You know what I want from my government?

[320 Years of History]

This is all spending:

This is discretionary spending for the same period:

What's the biggest difference? Discretionary spending is funded by income taxes, tolls, excise taxes/tariffs, fees, and just about anything else except self-employment insurance tax, Social Security tax and Medicare tax. As you can see a small portion of Social Security, unemployment and Medicare are funded by income and other taxes.


Roughly the "pie sections" in the charts above align with the several executive branch departments of government.

• United States Department of Agriculture
• United States Department of Commerce
• United States Department of Defense
• United States Department of Education
• United States Department of Energy
• United States Department of Health and Human Services
• United States Department of Homeland Security
• United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
• United States Department of the Interior
• United States Department of Justice
• United States Department of Labor
• United States Department of State
• United States Department of Transportation
• United States Department of the Treasury
• United States Department of Veterans Affair

Clearly you can see some departments aren't included in the chart. I suspect they may be those that either (1) receive less than 1% of federal moneys, such as Interior and Treasury, (2) have a material share of its budget and spending that is classified (see page 23 at the link), such as DHS or Justice, thus we don't know what its budget is, (3) or that aren't particularly visible to or well understood by most Americans, such as Commerce, Treasury and Interior.

There is also a spending category to which is rarely discussed: the legislative appropriation. That's the money Congress decides it needs for itself. Last I checked it was something between $4B and $5B per year, or about half the cost to run the Department of Commerce and about three times the sums Congress makes available to Commerce to help small business owners open or grow their businesses (page 16 here).

Why does it combine ss , unemployment , and "labor" , into one expense ?

Because the graphic depicts all government spending not government spending by revenue source. A high level depiction of government spending such as the one provided in this post logically groups together very closely related types of spending.

For example, Social Security, Unemployment and Labor is all spending that is directly attributable to individuals' labor. be it paying workers now for labor performed in the past (Social Security) (yes, Social Security is paid to some people who didn't or don't work, but mostly Social Security benefits are paid to people who did work -- see chart below), paying them now for labor they are unable to perform now (unemployment), or spending on programs to enable citizens to perform one or several forms of labor (Dept of Labor). Medicare and health are grouped because that is spending related to providing for citizens' health.




FWIW, the spending of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is spending that overwhelmingly uses funds other than income taxes.

Why are military and vet budgets separate ?

Because military spending means DOD spending not Dept. of Veterans Affairs spending. What's the difference? Veterans Affairs deals overwhelmingly with citizens who are no longer serving as military personnel and who are not eligible/subject in general (under anything but the most extreme of circumstances -- like the country is in "to the last man" situation or some other such "Independence Day" scenario that we see in movies and therefore willingly suspend disbelief about the likelihood of such a thing actually occurring) to serve as active military personnel in an branch of the DoD.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

So many of the business managers go into the unions and take a hostile attitude toward management, but then will cut a deal with management to betray the employees for management. I have known of this happening at General Dynamics in Ft Worth back in the 1990s and have heard of it happening elsewhere.

Most business managers simply want to score as much money as they can and should never be trusted by unions.

I'm pretty much anti-union only because of my experiences as a truck driver. If I went to make a delivery to a company I've never heard of before or knew anything about, I could tell you within five minutes whether they were union or not without even talking to one employee.

When unions started out, it was a pretty good concept. But like anything else, once they got too big and got too much money, it becomes more about business than it does the stated goals. Corruption.

Our company lost too many customers because of unions. They either moved out of state or out of the country entirely, so I do have a prejudice in the matter.

As for CEO's, why do people only complain about how much they make? When you go to a professional football game, what are you watching? You're watching a bunch of millionaires playing a game. How much are they making compared to the hot dog vendor, the ticket sales person, the water boy, the cleanup crew? After all, without these people, those players could never earn the kind of money they do.

I took an interest in the show Big Bang Theory after I purchased my big screen a few years ago. I caught up on all the shows from years past, so I went to Wiki to learn more about the cast.

As it turns out, the main actors get paid over one million dollars an episode. Then they get residuals from reruns and things like that. So the question is, what do the stage hands make compared to the salary of the actors? What do the makeup artists make? What do the lighting people make? What do the hair stylists and wardrobe people make? How about the writers?

Yet nobody ever mentions the salary of entertainers or the underlings that service them--only CEO's.

