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Where do my taxes go?


Aisha Greyjoy
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Federal:

On the mandatory spending side, I contributed:

 

Social Security 3,083.23 (interestingly, they took out a lot more then that for my Social Security)

Medicare/Health 2,357.76 (interestingly, they took out a lot less then that for medicare)

Interest 544.10

Veteran's Benefits 241.82

 

On discretionary spending, I contributed:

 

Defense 1,335.47

Education 218.04

Transportation 190.78

SS/Emp/Labor 163.53

Government 163.53

Veteran's Benefits 163.52

Medicare Health 136.27

International Affairs 136.27

Energy and Environment 109.02

Science Tech and Space 81.76

Housing and Community 54.51

Agriculture 27.25

 

For the record, I head a family of five with significant medical expenses, own a home, and pay a !@#$ton of local taxes, which contributes to relatively low federal tax burden. Really, a very typical American situation, except I have a stay at home wife, which is unusual now.

 

Its hard to get too worked about how the government spends my $8771. Where on here should I be furious with the governemnt for spending that money?

 

And really, as a liberal, can I freak out that the government spends 1335.47 of my money on an army? That seems like a real !@#$ing bargain to me. Best army in the world for the price of a new laptop?

 

I'm more concerned about social security. As our people age, and work less, and live longer, how will we sustain that burden? Will that burden be sustainable when I'm old enough to get Social Security?

 

Locally, I spent 10,200, not counting local sales tax and/or utility taxes, which I'd estimate at about $5000-$6000.

 

Overall, that's about 25k in taxes I paid. That's considerably less then half. I consider half the "unfair" point. Half is where its reasonable to say "Why should I work, F you government!" So I don't feel overtaxed.

 

Just offering a quick reality check to the usual idelogicial craziness we throw back and forth at each other here.

Duke of House Greyjoy

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I'm 17 and pay no taxes, it's brilliant. A whole £50 a week, free healthcare, nukes, army, subsidized travel, and I benefit from free schooling. Life's great!

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Mans two modes of existence can be thought of as his light and dark side. He is either the Protector or the Ravager. The Immovable Object or the Unstoppable Force.

 

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I'm 17 and pay no taxes, it's brilliant. A whole £50 a week, free healthcare, nukes, army, subsidized travel, and I benefit from free schooling. Life's great!

 

Commie. :P

 

To be fair, US foreign policy is closely tied to the use (or threat of use) of a disgustingly overpowered military. The US has, since the end of the World Wars, benefited greatly from free trade, and the US military - for better or for worse - has been used to either open free trade with other countries, or maintain free trade it already had. "Defense" spending is important, it just makes all of us want to go hyper-libertarian anarchists when we see the number. 

It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. It was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

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Sad to see how little money goes into space, the next frontier. The military complex of our country is a terrible thing.

To be fair, US foreign policy is closely tied to the use (or threat of use) of a disgustingly overpowered military. The US has, since the end of the World Wars, benefited greatly from free trade, and the US military - for better or for worse - has been used to either open free trade with other countries, or maintain free trade it already had. "Defense" spending is important, it just makes all of us want to go hyper-libertarian anarchists when we see the number. 

The DOD employs tons of Americans either directly (in the military) or indirectly (VA hospitals, shipyards, aerospace engineering firms, etc.). Most of the money goes back into the American economy. Plenty of science related products have been made from the defense industry. 

 

That being said, NASA with a large budget would be cool af. 

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The US pays $601 billion USD to the Department of Defense. ($1858.94 for every man, woman and child in America)

 

The Russian Federation defense budget is about $66 billion USD ($456.43 for every man, woman and child in Russia)

 

The People's Republic of China defense budget is $151 billion USD ($109.93 for every man, woman and child in China)

 

If the US decided to only spend more than Russia and China put together, they would spend only $217 billion.  If they chose to spend only more than what Russia and China paid per capita put together, they would spend only $183 billion.  Considering Russia and China are the US's only real competition on planet earth, what the hell is the US spending another $400 billion on?

 

The Defense Department is one giant pork barrel boondoggle.  There is no other explanation as to how the US can outspend the Russians nearly 10:1 and have roughly the same military outcomes.

 

The US similarly overspends on health care (mostly wasted on overpriced drugs for Pharma profits).  If the US government eliminated graft in the military procurement process and focused on cost effective weapons they could save hundreds of billions of dollars every year.  Similarly if the US regulated drug prices to rational levels like every other country on earth does, not only the government (via medicaid etc) but individuals would save hundreds of billions as well.

 

Military contractors like Raytheon and Pharma corps are pigs at the trough, where trillions of taxpayer dollars are shovelled into their snouty mouths.

Edited by Ogaden
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There is no other explanation as to how the US can outspend the Russians nearly 10:1 and have roughly the same military outcomes.

Yes there is. We have better military outcomes. 

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Like what

 

Having access to Gen 5 aircraft which outperform the latest Russian Gen 4 fighter almost 3 to 1. And don't get me started on the Russian Gen 5s. Chinese fighters are just cheaper knockoffs of the Russians. Oh, and the ability to deploy any number of American military assets at any point around the globe in less than a day. The ability to steamroll a second-world country in less than a week. 

