All but 8 Senators vote for 700 billion dollar military spending increase

SpamYouToDeath

I asked for a, Custom Rank and, Learned My Lesson.
15 Year Member
You can misinterpret the theory or apply its lessons incorrectly, but microeconomic theory is not wrong. That's like saying you can have round squares.

I meant "wrong" in the sense that any theory is wrong. It's insufficient to explain the observed behavior. In this case, it's insufficient to explain why things like roads, schools, and hospitals don't work when you privatize them.

To get back on topic: spending money to guarantee everyone's medical care would certainly be a better use of taxes than our current military spending. There's no way we're getting our money's worth out of the defense budget right now. Diabetes probably killed 1000 times more Americans than terrorism last year, but we're not lining up to fight that.
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
None of these things have ever been truly "privatized" in the modern world. Today thst word is code for fascism, not the free market. All of your arguments proceed from false premises.

And I'm against all military spending increases, so you're preaching to the choir there.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Belief is the death of intelligence.

The free market can never fail. It can only be failed.

True communism has never been tried.

No true Scotsman...
 

greedostick

Obsessed Neo-Fan
15 Year Member
We spend more on our military than most other industrialized countries combined. And then we claim we can't afford to provide healthcare to everyone in the country. Oh, and teachers have to buy pencils for their classrooms.

A solid military is more important than healthcare.

The problem with healthcare, and medicine in general, is that there are no laws in effect to keep pharmaceutical companies and hospitals from charging absurd amounts. You can buy prescription "A" in mexico for a few dollars, but in the USA prescription "A" is hundreds. You know they're making 99.5% profit off most prescriptions. Take the epipen for example. Someone who is a college graduate, and works in a good job can pay $280.00 for a prescription, but someone with no education can get it for $40.00. Our hospital charges $700.00 for an EKG. It's a 1 minute test. A stay in our ICU I heard is 20k a day. If you're a level 1 trauma, and go there, we're probably talking about a 200k visit or more. I won't even get into the amount of people who are illegal residents, that rack up hospital bills, and receive HCAP charity benefits, that sometimes pay 100% of their bills for several months. So then they come in and rack up the largest bill possible. I work in a registration office, which is shared with our financial advocates, and I would say easily 3 or 4 out of every 5 people getting financial help with bills are illegal or here on a green card.

Also, PLENTY of people are getting free healthcare. It's called Molina, Medicaid, and Caresource. Problem is that people getting it are usually just lazy piles of useless waste that leech off society. If those services were only made available to those who actually needed it, like the truly disabled, and MRDD, then it would be a great service. But the vast majority of those people have "depression", and don't work. Or popped out 5 kids in their 20's and don't work.

To some extent, most people have control over their healthcare. They can not sit on the couch all day, exercise, adn eat right, instead of eating fast food every day and smoking. If people actually took care of themselves, healthcare would not be so much an issue.

I personally am all for a strong military right now. Things seems to be getting worse on a daily basis, and have since 911.

but yeah, school should be free. It's one of the things that makes the most sense. If everyone was educated, most problems, wouldn't be a problem. Or at least not to the degree they are.
 
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SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Get a load of this discussion and tell me people, individually or in groups, behave rationally, or that we can quantify "utility," or even identify it.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
To some extent, most people have control over their healthcare. They can not sit on the couch all day, exercise, adn eat right, instead of eating fast food every day and smoking. If people actually took care of themselves, healthcare would not be so much an issue.

I personally am all for a strong military right now. Things seems to be getting worse on a daily basis, and have since 911.

Imagine the USA as a diabetic on a couch. Instead of "strengthening the military," he's "upping his doughnut intake." He's been doing this awhile, but man, he just can't get enough of those doughnuts. If anything, he's only gotten hungrier ever since the diagnosis.
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
The free market can never fail. It can only be failed.

True communism has never been tried.

No true Scotsman...

The no true Scotsman fallacy only applies when someone refuses to define the parameters of a "true Scotsman" or moves the goalpost after the fact.

A truly free market is very easy to define and it's very easy to verify that we do not have one.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
The no true Scotsman fallacy only applies when someone refuses to define the parameters of a "true Scotsman" or moves the goalpost after the fact.

A truly free market is very easy to define and it's very easy to verify that we do not have one.

You can't, just as easily, verify that true communism hasn't really been tried?
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
You can't, just as easily, verify that true communism hasn't really been tried?

Communism fails on its own premise. Yoi don't have to verify that it doesn't work; all you have to do is logically analyze its tenets and their implications.

Communism is the collective ownership of the means of production enforced by a totalitarian government. If there is only one true provider of goods and services (the state), there can be no market prices. And without market prices there can be no economic calculation, which means it is impossible for resources to be directed to their most productive uses.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Shakers weren't true communists. Sorry, it's never been tried!
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Communism fails on its own premise. Yoi don't have to verify that it doesn't work; all you have to do is logically analyze its tenets and their implications.

Communism is the collective ownership of the means of production enforced by a totalitarian government. If there is only one true provider of goods and services (the state), there can be no market prices. And without market prices there can be no economic calculation, which means it is impossible for resources to be directed to their most productive uses.