 

[320 Years of History]

The top 10% make 73% of all wealth. I promise you that they don't pay the kind of taxes into the system for what they make.

Red:
That has nothing to do with who pays how much taxes or whether they who pay taxes pay enough, too much or too little.. Your remark is about income earned, not taxes paid, not tax rates, or anything else taxes.

Blue:
That's an opinion, one to which you are to some extent potentially entitled. Whether the the top 10% should pay more or less in taxes is a subjective matter. That they do indeed pay more as taxes than do all other income segments is a fact.


Now it seems to me that folks who say the wealthy should be made to pay even more in taxes want two basic things:

• To exact a penalty for doing precisely what Americans are supposed to do: analyze the situation, identify opportunities (present and future) for profit making, avail themselves of those opportunities.
• Subsidize the non-wealthy even more than is already the case.

That wouldn't be terribly onerous but for the what those same folks also want in concert with the two bullets above:

• Dramatic reductions in the influence wealthy folks have in the policy making processes.
• Dramatic reductions in the influence wealthy folks have in the electoral process.

So you tell me, if you and several other folks buy a vacation home. If you pay for 50% of the mortgage and your several friends together pay the remaining 50%, would you not demand greater control in how and when the house is used and by whom? Well it's no different with taxes.

So what I'm saying is that folks can either the first pair of bullets or the second pair of bullets, but they can't expect both pairs of bullets, or even the first pair and either one of the second pair.

Very well put!

Thank you.

 

[OKTexas]

Government is the only thing keeping this nation a first world power and providing the first world environment for businesses to function.

I aint saying this stuff is FREE. So get over your worthless selfs....That is why I call it a investment!!! WE're making these investments as we speak!

Posts like this give all 12-year-olds a bad reputation.

Says the 4 year old that has lived with the benefits of a stable government his entire worthless life. Learn something but until then please fuck off.

Try going to a place without a stable government and starting your business...It will be burnt down.

Why are you bringing regressive run cities into the discussion?

 

[320 Years of History]

Hopefully, in the future unions will be for the worker once again and not a smoke screen for the business.

A smoke screen? You mean like when they move the business out of state or the country to get away from unions like so many have done in the past?

So many of the business managers go into the unions and take a hostile attitude toward management, but then will cut a deal with management to betray the employees for management. I have known of this happening at General Dynamics in Ft Worth back in the 1990s and have heard of it happening elsewhere.

Most business managers simply want to score as much money as they can and should never be trusted by unions.

Red:
Excuse me?? I know what you wrote and what you meant can't possibly be the same things, unless you were wasted when you wrote it, in which case I suppose anything is possible. LOL

Aren't union members by definition not the management of the company in question? How and why then would business managers take a hostile attitude toward other business managers and then cut a deal with the very same managers to betray the union. Seems to me the union isn't and would not ever be involved in any of those events.

I'm suspect somewhere in that statement you meant to say "union bosses," but I don't know know where.

Blue:
Business managers have one overall job: to run the company and all its affairs so as to maximize returns realized by company owners. That's it.

There are two basic approaches to maximizing net income: increase revenue and/or reduce expenses. Wages are a big expense, so what other than adversarial will be the nature of the interactions between unions and company management?

It might be different were union members to contribute to increasing revenues to a greater extent than they contribute to increasing costs, but mostly they don't. In short, the way unions in the U.S. work is that the "fatter" the take for union employees, the "fatter" the take for the union itself. That's essentially a parasitic organizational model. Who can blame company managers for not taking a kind view of unions?

Trade Unionism: Differences and Similarities – A Comparative View on Europe, USA and Asia

 

[buckeye45_73]

You know what I want from my government? Universal healthcare, free college, new or repaired infrastructure that isn't falling into rivers, a doubling of nasa's budgets so we can go to mars and a new 50 meter telescope to find extrasolar planets, billions for cures for cancer that will save a million people a year, billions for new fusion tech attempts and possible a fully working fusion reactor! I want our educational system leading the world with the teacher not having to dig into their own pockets to educate other peoples children,

This is how a nation remains a great power!!!! period.

Yeah, a great power like Denmark!!!!!!'

That's it...why not a Ferrari? Maybe they could provide us all with a yacht!

 

[JimBowie1958]

Hopefully, in the future unions will be for the worker once again and not a smoke screen for the business.

A smoke screen? You mean like when they move the business out of state or the country to get away from unions like so many have done in the past?