 

If a Russian embassy in Argentina was attacked, how long do you think it would take the Russian military to respond? For god's sake, we (metaphorically) hanged a Secretary of State for treason because she couldn't get American boots in the middle of a god-forsaken Libyan dessert in less than a work day. 

 

The DOD employs tons of Americans either directly (in the military) or indirectly (VA hospitals, shipyards, aerospace engineering firms, etc.). Most of the money goes back into the American economy. Plenty of science related products have been made from the defense industry. 

 

That being said, NASA with a large budget would be cool af. 

 

That is the quintessential definition of a military-industrial complex, lol. Take nukes for example. We don't need 7000 nuclear warheads, we just need a solid 24 and a good delivery system for it. But da reps need to keep the silos open to keep people in their districts employed. 

 

Also, I'm still waiting on the space lasers Reagan promised us. I'm kind of pissed about that. Half life 3 confirmed. 

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It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. It was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

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The actually performance is more like 3:1, too bad they can build 100 of them for the cost of one F-35.

 

Lucky for them their S-400s, which cost 1/10,000th the price of an F-35, can shoot down F-35s

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It might be dubious to claim that the F-35 is easily taken out by an S-200.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-22-f-35-stealth-fighters-vs-russias-s-300-s-400-s-17394

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/could-russia-really-shoot-down-f-22-f-35-or-b-2-stealth-17986

 

Sorry to post from a blog, but there's not a lot of articles on the subject.

 

I did find a bunch of Russian propoganda on RT and Russia-Insider claiming they can easily shoot down an F-35.

Edited by Aisha Greyjoy

Duke of House Greyjoy

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For god's sake, we (metaphorically) hanged a Secretary of State for treason because she couldn't get American boots in the middle of a god-forsaken Libyan dessert in less than a work day. 

 

That is the quintessential definition of a military-industrial complex, lol.

 

Take nukes for example. We don't need 7000 nuclear warheads, we just need a solid 24 and a good delivery system for it. But da reps need to keep the silos open to keep people in their districts employed. 

 

Also, I'm still waiting on the space lasers Reagan promised us. I'm kind of pissed about that. Half life 3 confirmed. 

I know some people who wanted to do that not metaphorically. 

 

Great at employing people. 

 

Actually, according to this and this, it would be closer to 700. 

 

We're getting there. 

 

 

 

It might be dubious to claim that the F-35 is easily taken out by an S-200.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-22-f-35-stealth-fighters-vs-russias-s-300-s-400-s-17394

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/could-russia-really-shoot-down-f-22-f-35-or-b-2-stealth-17986

 

Sorry to post from a blog, but there's not a lot of articles on the subject.

 

I did find a bunch of Russian propaganda on RT and Russia-Insider claiming they can easily shoot down an F-35.

Lucky for them their S-400s, which cost 1/10,000th the price of an F-35, can shoot down F-35s

If I were to find a program that a major defense contractor uses as a simulation and ran a scenario where a F-35 went by an S-400 without being shot down, would you still believe that a S-400 is better than an F-35? 

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Just $50,000 per surely a eryt at $200 incoming missiles. Surely that's an economic model that won't be abused by the opponents. We'd probably only need one of those laser in one embassy because it'll then be closed and have to move to a new embassy'll be closed and so on.

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At reigniting the weapons race? Or shooting down nuclear/radiological/bacteriialogical/c and/or chemical warheads?

ore than 9,000 possible nucleargets and christ knows how many. Plu spreads out those unused warheads all over the world so we could really have some Mad Max stuff going on pretty quickly with SDI and be bankrupt almost immediately. Your taxes are depsotied into the general fund for the most part. You can mail them a ccheck if you have an urge to give them additional money (for some reason is economical so I assume r at least two or three people opt to do it per year in ojust afford PO box rental.rder to 

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My point was, the actual $ I pay for defense isn't absurd. And America's spending per capita is abusrd when compared to Russia and China because their per capita income is so low.

 

Compare the US to the UK or Germany, and we do spend a lot, being #1 and the World Police/Empire is not free or cheap.

 

But its in the same ballpark. 3.6% or so of GDP compared to the mid 2's for most NATO countries, Germany is a bit of an under-militarized country ATM.

 

An interesting quote is...(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget.htm)

Percentage-wise, Russia is one of the world leaders in terms of the share of GDP spent on defense. For instance, the United States’ defense spending makes up 3.5 percent of its GDP, with China’s reaching some 2.1 percent, whereas Russia’s amounts to 4.5 percent of its GDP. The Russian figure is the world’s largest after Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which spend 10.4 and 5.1 percent of their GDP respectively on arms.

 

Really, the only large items are medicare and social security. Everything else in my taxes is kind of small.

 

I spend 4x as much in property taxes for my local schools as I do for defense. Just to put things into perspective. And I think that's a good ratio. Lets keep that ratio.

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Duke of House Greyjoy

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