Poverty in America

[Darwoth]

due to claeyt and justin bieber i am firmly convinced that when president trump is elected he should build a wall across our northern border first.

[TotalyMeow]

Edited my post during your post. Please go back and read all your mistakes. You made huge math mistakes.

Yes, I go back and edit as you suggest. I can only plead extreme exhaustion making me bad at math today since I haven't slept in a couple days.

[Claeyt]

..and now we get to the real welfare in this country......

It's worse than you think. It's not 16% or 30%. It's actually 57% of our taxes going to military spending every year.

it is a complete and total waste of time to continue engaging claeyt in discourse about american issues.

It may be a waste of time to try to actually convince him of anything, but I find it very useful to see what he comes up with and then look up the truth myself. I learn a lot when talking to Claeyt by virtue of being spurred to do my own research on various subjects I might not otherwise have realized I was deficient in knowledge about.

Until today, I thought we spent considerably more than 16% of taxes on the military. I had though it was over 30%, but it turns out that was a bit of propaganda. I also didn't realize such a whopping ~65% went to assistance programs. Geez. I feel like with numbers like these we really should be able to afford at least one little coast to coast high speed train.

Maybe I can teach you basic math along the way.

Historically we do spend much more than 16% of our total budget on the military. Also the 30% you've heard is from these figures:

The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, military spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[27]

Department of Defense spending's share of discretionary spending was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen to between 53% and 54% in recent years.

This means that almost the entirety of our deficit is because of our discretionary military spending and the inability of congress to stop spending on the military.

Total military spending (DoD and Contractors) accounts for 50.5% of discretionary spending, 38% of total budgeted expenditures of the federal government and 42-57% of estimated tax revenues depending on if you include contracted non-DOD expenditures.

THE GREATEST LIE THE REPUBLICANS TELL US IS THAT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE ARE CONTRIBUTING TO OUR DEFICIT WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY DISCRETIONARY MILITARY SPENDING THAT IS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY DOING IT. SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE ARE PAYROLL TAXES THAT IF LEFT ALONE ARE SELF SUSTAINING FOREVER. THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE IN TROUBLE IS BECAUSE NIXON TAPPED THE PAYROLL TAX FUNDING FOR THEM TO PAY FOR THE VIETNAM WAR BACK IN THE 70'S AND EVER SINCE THEY HAVE BEEN USED TO PAY FOR MILITARY SPENDING.

It's not 30% or 16% it's actually 57% OF OUR TOTAL FEDERAL TAXES going to military and contracted military spending. Of course we borrow in deficit to pay this and military spending has gone up 9% per year since 9/11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... ted_States

[TotalyMeow]

It's not 30% or 16% it's actually 57% OF OUR TOTAL FEDERAL TAXES going to military and contracted military spending. Of course we borrow in deficit to pay this and military spending has gone up 9% per year since 9/11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... ted_States

No, Claeyt, you're thinking of discretionary spending, which does not include mandatory spending like social security and medicaid. The Wikipedia article mentions that the 57% figure is discretionary, as well. The page I linked earlier shows it in some nice pie charts:

A fair visual of where the taxes go can be found here: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budg ... /spending/, near the bottom where there is a pie chart with 'All Federal Spending'.

Look at the discretionary spending pie chart just above. It might look familiar.

I'm pretty sure that Nixon thing is a myth.

[Inotdead]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... ted_States

It says 16% on that page.

[Dallane]

Your daily reminder that cleaty is a racist.

I'm not saying it's right or justified that they steal or sell drugs or murder cops I'm saying that that's exactly what you would do if you were poor and desperate and Black.

[Claeyt]

No, Claeyt, you're thinking of discretionary spending.

NOPE,

This is where it gets deep Tmeow. You ready?

That 57% number has nothing to do with the total budget. Military Spending in the U.S.A is AT THE AMOUNT OF 57% of our total taxes taken in every year. Here's how:

1. Military spending INCLUDES mandatory spending from payroll taxes because all Military contractors, DoD, Dept of Homeland Security (which is partly budgeted under military spending) and VA employees (which is the budgeted under military spending) and any other department that works with the military, all get and pay social security and medicare. This means that DoD employees, CIA, NSA, VA, etc... and all military contractors get 6.4% of their pay taken out for social security and 1.45% for medicare through the payroll tax. Because the departments are the employer they match those amounts (so they add 6.4 and 1.45% to the payroll tax). That means that the DoD, CIA, NSA and all military contractors are actually costing the U.S. taxpayer 12.8% for social security (pay plus employer contribution) and 2.9% for medicare (pay plus employer contribution) per federal employee employed within the federal military complex.

This is of course how all federal employees cost us more than just their paycheck but since the DoD is the absolute largest department in the U.S. government and military agencies are over 50% of all government employees it's a huge part of our mandatory spending. Government contractors always add this to their contracts to get this as well.

...oh and don't forget that all federal employee retirement benefits (of which 55.5% are military employees) are budgeted under mandatory spending.

TLDR; The Military is also budgeted under the mandatory budget because of social security, medicare payroll taxes and retirement pay of military employees.

2. This is the scary part. These are the largest government agencies in the federal government:



The DoD is twice as large as the VA and 4 times as big as any non-military department.

Close after that are the CIA, NSA and other pseudo parts of the military.

The DoD itself accounts for 30.1% of all federal employees. ...or 39.2% with the Dept of Homeland Security which includes the coast guard which is budgeted through the military.

The VA accounts for 16.3% of all federal employees.

This means that 55.5% of all federal employees are within the facet of military spending.

From OPM.gov:

As of September 2013, Department of Veteran Affairs has 337,683 (16.3%) federal employees in pay status; Department of Army has 261,029 (12.6%) federal employees; Department of Navy has 194,301 (9.4%) federal employees; Department of Homeland Security has 193,867 (9.4%) federal employees; and Department of Air Force has 167,439 (8.1%) federal employees.

https://www.opm.gov/FAQs/QA.aspx?fid=56 ... 74063441ba

3. Also You're not taking into account deficit spending as part of the equation. Because we use deficit spending we are able to fund the military like this. If we didn't use deficit spending the military would make up 57% of our total taxes which we use for both mandatory and discretionary spending.


...and this is why arguing about the pittance we give to poor people is looking pretty small right now.

...we are a militarized nation and this is why we can't have nice things.

[Judaism]

Stop using size 10000, it won't make your points true.

[Inotdead]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... ted_States

You link the page that proves you wrong, then say it has nothing to do with it.
Classic Claeyt.

[Claeyt]

You link the page that proves you wrong, then say it has nothing to do with it.
Classic Claeyt.

As I pointed out in my post Military spending is 57% of our taxed revenue not 57% of our federal budget.

I'm not arguing that the DoD makes up 16% of the budget but there's more to it. Military spending is included in almost every one of those piece of the pie chart. It's included in both mandatory and discretionary spending because of the payment of social security, medicare and retirement benefits to the 55.5% of federal employees who fall under the category of 'military spending'. The VA falls under healthcare spending. Non-military government Contractors which including shipping, feeding and housing all of our federal employees around the world falls under non-military (or non-DoD) discretionary spending. Plus there's the deficit spending.

Also let's not forget about the 103 million dollars in food stamps that soldiers in the U.S. military qualified for last year. Or that 25% of soldiers in the U.S. military sought food aid from charities and the government in 2014.

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain ... id-n180236