Trump wants to cut his way to prosperity -- by sending Science to the middle ages

thats ok those guys will look great in a national cemetery.

 

actually he didnt win the popular vote which there is so much revulsion to him.

 

Well, that sucks for you because he's in the White House and the votes preferred Trump on the issues. If you don't want smaller government, maybe you shouldn't have lost.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/18/trump_won_on_the_issues_132383.html

 

Since most people understand the popular vote is meaningless in a Presidential election, what sort of person is revulsed by the fact Trump did not win the popular vote?

 

. . . . But the corporate sector is gaining A LOT.

 

Well under his leadership our military shrank and their effectiveness was diminished. Because of him not wanting to use the military it allowed radical groups to blossom and grow which put the world in danger along with the US.

 

the people that can process several facts at once.

 

Well, as you can tell from his defenders here and elsewhere, it is not intended for the Large Majority of America that voted against him, but for the minority that voted for him.
They signal their agreement by stamping their feet and grunting.

Oh, we absolutely need more weapons!!!!
(I can't find a recent pie chart, but it's representative)

For you Trump supporters, I want to point out that Europe is allied with us...

 

Please explain your response, and how it meaningfully addresses my question.

 

Is English your second language? I never said you supported Clinton.

 

thats what americans do when we arent at war. hang around awhile you will learn how the US works. the radical group thing is a thing Bush made when he meddled in the mid east. Obama was smart enough to figure that out.

 

Just say NO! to drugs.....
a total invasion - FROM WHO????? MARS???? There is no country that could mount an invasion of the US.
Do you sleep with a light on and covers over your head?
GET REAL.

 

actually you did when you said I shouldnt have lost. pay attention to your own posts.

 

You have repeated the phony talking points well.

Our war in Iraq was a huge recruiting tool for radical Islam. Dispute that with your talking points.

 

I'm all for reducing redundancy. But there isn't any indication that Trump is targeting redundancy.

Similarly, I'm all for eliminating wasteful programs. But there isn't any indication that Trump is targeting waste.

The way you target waste and redundancy is to SHOW that a program is wasteful or redundant, and then eliminate it. That is not what is happening here.

 

There were other people running in the election besides Clinton. You do realize this, right?

 

Broadbrush stereotypes are not actually facts.

A nice assertion. No actual relation to reality, however.

Is there waste in government? Sure. There is waste in every human endeavor. But it is not universal nor evenly distributed. Not every agency or department is wasteful, or equally wasteful. Many are UNDERfunded, not overfunded.

The way you cut out the waste is by CUTTING OUT THE WASTE. That takes work, sure -- you have to actually identify the waste first.

Far easier to breezily assert that we can cut government by 10% with no bad effects. But all that does is make you look ignorant.

 

And again with your dreamed-up fantasy of a lazy government worker. You should write fiction! Oh wait, you are.

 

Absolutely. In fact, if it was just about cutting to balance the budget, the military and the wall would also be on the chopping block. Yet, they are not, but instead see solid increases in funding.

Also, if it was about reducing the deficit, there would be no talk about cutting taxes for the rich.

What this is, rather, is politically motivated to punish the agencies he (and his voters) don't like, so later he can point to them saying what a terrible job they are doing, so they can be cut more. This is all an effort to destroy government as much as possible, as Bannon has revealed in previous interviews.

 

Well, I'm a pure mathematics and numbers guy. So if you can't quantify the usefulness of any of government problems that are being cut from the budget, I (nor any rational thinking person) has to care about what programs are cut.

 

Anyone can look up the salary of any government employee and see whether or not they are over-paid.

Whether or not someone is overpaid is relative; however, most government employees make a comfortable living depending on the generally accepted definition of comfortable.

 

The government -- which is, by extension, us -- has an interest in investing in the education and professional development of its populace. It makes us more competitive, more productive, increases our standard of living, reduces the welfare rolls, etc.

If removing tattoos helps people become more successful, everybody wins. Just like helping them learn skills or get an education helps all of us.

There are plenty of Catch-22 situations where if people can just get past an initial hurdle, they can get on to a self-sustaining trajectory. In this case, maybe the cost of tattoo removal was high enough that the person couldn't afford the removal until they had a decent job -- but they couldn't get a decent job because of the tattoo.

So you're the government. You recognize that if this person can't get rid of the tattoo, they will underachieve their whole life -- earning less money, paying less in taxes. Further, things like welfare usage and crime rates correlate with poverty, and both cost society money.

In that light, paying a few hundred bucks for tattoo removal translates into WAY more than that in savings/income to the government over that person's lifetime. It's a cost-benefit no-brainer.

You may not like the fact that the government provides a social safety net. But it does. And as long as it does, there will be things like this that seem odd, but save money in the long term. Opposing them is being pennywise and pound foolish.

 

Do you believe that everything in life can be quantified in dollars? And that doing so is the most relevant or useful measure of a program's worth?

 

Simply looking up someone's salary will not tell you if that person is overpaid.

"Making a comfortable living" is unrelated to the concept of "overpaid."

 

Can you quantify the usefulness of every buck spent by the military? Aircraft carriers? Cruisers?

I am all for quantitation. At least for science funding, the NSF and NIH lists all of their funded grants, past and present, on their website. They also quantitate productivity, since papers and patents produced are publically accessible. And I can guarantee, if your grant didn't result in several papers, you aren't going to get renewed. That's what the peer review system does for you.

How do I know that? Because I have been on both sides, the grant receiving side, as well the panelist side making recommendations about funding decisions. I can tell you, grant reviewers are all about quantitation.