Conservatives Answer This; Which Costs More?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Divergent, Sep 15, 2015.

  1. Divergent

    Divergent Banned

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    Which Costs More Conservatives?

    Unnecessary Welfare?
    or
    Unnecessary Warfare?

    Unnecessary Warfare is our countries biggest unnecessary cost by FAR. THIS IS FACT. . . . :salute: You can try to prove me wrong, but this will only bump a thread that will kick your intelligence in the face.

    War IS sometimes necessary and Welfare IS sometimes necessary people. Learn when and why please.
     
  2. Independant thinker

    Independant thinker Banned

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    They are either a dolt, or they care more about the Federal Reserve and Israel than they do about America. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two.
     
  3. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    The US spends seven times more on the military than our closest contender (China) and some 53% of the worlds military spending.

    But, you can't cut that. Newp. Instead we should just borrow more money from China to waste on the JSF program.

    Obviously, however, food stamps is the root of the federal budgetary issues.
     
  4. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The greatest problem with social programs is fraud and rewarding a welfare lifestyle. We know MANY people engaged in social programs fraud:
    1. Collecting SS disability while secretly working not reporting their income - meaning they both are committing SS fraud and tax fraud.
    2. People who absolutely will not work any job because they don't have to due to government benefits.

    There also is a HUGE problem of the government paying people to divorce and having broken homes.

    The USA being a magnet to poor people of other countries to come here and received substantial free-money also is a problem numbering into the millions. Of the 10,000 Syrian immigrants that the President wants to bring here, virtually 100% will be living on money taken from the paychecks of working people and piled on top of the national debt (meaning taken from everyone by inflation.)

    These thefts, frauds and lazy-ism all deprive those who ACTUALLY need assistance due to no fault of their own. Yet it is a topic no politician - not even Trump - dare touch.
     
  5. buddhaman

    buddhaman New Member

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    Unnecessary warfare and unnecessary corporate welfare are the same thing.
     
  6. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Comparing military expenses to social program benefits is apples and oranges.

    War and military/foreign policy conflicts are very complex economic questions. For example, in Gulf War 1, Kuwait paid ever dollar at strict retail for every expense of the war. Essentially, with the end of the Cold War we sold and basically leased our excess and old inventory to Kuwait.

    The HUGE drop in fuel costs - which benefits all consumers - is also due largely to military/foreign policy. By keeping the ME in turmoil we prevent the formation of a mega radical and conquering Islamic super power. Millions of Americans and their family rely upon military and military contractor employment and then retirement benefits.To some degree, the military also is a social welfare program.

    Sales of military equipment is one of the few major industries the USA still has. The mini wars, revolutions and conflicts of military and foreign policy have successfully prevented any major world-scale war or war between major powers for well over half a century.

    The MASSIVE consumer of the federal budget is the national debt and interest on it, not the military. Military expenditures costs money and it makes money. The ratio between the cost versus profit is extremely difficult to calculate.
     
  7. milorafferty

    milorafferty Banned

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    The simple facts are, warfare advances technology and welfare reduces the incentive to improve.

    I'm not saying war is great and welfare is bad. But historically, we have made huge leaps in technology and by association improvements in the human society because of(not in spite of) warfare. And also historically, welfare has reduced incentive to improve for huge groups.

    If you have to innovate to survive, you work toward that goal, but if you are comfortable where you are with no threats, the urgency is much less.
     
  8. Brewskier

    Brewskier Well-Known Member

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    You really think only right wingers start wars? You should look at 20th century American history and see which Presidents were involved in wars.
     
  9. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Slinging around the words rightwinger, leftwinger, conservative, liberal etc often if absolutely valueless.
     
  10. maat

    maat Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I would think logic would reason that both be eliminated.
     
  11. maat

    maat Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Actually, only warfare is necessary. I assure you that the country would still be free and able to defend itself without welfare.

    Since welfare is not an enumerated duty, as is national defense, it should remain a state and local issue where it should be considered.
     
    AlphaOmega and (deleted member) like this.
  12. toddwv

    toddwv Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why pick and choose when you can have both?

    Invade Iraq? Check! More warfare please!
    Defund sex education? Check! More unwanted pregnancies please!
     