So many of the business managers go into the unions and take a hostile attitude toward management, but then will cut a deal with management to betray the employees for management. I have known of this happening at General Dynamics in Ft Worth back in the 1990s and have heard of it happening elsewhere.

Most business managers simply want to score as much money as they can and should never be trusted by unions.

Red:
Excuse me?? I know what you wrote and what you meant can't possibly be the same things, unless you were wasted when you wrote it, in which case I suppose anything is possible. LOL

Aren't union members by definition not the management of the company in question? How and why then would business managers take a hostile attitude toward other business managers and then cut a deal with the very same managers to betray the union. Seems to me the union isn't and would not ever be involved in any of those events.

I'm suspect somewhere in that statement you meant to say "union bosses," but I don't know know where.

Blue:
Business managers have one overall job: to run the company and all its affairs so as to maximize returns realized by company owners. That's it.

There are two basic approaches to maximizing net income: increase revenue and/or reduce expenses. Wages are a big expense, so what other than adversarial will be the nature of the interactions between unions and company management?

It might be different were union members to contribute to increasing revenues to a greater extent than they contribute to increasing costs, but mostly they don't. In short, the way unions in the U.S. work is that the "fatter" the take for union employees, the "fatter" the take for the union itself. That's essentially a parasitic organizational model. Who can blame company managers for not taking a kind view of unions?

Trade Unionism: Differences and Similarities – A Comparative View on Europe, USA and Asia

Unions have been taking business manager majors into the cadre of their union leadership for the past few decades and are the principle reason that Unions have lost support and become a shrinking part of the population, IMO.

 

[JimBowie1958]

You know what I want from my government? Universal healthcare, free college, new or repaired infrastructure that isn't falling into rivers, a doubling of nasa's budgets so we can go to mars and a new 50 meter telescope to find extrasolar planets, billions for cures for cancer that will save a million people a year, billions for new fusion tech attempts and possible a fully working fusion reactor! I want our educational system leading the world with the teacher not having to dig into their own pockets to educate other peoples children,

This is how a nation remains a great power!!!! period.

Yeah, a great power like Denmark!!!!!!'

That's it...why not a Ferrari? Maybe they could provide us all with a yacht!

Denmarks per capita income is higher than the US, after taxes, and they have effectively banned Muslim refugees from their country by having a second much lower tier of welfare for the refugees.

We can and will learn from their experiences, at least I hope we do.

 

[buckeye45_73]

You know what I want from my government? Universal healthcare, free college, new or repaired infrastructure that isn't falling into rivers, a doubling of nasa's budgets so we can go to mars and a new 50 meter telescope to find extrasolar planets, billions for cures for cancer that will save a million people a year, billions for new fusion tech attempts and possible a fully working fusion reactor! I want our educational system leading the world with the teacher not having to dig into their own pockets to educate other peoples children,

This is how a nation remains a great power!!!! period.

Yeah, a great power like Denmark!!!!!!'

That's it...why not a Ferrari? Maybe they could provide us all with a yacht!

Denmarks per capita income is higher than the US, after taxes, and they have effectively banned Muslim refugees from their country by having a second much lower tier of welfare for the refugees.

We can and will learn from their experiences, at least I hope we do.

I wouldn't call them a power....they don't produce much, they don't have a military worth a shit.....and they are losing ground in economic areas, because you cant keep what they are doing for very long. And they are in the EU, hell no.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I wouldn't call them a power....they don't produce much, they don't have a military worth a shit.....and they are losing ground in economic areas, because you cant keep what they are doing for very long. And they are in the EU, hell no.

I wouldnt call them a power as they are a pretty small nation, but they have their pluses as well as their minuses.

Their military isnt exactly the US Marines or 82nd Airborne.

 

[buckeye45_73]

I wouldn't call them a power....they don't produce much, they don't have a military worth a shit.....and they are losing ground in economic areas, because you cant keep what they are doing for very long. And they are in the EU, hell no.

I wouldnt call them a power as they are a pretty small nation, but they have their pluses as well as their minuses.

Their military isnt exactly the US Marines or 82nd Airborne.

yeah, I understand what you were saying....but that cradle to grave stuff can only last so long...people actually have to work and produce stuff....but it's one of the more stable countries in Europe!

 

[SAYIT]

Yeah, a great power like Denmark!!!!!!' That's it...why not a Ferrari? Maybe they could provide us all with a yacht!

