(August 5, 2015 at 10:47 pm)Lek Wrote: What you guy's need to realize is that most Republicans are middle and working class citizens who also want our tax dollars spent well.  

Which makes me wonder why they would vote Republican in the first place. The Republicans spend just as much as the Democrats, but they spend it on bloated, wasteful military projects that we never even end up using or they buy tanks the Army generals themselves say we don't need. This out of control spending is due to both party's recklessness, but for some reason I only hear Republican voters complaining about wasteful spending when it's going to social programs.

Why is it that Republicans whine when tax dollars go to the poor but have no problem with it going to the rich?

The defining question of our times.  Why do poor whites vote against their own interests by voting republican?

(August 6, 2015 at 1:22 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: We have BUPA private hospitals.

Private hospitals exist too in my country, but they usually have public insurance contracts.

(August 6, 2015 at 1:43 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The defining question of our times.  Why do poor whites vote against their own interests by voting republican?

Conservative phenomenon everywhere. The need to get fucked and call for a second helping.

Since when is spending money on Medicare, Medicaid, or welfare and food stamps a waste of money?

I get really tired of idiots painting both parties as wasteful spenders. No, there has been only one party who has held progress hostage using blackmail to protect trickle up economics for the past 30 years. You can only blame Dems for allowing them to be bullied by corporate blackmail, and our midterm voter apathy does not help either.

It is not even close.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/arti...67,00.html

Quote:Sifting through Pentagon data, the CSBA study breaks down the total costs of the war on terrorism as $687 billion for Iraq, $184 billion for Afghanistan and $33 billion for homeland security. By 2018, depending on how many U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq, the total cost is projected to likely be between $1.3 trillion and $1.7 trillion. On the safe assumption that the wars are being waged with borrowed money, interest payments raise the cost by an additional $600 billion through 2018.

As you can see below in the breakdown or percentages of federal spending, most of it goes to social programs which benefit the poor and middle class.  Medicare and social security will go broke unless more money is allocated to them, which is usually the way it goes with federal programs.  




As you can see below defense spending is decreasing under the republican-controlled congress.  Notice how it went rose under the Obama administration with the split congress.

Recent Defense Spending
Defense spending declined in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War and increased in the 2000s during the War on Terror.
Chart 2.32: Recent Defense Spending
Defense spending stood at 6.8 percent of GDP at the height of the Reagan defense buildup. But, beginning even before the breakup of the Soviet Union it began a decline, reaching below 6 percent in 1990, below 4 percent in 1996 and bottoming out at 3.5 percent of GDP in 2001, about half the level of 1985.
But 9/11, the terrorist attack on iconic US buildings in 2001, changed that, and defense spending began a substantial increase in two stages. First, it increased to 4.6 percent by 2005 for the invasion of Iraq, and then to 5.0 percent in 2008 for the the “surge” in Iraq.
Spending increased further to 5.7 percent in 2011 with the stepped up effort in Afghanistan. Defense spending is expected to decline to 4.5 percent of GDP in 2015 and 3.8 percent GDP by 2020.

---

Lek, in case it escaped your notice, Medicaid and Social Security are things that people PAY FOR.  Notice also how your boytoy Bush kept his wars "off budget" so you could have absurd charts like that to make you feel better about being a dick who wants to fuck over the poor while feeding the military industrial complex.

Grow up, son.

And it isn't a defense but an offense budget. 18 percent of all public expenses doesn't strike anyone as ludicrous? Even not considering what min just mentioned. And where's education? How much is that?

(August 6, 2015 at 4:07 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Lek, in case it escaped your notice, Medicaid and Social Security are things that people PAY FOR.  Notice also how your boytoy Bush kept his wars "off budget" so you could have absurd charts like that to make you feel better about being a dick who wants to fuck over the poor while feeding the military industrial complex.

Grow up, son.

People pay for everything the government spends Mini.