19 October 2010

Your tax money at work

Via The Armchair Reader... and Lulu of the Zulu Nation.

11 comments:

  1. That is of course if you leave out a HUGE amount of government spending... (for purposes of making a dubious point no less, which they are up front about but still is misleading)

    http://farbar.blogspot.com/2008/09/2008-federal-budget.html

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  2. Regardless, military related spending is much larger than that and accounts for an absolutely sickening amount of spending. Never mind the supplemental war spending and 'black' budgets that aren't included in the budget proper. Never mind all the colossal military *related* costs that aren't included as 'military' spending. It's despicable and inexcusable.

    Hands off the warfare state

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  3. AF, that's the point of the chart, which is clearly captioned to specify that it represents the pie of DISCRETIONARY spending. In other words, this is how your elected representatives choose to spend the money they have control over.

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  4. Social Security appears to be missing from this chart.

    AF, that's the point of the chart, which is clearly captioned to specify that it represents the pie of DISCRETIONARY spending. In other words, this is how your elected representatives choose to spend the money they have control over.

    This is a distinction without a difference. Is there anything that government does that isn't discretionary?

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  5. John, Social Security IS missing from the chart. As are other non-discretionary items. You may need to click on the pic to enlarge it enough to read the caption.

    And of course there are things that are non-discretionary. Interest on Treasury bills can't be omitted; it has to be paid using the full taxing power of the government. Failure to do so would result in economic catastrophe. By convention SS and Medicare/aid are also considered inviolable.

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  6. If we dramatically increase our support of renewable energy and energy efficiency, we can dramatically reduce our military expenses and our interest on the debt.

    Much of our military expense is a hidden subsidy for oil. When our oil supply routes get threatened we send out the military. Our source of energy should not dictate our foreign policy.


    We borrow large sums of money from China to pay for imported oil. That is insane.

    If we stop our addiction to oil we can improve our country's cashflow, create new jobs, and improve our national security.

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  7. I hate the government. Oh, and politicians.

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  8. By convention SS and Medicare/aid are also considered inviolable.

    So by convention, A is considered to be discretionary and B is not, but there's nothing inherently discretionary or non-discretionary about them.

    One could just as easily say "Hey, we have to pay the military budget! It's not an option!"

    In this case, we can move the defense budget off this chart.

    My point is this, Minnesotastan: "discretionary" is a subjective, not objective term.

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  9. Where is Eisenhower with his warnings about the military industrial complex?

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  10. I'm totally with John -- the only thing separating the definitions of "discretionary" and "nondiscretionary" is a huge amount of political power. Every time I see someone buy into this I just hate and resent old people a little more.

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  11. Discretionary is a technical term. A discretionary budget must be passed every year in order for those monies to be spent; non-discretionary funds are dispersed automatically.

    The question of the political capital required to change something that comes up for revision every year versus something that is ingrained into the structure, function, and perception of our government hardly needs to be asked.

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