I've got work in five, but why should I accept any economic premises more readily than I accept a Euclidean universe?
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
I'm not trying to be a sophist or a solipsist. Or an asshole.

I just don't believe that a "market" is any better at maximizing "utility" than a central committee or an algal bloom, though I do believe that a free market operates with about as much foresight as the bloom.
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
I'm not trying to be a sophist or a solipsist. Or an asshole.

I just don't believe that a "market" is any better at maximizing "utility" than a central committee or an algal bloom, though I do believe that a free market operates with about as much foresight as the bloom.

Then you don't understand economics at all. Market prices are as necessary to economic prosperity as oxygen is for human life.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Let's say that "Market prices are as necessary to economic prosperity as oxygen is for human life."

Okay? And?

It's necessary for oxygen and fuel to be consumed in order for a fire to burn. A fire that "maximises utility" snuffs itself out the fastest.

The "market" valued the Moai of Rapa Nui as worth the resources and labor that were spent in their construction, at least at the time they went up. If we don't see them as such now, what changed?

Money is a metaphor. Economic models are metaphors. A person could consider my earlier metaphor about the USA as a diabetic doughnut addict apt or not, but no reasonable person would consider it perfect, or complete, just like no reasonable person would mistake a map for the mapped territory.

I'm reasonably confident that any "free market" you point to has some socialized costs it fails to acknowledge, and some that we all fail to recognize, just as a 19th century archaeologist might fail to recognize his methods would be considered vandalism by 21st century standards.
 

CrazyDean

Zero's Secretary
For those who think that increasing military spending is necessary, here's some info on aircraft carriers. According to Wikipedia, there are currently 19 carriers in the world. The US has the largest aircraft carriers by quite a large margin, and we have 11 of them. The last one cost $10B. The price doesn't include the research and tooling costs of the ship. Of course, this also doesn't include the ongoing costs such as paying the 2600+ sailors who work on it and the extremely high costs of replacement parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...Numbers_of_fleet_aircraft_carriers_by_country
 

StevenK

ng.com SFII tournament winner 2002-2023
10 Year Member
For those who think that increasing military spending is necessary, here's some info on aircraft carriers. According to Wikipedia, there are currently 19 carriers in the world. The US has the largest aircraft carriers by quite a large margin, and we have 11 of them. The last one cost $10B. The price doesn't include the research and tooling costs of the ship. Of course, this also doesn't include the ongoing costs such as paying the 2600+ sailors who work on it and the extremely high costs of replacement parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...Numbers_of_fleet_aircraft_carriers_by_country

Not really sure what that tells us.

It's common knowledge that the US outspends every other country on defence to a huge degree, but the question is whether it's worth it or not?
 

SpamYouToDeath

I asked for a, Custom Rank and, Learned My Lesson.
15 Year Member
Then you don't understand economics at all. Market prices are as necessary to economic prosperity as oxygen is for human life.

I bet you're a shrewd negotiator when you're keeling over in septic shock. Hold on, I think the hospital across town has a better price on appendectomies.
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
Free market solutions would have saved Puerto Rico by now. Or not. Either way It would be for the best.
 

norton9478

So Many Posts
No Time
For Games.
20 Year Member
Socialism means the state controls the pricing and means of production. On the free market, prices are set via voluntary exchange and the means of production are privately controlled.


Socialism is funded by taxation which is involuntary. If you really can't differentiate between people freely spending their own money on products of their choice and being forced to buy things at gunpoint by the state, there isn't a lot I can do for you.

You are using a singular, narrow definition of "Socialism".


Microeconomic theory is derived from taking axiomatic truths and then spinning out the necessary logical implications.

So say microeconomic theory is "wrong" would be like ssying Euclidean Geometry is wrong. The method of discovering new knowledge in both fields is the same.

You can misinterpret the theory or apply its lessons incorrectly, but microeconomic theory is not wrong. That's like saying you can have round squares.

Are we talking about microeconomics or macroeconomics?
 

SML

NEANDERTHAL FUCKER,
20 Year Member
"The farm" in summertown tennessee

I'll always be able to shift the goalposts, man. Tennessee, you say? Sorry, friend, the true communism is stateless!

Free market entrepreneurs aren't lining up to save Puerto Ricans? Sorry, without the nanny state, maybe people would have thought harder about living in Puerto Rico in the first place. Also, the Jones Act?

Libertarianism keeps getting co-opted by fascists? Freedom is hard!

I remember responding to family emails about creeping socialism with "well actually, if you look at it, the ACA is a *corporatist,* or "soft fascist," bill..." It's not like I'm unfamiliar with the scripts. I'm not some statist casual over here, but I do know that Kool Aid comes in many flavors.
 

Lukejaywalker23

Playa' From, Around The Way.,
Not really sure what that tells us.

It's common knowledge that the US outspends every other country on defence to a huge degree, but the question is whether it's worth it or not?

I believe our military budget is to high but I don't know what number it should be to keep us safe. Is it 10b, 700m , 800b?
 
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