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Donald Trump 2018


TheFlyingBoat

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3 hours ago, scottsins said:

Isn’t the 2% requirement already agreed to, and only effective by 2024?

Yes.  I read an article on NPR that says 9 of 24 nations will be compliant this year, and several don't plan to gain compliance by 2024.

In an ironic twist (not), Trump has been overstating our spending at 4.2% of GDP.  The Pentagon says it's 3.3%.

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4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yes.  I read an article on NPR that says 9 of 24 nations will be compliant this year, and several don't plan to gain compliance by 2024.

In an ironic twist (not), Trump has been overstating our spending at 4.2% of GDP.  The Pentagon says it's 3.3%.

 

I've never seen any stat that puts it at 4%. I have seen anywhere from 3.1 to 3.6%.

As far as breakdown by country, here's 2017:

 

db173260-d70a-474b-a6cc-75532465f82c.jpg

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35 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Here's another chart from WSJ, with data apparently sourced from NATO, that puts US @ 4.4%:

WO-AT611_NATOSP_9U_20140904115706.jpg

I wonder how much we could save if we only spent 2% GDP, several hundred billion a year?  Imperialism sure is expensive.  

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11 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

I wonder how much we could save if we only spent 2% GDP, several hundred billion a year?  Imperialism sure is expensive.  

If we assume a 1.3% reduction in defense spending, then based on a current GDP of $19.4T, that would save $252B.

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2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

If we assume a 1.3% reduction in defense spending, then based on a current GDP of $19.4T, that would save $252B.

Yeah, OR, and hear me out, Paul Ryan says we can just cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and SNAP for poor, lazy, freeloading minorities - err, I mean, impoverished, non-working, non-white takers -  instead! With all those savings, we can actually INCREASE defense spending. Then we'll really be MAGA-ing so much you'll be tired of MAGA-ing.

Edited by Js1
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4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

If we assume a 1.3% reduction in defense spending, then based on a current GDP of $19.4T, that would save $252B.

I didn't word that well -- the assumption is that we would drop defense spending from 3.3% of GDP to 2% of GDP.

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Just now, jimmyjazz said:

If we assume a 1.3% reduction in defense spending, then based on a current GDP of $19.4T, that would save $252B.

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

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4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

If we assume a 1.3% reduction in defense spending, then based on a current GDP of $19.4T, that would save $252B.

lol but shit like Sanders' free college plan, which would cost far less than that, is a pipe dream.  This country is so impossibly fucked up.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.

Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

According to Kevin Morgan's lawyer we could be 720,000 shaggytexas websites.

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12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

Dotard could light up his political enemies RocketMan style.  

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Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!
This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.
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14 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

52 actual infrastructure weeks a year, please.

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1 minute ago, tchookem said:
14 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

This is correct.

 

 

also

 

 

 

 

Brexit

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17 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.

Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

hello from overseas friends. its been interesting. hope you fools are ok. lets hear from Bill on this concept a bit

 

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Just now, tchookem said:
13 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

That's exactly it.  

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8 minutes ago, tchookem said:
21 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

Yep.  315 billion dollars worth of F35s.  And that's just the purchase price.  That doesn't include maintenance/etc.  We have 1.2 million troops.  We could have forgone the F35 program entirely and cut every service member a 265,000 dollar check.  Or we could have updated older planes (which we are updating anyway) at a fraction of the cost and cut the service members 150k checks instead.

And that's just one boondoggle program. The DoD has loads of wasteful spending.  None of these budget increases go to the troops.  Hell, we bitch about the VA and act like we can barely fund it.

Edited by FondrenRoad
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I could probably google this, but I'm overcome with laziness:  anybody know what our $ commitment is to salaries and benefits for all military personnel?  I'm gonna guess $50B but that assumes an average of $40K per year and I haven't the foggiest notion of whether that's reasonable.

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45 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

And we would still have a multiple on spending dollar for dollar relative to China at #2. Wonder if there is anything cool we could do with an extra quarter trillion annually. 

We could use it to improve public education. But then, an educated electorate is bad for the GOP so they would never adopt that plan. They'd just use the surplus as an excuse to cut more taxes for the rich. 

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29 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I could probably google this, but I'm overcome with laziness:  anybody know what our $ commitment is to salaries and benefits for all military personnel?  I'm gonna guess $50B but that assumes an average of $40K per year and I haven't the foggiest notion of whether that's reasonable.

I would assume with the bulk of the military being enlisted that that salary figure is high.

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7 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

We could use it to improve public education. But then, an educated electorate is bad for the GOP so they would never adopt that plan. They'd just use the surplus as an excuse to cut more taxes for the rich. 

Didn't you get the memo? Charter schools that aren't regulated are what we need more of!

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2 minutes ago, Red Five said:

It seems like this would be a pretty good platform for a candidate. “Hey I’m going to drop our defense budget by like 1% and pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and pay off our debt.”

I agree, but I think people are so scared of that being used against them in states that are more red or swing districts. "THEY WANT THE BROWN TERRORISTS TO WIN!" is stupidly effective even in suburban areas.

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53 minutes ago, tchookem said:
1 hour ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

rs-233814-arms17n-2-web-e7d11284-2450-41

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10 minutes ago, Red Five said:

It seems like this would be a pretty good platform for a candidate. “Hey I’m going to drop our defense budget by like 1% and pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and pay off our debt.”