  13. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    And that's why we're the lone superpower. The military operations we've executed in recent times are simply beyond other nations, at least in terms of being able to go after countries on the other side of the planet as opposed to adjacent countries. One can debate if it's necessary for it to be possible to have those sorts of operations. But I don't think one can really debate that you need to spend that kind of money to do those sorts of things.

    To a large extent it still is.

    In terms of cost welfare spending is much higher than it seems because it occurs at the state and local levels and isn't recorded or tracked nearly so well as the Federal budget is. While I suppose it's a matter of debate as to what counts as welfare I'd say about 40% of my states budget goes towards it, and smaller amount of our local budget does.

    In contrast, at least in my state, spending on military (national guard) is pretty negligible and I don't think local governments put anything into the defense pot.

    That's significant as state spending has been growing faster than federal spending.
     
  14. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    As in few countries possess the capability to enter a third world nation, destroy, and withdrawal because the locals become too violent.
     
  15. maat

    maat Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Clearly, the federal welfare budget is massive and unconstitutional.

    http://www.budget.senate.gov/republ...?File_id=34919307-6286-47ab-b114-2fd5bcedfeb5
     
  16. Darkbane

    Darkbane Banned

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    well this sounds fun so I'll take a stab at it...

    on one hand, war costs money, it destroys things, but then it also sometimes spends money to rebuild after, all at a great inflated cost to what it would cost without war... but hey thats the cost of war right...

    on the other hand, welfare costs money, it destroys things, but then it also sometimes rebuilds them after, all at a great inflated cost to what it would cost without welfare... but hey thats the cost of welfare right...

    so they do seem pretty similar and different...

    welfare I could argue, is like a war on people, because the current system is awful in design, and really encourages people to hold on to that last bit of welfare, always being dependent on it... because making $1 too much can sometimes cost them tens of thousand in support, that they simply could not live life without, that, to steal your line, is a FACT... its not to say the people didn't need welfare, or shouldn't have received it, but its just one of the nasty side effects the current design encourages and traps people into...

    to give a real life example... my neighbor, a single mother with 1 kid... works at the daycare her child goes to, for obvious reasons its just more convenient and cost effective for her... now she had a chance to take a job a few miles north at another daycare, that caters to the upper class and of course charges them a boatload more because they know they can get them to pay... she would have made $4000 more a year, sounds great right, this is exactly what we want to happen... however she now would lose the $8000 a year she was getting for daycare costs, and the new daycare would cost almost twice what the old one did, so she would have to leave her kid at the old daycare, and now pay out of pocket the $8000 to stay there... but that would leave her $4000 in the hole after you factor in her pay raise...

    so even with a $4000 pay raise, she would have lost $8000 in daycare benefits... not to mention all the other services that would scale back based on her increased wages... she would have to pay more for healthcare, she would have to pay more for energy assistance, she would also have to pay more for food as they would cut that back as well... so this "raise" and moving up and out of welfare, would ultimately cost her so much she can't afford to take the better job!

    this sounds a lot like warfare against poor people... because we trap them in this horrible war zone nobody wants to live in, and once we get them in it, we bomb and destroy every chance they get to leave, forcing them to be desperate and live a life with no chance of ever getting out because we shoot at them the second they do... making them retreat back into the warzone trying to find someplace safe to hide... always living less of a life than they ever wanted to...

    so welfare as democrats preach is necessary and wonderful, is a lot more like the awful war they demonize and vilify republicans for loving so much hey...

    this is another issue, were both sides are wrong, and right, but they are wrong and right about things other than what they say are right and wrong... so as long as democrats continue to say the current welfare system is right, they will be forever wrong in defending it... its no worse than warfare they claim is wrong...

    I think thats a pretty fair and accurate view of how the current system works...

    what would be better is if someone actually came up with a progressive system so when someone got a raise, they wouldn't lose twice as many benefits, its an absolute failure the current system they keep pumping more money into... instead they need to overhaul the whole thing, and set it up so when someone gets say a $2000 raise, they only lose $1000 in benefits, so they still end up ahead ultimately... and can chip away and keep moving up and progressing...

    but this current system you're defending as better than warfare, is no better than warfare, is just as bad as ruining their lives...

    so rather than try to say its not as bad as war, how about you say, here is what we can agree with republicans it NEEDS to be fixed, and not just spend more money as a solution, because spending more money on war is just as stupid as spending more money on welfare, if the results will still be the same, why spend more on either...
     