Denmarks per capita income is higher than the US, after taxes....

Denmark is neither socialist nor is its per capita income greater than that of the US.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...2.html&usg=AFQjCNF2rYU88xLYRhK2OS_TcjD9r2OGaA

 

[buckeye45_73]

I wanna change my free car to an Astin Martin!

 

[JimBowie1958]

Yeah, a great power like Denmark!!!!!!' That's it...why not a Ferrari? Maybe they could provide us all with a yacht!

Denmarks per capita income is higher than the US, after taxes....

Denmark is neither socialist nor is its per capita income greater than that of the US.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjS4Prs1dbOAhVCNSYKHTgSC8kQFggsMAM&url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/denmark-not-socialist_b_9011652.html&usg=AFQjCNF2rYU88xLYRhK2OS_TcjD9r2OGaA

I cant find the data at the moment, but Denmarks median individual income adjusted for purchasing power ishigher than the US after taxes.

I will try to find that data tomorrow, but I just wantee you to know.

And you are right about 'Nordic Socialism' it is not purely socialist economy, at least not in the sense that Marxism is. But the people there call it socialism and that is more significant to me as economists argue about that kind of hair splitting all the time. IT is more of a heavily regulated capitalist economy, and they do a much better job of it.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I wanna change my free car to an Astin Martin!

By 2030 you should be able to 3D print and assemble just about any kind of car you want to, lol.

 

[buckeye45_73]

I wanna change my free car to an Astin Martin!

By 2030 you should be able to 3D print and assemble just about any kind of car you want to, lol.

LOL, that would be nice!

 

[JimBowie1958]

I wanna change my free car to an Astin Martin!

By 2030 you should be able to 3D print and assemble just about any kind of car you want to, lol.

LOL, that would be nice!

3D-Printed Car | Local Motors

World's First 3D Printed Supercar is Unveiled - 0-60 in 2.2 Seconds, 700 HP Motor - Built from Unique Node System
“Divergent Microfactories is going to unveil a supercar that is built based on 3D printed parts,” Manny Vara of LMG PR tells 3DPrint.com. “It is very light and super fast — can you say faster acceleration than a McLaren P1, and 2x the power-to-weight ratio of a Bugatti Veyron? But the car itself is only part of the story. The company is actually trying to completely change how cars are made in order to hugely reduce the amount of materials, power, pollution and cost associated with making traditional cars.”

The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars. Unlike previous 3D printed vehicles that we have seen, such as Local Motors’ car that they have printed several times, DM’s manufacturing process differs quite a bit. Instead of 3D printing an entire vehicle, they 3D print aluminum ‘nodes’ which act in a similar fashion to Lego blocks. 3D printing allows DM to create elaborate and complex shaped nodes which are then joined together by off-the-shelf carbon fiber tubing. Once the nodes are printed, the chassis of a car can be completely assembled in a matter of minutes by semiskilled workers.

World’s first 3D printed drivable car takes just 44 hours to make

 

[P@triot]

No lying is defined as something a government needs to do from time to time, in order to keep it's people safe.

That's an astoundingly ignorant comment by an individual who is an astoundingly obedient minion to power.

 

[Dr Grump]

As I said. You better hope you never need a gun because you won't be able to get one.

I'm no Chicken Little..

 

[forkup]

No lying is defined as something a government needs to do from time to time, in order to keep it's people safe.

That's an astoundingly ignorant comment by an individual who is an astoundingly obedient minion to power.

You know what I find so interesting about you patriot. Twice now you try to spew rhetoric or not answer, in favor of actually answering the premisis of my posts. It strikes me as ironic that someone like you would call someone else ignorant, while at the same time being seemingly incapable of holding a substansive conversation

I'll give you a historical example. The Cuban missile crisis was resolved with Krushev withdrawing it's missiles from Cuba while Kennedy withdrew his from Turkey. It depended on absolute secrecy of the deal being made. Without it you and me wouldn't be able to discuss this. Your life depends on the government having certain secrets, that simple.

My first unanswered reply.

If this would be the case, congress would hold hearings to establish Scalias unsuitability. They haven't even interviewed so that means bad faith. It's not even the excuse Republican congresspeople use. They are trying to sell it as not giving the people a voice until after the election. So clearly obstructing the will of the drafters of the constitution.

The second unanswered one.