion of the overall federal budget (I don't count Social Security or Medicare budgets, as they are most definitely not going away by choice). No different than the Liberals calling for less military spending who don't think about the implications therein or just how much money that it actually would make.
No, I am not calling for the removal of NASA. I think ending social programs will not only lower our budget, but will help to bring our society back from this mentality of relying, and blaming others for our problems. And since you brought it up, I am all for getting rid of social security in the next 10 or so years. Again, goes back to whose responsible for your own life (government, your neighbor, you??)
Originally posted by sigma:
You want to call for something -- call for less government spending period. I don't hear you, or most hardcore conservatives, complaining about government over-spending, yet we spend more just on Interest on our National Debt than we do on all the social programs in the country combined and then some. And that has absolutely no benefit at all, it's just flushed down the drain.
Your damn right I am calling for less spending all around!! Okay, since you love your proof to smack you in the face aparantly...
Originally posted by 99blacksesport:
THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO SPEND LESS MONEY AND LOWER ITS YEARLY BUDGET
Originally posted by sigma:
We overspent more this year than the budget for social programs. Meaning that if you took every last one of them away we'd still not have broke even for the year.
Im not sure exactly what you are saying here, but I think you are saying that we should raise taxes so we can get back to that holy grail of a surplus that we supposedly had under Clinton? Well, if you are, then you need to understand that the government has no way of making money, therefore any 'surplus' they have is because they took too much money in! Clinton did not lower our spending by any means, he just took more money in than he needed to.
Originally posted by sigma:
Or go after the huge "Discretionary Spending" black hole of money -- as much as 20% of the federal budget that isn't even 'budgeted' at all.
Not sure where you get that from, so I can't say anything about that could you show me (and no links to X-file fan's homepages! ) -Nick
"Moore has also accused the American people of being the stupidest, most naive people on the face of the Earth. And after last weekend, he's got the box office numbers to prove it!"
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First, I need to correct myself re: NASA's budget -- it's actually 16 billion, not 6. Quote:
Again, we need to do something right now as gas prices climb to $4/gal in some places!!! You are quite good at bringing up counterpoints to anything and everyting I say, so what do you propose we do about gas prices RIGHT NOW? We are not in a situation in this country to lower our demmand substantially, so what should we do???
Quite frankly -- I don't think there's much that we can do. There is no fix that will even begin to take a noticeable effect on gasoline demand within 20 years.
Throw some Government money (I know you don't want to hear that), or at least larger tax incentives, to get the Big Three to invest in Alternative Fuels -- Real alternatives. Not the ones we have currently in development that use fuel that currently takes more energy for us to create than they would use.
Only when we settle on a fuel can we begin to incent petroleum companies to install fuel sources in a quick manner across the nation.
Reduce our reliance on plastics. We use more petroleum energy every day in the creation of hydrocarbons for plastics use than we do in gasoline.
We're talking a multiple-decade long approach though.
Eliminating the gas tax entirely would only save $0.40/gallon. As you said, we're reacing $4.00/gallon -- that's only 10% decline. That's nothing. The societal and economic impact of removing the social programs you prescribe to make up the difference would be enormous. The price of everything would skyrocket as the minimum wage would have to be adjusted. It's not worth the savingson gas.
Quote:
Maybe you think that its is money well spent, I don't like the idea of funding artists livings so they can make art for a living. If you can't make a living off of it, its a hobby and you need a real job, and make your art on the side.
Artists traditionally don't make a living off their art. Certainly you've heard that only after a artist dies are his painting worth anything.
I'm not a huge art fan either -- but I know that all great societies are remembered as much, or more, for the art that they created than for most everything else they accomplished.
I think it's, largely, a worth-while cause.
Quote:
Im not sure exactly what you are saying here, but I think you are saying that we should raise taxes so we can get back to that holy grail of a surplus that we supposedly had under Clinton? Well, if you are, then you need to understand that the government has no way of making money, therefore any 'surplus' they have is because they took too much money in! Clinton did not lower our spending by any means, he just took more money in than he needed to.
Well, unfortunately, we're in the hole about 10 trillion dollars. The only way to pay that back is to have a surplus.
Without a surplus when you get years like this one, you just increase your debt load. And without a surplus you never pay that back. Meaning you just get more and more in debt.
What I was saying is that we spend more on interest payments alone on our debt than we do on all our social programs combined. Meaning that paying off that debt would have the same fiscal impact as eradicating every social program.
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Originally posted by 99blacksesport:
Nope, sorry, their budget is getting ready to go up to $140 million.
Article 2
Maybe you think that its is money well spent, I don't like the idea of funding artists livings so they can make art for a living. If you can't make a living off of it, its a hobby and you need a real job, and make your art on the side.
Nick, $140 Million is a very, very small percentage of our annual budget. Using that $140 Million to reduce gas taxes wouldn't, I imagine, be even noticeable.
Originally posted by 99blacksesport:
Again, we need to do something right now as gas prices climb to $4/gal in some places!!! You are quite good at bringing up counterpoints to anything and everyting I say, so what do you propose we do about gas prices RIGHT NOW? We are not in a situation in this country to lower our demmand substantially, so what should we do???
We may not as a country be able to do something to substantially lower overall demand but as individuals, we can adjust our lifestyles to minimize the impacts of higher gas prices. That includes not driving when you dont need to, driving a vehicle matched to your needs and keeping your vehicle in good repair to maximize mileage.
For most of us, the increase in gas prices is an irritation at most. I pay more for an iced coffee than I do for a gallon of gas.
Bless our servicemen & women overseas.
L.Cpl Ian Malone, 1st Battalion Irish Guards, R.I.P.
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