  17. Penrod

    Penrod Well-Known Member

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  18. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Our welfare, TANF, in just about every state REQUIRES training and/or that the recipient is looking for a job. Welfare is a way in which we TEMPORARILY help out people who have been left behind in a changing world. It is a necessary part of our social infrastructure. Along with universal healthcare it keeps us from having buzzards eating the corpses in the streets, like in India. How can you expect Homeless people to work their way out of poverty when they can't change their clothes or take showers, let alone eat? And yes, we do indeed have whole FAMILIES that are homeless.

    Our military is a bloated monster where we pay highly trained technicians wages that require them to eat off Food Stamps to care for and operate weaponry that is outrageously expensive and that either doesn't do what it's supposed to or is utterly obsolete when it does, usually both. This is because war profiteers and their lickspittles have controlled our government for some time now.

    What we need to do is to somehow get pols to be able to make fixing highways and bridges as dramatic on the evening news as killing people. Then we could pay our dedicated and hardworking military scientists better wages to innovate new ways of repair for our woefully neglected infrastructure instead of billion dollar airplanes nobody wants. Think of it, if we spent even HALF of what we now shovel at the F-35 and other such boondoggles on our transport network we could probably have BOTH automated highways AND high speed rails

    The reason the US is as prosperous as we are today is because Eisenhower and his Republican Party had the courage to spend the money to build the Interstates instead of buying more tanks to fend off Russians who had no intention of using theirs. I remember they used to put up SIGNS saying how many millions of dollars they cost per mile. You wouldn't be able to do that today, hell no, you can't take color pictures of a highway banking into the sun as it is about to get shot down by a Stinger sent its way from the back of a Toyota truck
     
  19. Darkbane

    Darkbane Banned

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    you know the ironic thing, we could almost use those exact same stats when we talk about americas spending on welfare... so maybe americas problem isn't war, or poverty, its we think spending more money solves problems... and it doesn't seem to be working that way, since we keep saying, just a little bit more, and a little bit more, and if only we spent a little bit more we'd solve either... yet here we are, 50 years after the war on poverty, trillions spent, same percentage of americans in poverty... and I can't really think of any war since WWII where we solved any problems either... all this money, and we've accomplished nothing with it...

    but let me guess, if we just spent a little bit more... lol
     
  20. maat

    maat Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The interstate highway system is a perfect example of general welfare. It is general infrastructure. Mine or your income/ personal needs(food, clothing, shelter, education, income) is not.
     
  21. Independant thinker

    Independant thinker Banned

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    Doing something about it costs more than giving them the money.

    It's a good system, and necessary.
     
  22. Independant thinker

    Independant thinker Banned

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    How good is America's military? Could it beat a major power?
     
  23. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    OK, so let's spend the money we spend on our military weaponry on our general infrastructure, and lets employ our welfare recipients and our military people at that. I truly can't see why that idea wouldn't work. Bridges, highways, bullet trains, even port facilities and wind farms they're all as pretty as fighter jets and aircraft carriers and they cost just as much money so there would still be plenty to feed the crony capitalists. Hell, we might actually get some BENEFIT for our taxes for a change.
     
  24. Penrod

    Penrod Well-Known Member

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    The Unions wont stand for that
     
  25. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Oh, yes, easily. What it can't beat is basically bandit gangs in trucks. We'd have little problem in putting away the Russians if they invaded Europe, frex, but the IS or Taliban still operate largely with impunity. While it's true that every time they come up against us in open warfare we beat the stuffing out of them, this is why they're rarely foolish enough to do that.

    We have some things that work. Drones, frex. I really don't see why the vast majority of our AF is not UAV's. Why do we continue to throw lots of money at manned aircraft, instead of making drones bigger and faster. Do we have drone bombers, or supersonic UAV's, I don't think so but could be wrong. Even if we do, why aren't there more?

    I really don't understand why our military hasn't converted to the reality of asymettric warfare by now. Guerilla tactics go back to Napoleonic times, or even Rome's Fabius vs Hannibal if you want to see it that way and we had an pretty sad object lesson in Vietnam, so it's not like this is anything new. Can any of our military people explain this?
     

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