Just to clarify, it wouldn't be cutting the defense budget by 1%, it would be cutting it by 39%.  The math I showed assumed we cut defense spending from 3.3% of GDP to 2% of GDP.

I should just delete that post.

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12 minutes ago, Red Five said:

It seems like this would be a pretty good platform for a candidate. “Hey I’m going to drop our defense budget by like 1% and pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and pay off our debt.”

Do you even MIC bro?

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Mmmmm I love me some defense spending. I love even more reading people hate on my salary bennies.  Yummy and saucy. 

 

For FY 18  personnel costs are about 141B for that question asked and another 10B or so for family support.  I’m not sure if that includes pension payments or not but luckily for you guys the military did away with those pensions for new troops so they have to fend for themselves.  Although if they stick it out for 20 which many very rarely do they will get a little something

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42 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

Didn't you get the memo? Charter schools that aren't regulated are what we need more of!

Not to mention paying our tax money to church-run schools (aka madrassas) so we can keep our children ignorant of science, literature, uncomfortable historical facts, etc. 

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1 minute ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Not to mention paying our tax money to church-run schools (aka madrassas) so we can keep our children ignorant of science, literature, uncomfortable historical facts, etc. 

Sounds like Sharia law or something. 🤔

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1 hour ago, tchookem said:
1 hour ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

Have friends that do contracts for various middlemen.  If you're not making 6 figures,  you're not doing it right.  But yeah, 'Merica and the soldiers.  

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2 hours ago, tchookem said:
2 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless.
Aw fuck it.  More missiles!

This is actually an important point, the increased spending isn't going to the soldiers' pockets or being used to care for veterans, it's making defense contractors very rich. Most Americans think defense cuts hurt the soldiers.

Except it does hurt. What most folks who aren’t involved think is that it lines defense contractors pockets.  But the largest expense for the military is personnel cost hence why so much is now contracted out today that never was. So when there’s a slash to budget. The first thing that goes is personnel and manning in the form of RIFs Voluntary outs early retirement mandatory retraining to undermanned career fields or get out. Closing of doors to various programs slashing TA funding and education. Cutting annual raises to 1.0% ( I know be happy with 1.0 or should have went to college and got a real job. Which is what I’ve been told).  Then you tell our maintainers to go to the nearest aviation museum and can parts off displays to keep our 40-50 year old aircraft flying that husband brothers sisters are flying on. So yeah defense cuts especially the ones we saw last admin hurt and cut us deep. Now we do more with less having leave cancelled because our 100 man shop is now 40 man shop still doing requirements of a 110 man shop.  But again I’m just a stupid military guy 

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1 minute ago, Sgt Hulk said:

Now we do more with less having leave cancelled because our 100 man shop is now 40 man shop still doing requirements of a 110 man shop.  But again I’m just a stupid military guy 

In the private sector what this says is that you should have never had a 100 man shop if 40 men can do the job. But for some reason that "IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR" logic never gets applied by the right to the military, only to other government agencies like the EPA, Education, etc.

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6 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

In the private sector what this says is that you should have never had a 100 man shop if 40 men can do the job. But for some reason that "IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR" logic never gets applied by the right to the military, only to other government agencies like the EPA, Education, etc.

6 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

In the private sector what this says is that you should have never had a 100 man shop if 40 men can do the job. But for some reason that "IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR" logic never gets applied by the right to the military, only to other government agencies like the EPA, Education, etc.

So out of all that what you deduced was that we had an overmanned shop ? Completely missing the point that we went from slightly undermanned to half our manning gone  I love when someone tries to compare military operations to the private sector.   Lol 

Edited by Sgt Hulk
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Just now, Sgt Hulk said:

 

Yes. Your example says that you have 40 men who are now getting the job done but that you want 100 men to do the same job. What that means is that the 100 man level of staffing was government bloat and waste. You don't agree with that opinion because it's your ass on the line.

But if the EPA had a 100 person office with a workload that 40 people could get done then you would want to know why tax dollars are being wasted on 60 extra heads and wouldn't care one lick about the stress that the 40 EPA employees would be under. And you'd be right to question that.

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5 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Yes. Your example says that you have 40 men who are now getting the job done but that you want 100 men to do the same job. What that means is that the 100 man level of staffing was government bloat and waste. You don't agree with that opinion because it's your ass on the line.

But if the EPA had a 100 person office with a workload that 40 people could get done then you would want to know why tax dollars are being wasted on 60 extra heads and wouldn't care one lick about the stress that the 40 EPA employees would be under. And you'd be right to question that.

Lol so again you deduced that we have a workload of a 40 man office even when i states we had a 110 man workload You’re wrong. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand.  When I saidnhaving leave cancelled because we now don’t have enough manning to do the mission someone you think that’s perfectly acceptable saying the job is still gettin accomplished.   You’re partly right because these guys make the mission happen regardless.  Now at 7 Day a week 12 hour day shifts with no leave or time off and no overtime til keep MC rates above 70% that were one time above the majcom standard of 90 mission capability.  But thought processes like yours are the reason why we got cut so deep because you think a 3 person job can be done by 1 person just tell him he can’t go home or have a day off until done 

Edited by Sgt Hulk
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Oh, I completely understand. People are selfish creatures. You will whine about how tough your job is and how you need more resources but will then wonder why we're "wasting" so many resources elsewhere. It's human nature, everyone does it including me. The important thing to do is to admit it.

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