Obama's plan to cut $100 million dollars from the budget

[rhuarch]

The problem of understanding large numbers...

http://www.wimp.com/budgetcuts/

[jyng1]

I know a way to cut a little more than a 100 million off the Federal Budget:

http://www.costofwar.com/

[rhuarch]

I know a way to cut a little more than a 100 million off the Federal Budget:

http://www.costofwar.com/


That would certainly help...

[joft]

some studies have shown that human number sense is (kindof) logarithmic

so we see


10^6 = 1,000,000
10^9 = 1,000,000,000

and we think the difference between them is roughly like the difference between 6 and 9

edit: ok leave it to me to mess up arithmetic terms. I shouldn't have said "difference" because that implies subtraction. i think the conclusion was that humans intuit the ratio of 10^9/10^6 to be about the same as the ratio of 9/6

(my problem was after i introduced the word "logarithmic" i kept taking logarithms of everything... log(10^9/10^6) = 10^9 - 10^6)

[Zelda]

I know a way to cut a little more than a 100 million off the Federal Budget:

http://www.costofwar.com/

Yep.

[Chunes]

Why doesn't anyone ever calculate war profit, though? There are certainly some very profitable aspects to imperialism, but everyone just assumes that all money spent on war goes into a black hole. I bet the real cost is a bit less than people claim.

(Think of how much less we can economically blackmail other nations when they know we don't have a bite behind our bark, for example. That'd be a massive expense!)

[joft]

Nice attempt internet cool guy, but you fail.

The true cost of war is much more massive than the sticker price. Two words: opportunity cost. Had we spent that same trillion dollars in the past decade on education and research and development, we wouldn't need to economically blackmail anyone.

[Chunes]

My point isn't that the war is profitable. My point is that the actual cost of the war is less than 990 billion dollars. I make no claims regarding how the money should have been spent; neither do I make claims regarding the morality of war.

[LongSilence]

Nice attempt internet cool guy, but you fail.

The true cost of war is much more massive than the sticker price. Two words: opportunity cost. Had we spent that same trillion dollars in the past decade on education and research and development, we wouldn't need to economically blackmail anyone.

You have a point. But such a restructuring would surely have huge consequences on things. Think of all of the money that the weapons industry brings into the US by keeping at the top of the world market in terms of innovation and monopoly. Of the sales to other nations that bring in a lot of taxes. This is before you even bring in the question of what's been taken from Afghanistan and Iraq and the profits from giving American corporations huge jobs to do there. And can you put a price political clout that your nation retains by having the biggest military in the world?

That said, I agree that none of these of good things and should be changed. But hell, you know this was the way America became number 1, right? If you stop doing things this way, can you be so sure that Uncle Sam won't find himself slipping from his place on top of the pile?

[C.J.Woolf]

My point isn't that the war is profitable. My point is that the actual cost of the war is less than 990 billion dollars.
That's a very rough estimate; it might turn out to be more. From World War II, every American war has been more expensive after the shooting stopped than it was during hostilities. The largest expense is veterans' benefits. We're going to be paying for the Iraq and Afghan wars for a looooong time. Fun facts: The last Civil War veteran died in 1958, and the last Civil War widow died in 2008! A lot of young women married old veterans for their pensions.

[Chunes]

Fun facts: The last Civil War veteran died in 1958, and the last Civil War widow died in 2008! A lot of young women married old veterans for their pensions.

Somehow I don't think we'll have to worry about that anymore. ;)

You do have a point about the rest. I think there's too many variables to accurately calculate the overall cost, but we can be fairly sure it's going to be heavily subsidized by taxes.

[joft]

I'm just going to keep enlarging the picture.

The U.S. supplies about 41% of the world's arms, or $607 billion in 2008.

Counterpoint:

1) The vast majority of nations who bought those arms would have been better off spending their money on other things.

2) The world economy is not zero sum. The United States does not only benefit at the expense of others. In fact, if our trade partners are better off (as they would be if they invested their money in education instead of buying our guns) there's a good chance that we would benefit from that as well.

The economic debate about defense/war spending has long been over. Hawks lost. Military spending only continues because politicians benefit from it.

[Ferrus]

You have a point. But such a restructuring would surely have huge consequences on things. Think of all of the money that the weapons industry brings into the US by keeping at the top of the world market in terms of innovation and monopoly. Of the sales to other nations that bring in a lot of taxes. This is before you even bring in the question of what's been taken from Afghanistan and Iraq and the profits from giving American corporations huge jobs to do there. And can you put a price political clout that your nation retains by having the biggest military in the world?

That said, I agree that none of these of good things and should be changed. But hell, you know this was the way America became number 1, right? If you stop doing things this way, can you be so sure that Uncle Sam won't find himself slipping from his place on top of the pile?
No empire or nation has been able to afford or maintain a hegemonic military forever.

[LongSilence]

Of course they haven't. But they've damn well all pretty much died trying. They're too paranoid of old enemies or conquests attempting to kick away the pedestal they've made for themselves.



1) The vast majority of nations who bought those arms would have been better off spending their money on other things.
True. But if Americans refused to sell the buyers weapons... someone else would be more than happy to offer their own alternatives. Unfortunately, the US's behaviour isn't the main reason why there are people in every single continent who want to kick the crap out of someone else or scared that someone will try it with them. On a very basic level it's a very simple task getting an angry man wanting the tools to crush his enemy or a scared man wanting 'protection' to part with his resources. At least when you can make better weapons than he can.

Yes, we would all be better off if everyone the world over started thinking that nobody really needs so many fancy ways of shooting and blowing things up. And very very slowly it appears nations are working that out- armed forces in many cases have had their fundings cut over the last decade, regiments have been disbanded and bases sold off. But that makes the regular people kinda uncomfortable, in spite of their best intentions. Sure, they trust themselves to be 'good guys' but those other countries with their terrorists and militaristic regimes- you just can't trust them, can you?
2) The world economy is not zero sum. The United States does not only benefit at the expense of others. In fact, if our trade partners are better off (as they would be if they invested their money in education instead of buying our guns) there's a good chance that we would benefit from that as well.

The economic debate about defense/war spending has long been over. Hawks lost. Military spending only continues because politicians benefit from it.[/QUOTE]
How do you get other regimes to put their money into education when what they want to buy are guns to keep them in power and protect themselves from other regimes? Unfortunately trying to get all the people with the advanced technology to all agree not to sell weapons when there is a hell of a lot of money to make from power-hungry despots and scared regimes trying to keep up with the rest of the world is never going to really work. You might get certain elements to say they're going to be principled about it and some might even stick to their word but there will always be someone slightly lower on the scale with slightly less effective weaponry willing to monopolise the market themselves.

That leaves us with the slightly more achievable task to get those despots and scared regimes more interested in securing their rules through social improvements than force and hostilities. But hell, the number 1 power in the world can't even stick to that idea themselves. It all takes is for someone to take away a couple of towers and they get all butthurt and aggressive themselves.

So yes, if the US people can't even stop Afghanistans and Iraqs from happening then they can't really get all idealistic about saying that selling old weapons that tend to not be used against them does not constitute a market that makes the US back a lot of money if they are continuing to research and develop cutting edge weapons of war. You could argue that they don't have to do that but do you really think you could sell that idea to people?! No major power in the current climate is seriously going to step out of the weapons development or purchasing business any time soon.