I don’t compare our military expenditures with China or Russia. And much of that budget goes towards veterans, and who knows what China or Russia provides for their vets.
Our military budget is not the problem.
mysondsdad actually Argentina had two horrific terrorist attacks against jewish targets. 85 were killed in one attack and 29 in the other. (back in the 1990’s)
@Mysonsdad That is an awesome and great idea. That is what we need.
<<<
Despite all this, we are the only country in North or South America that has been attacked by terrorists
<<<
We don’t have a military so that we’re not attacked by terrorists, altho that is a smaller reason. We have a miliatry to protect this country from being taken over by another major power…(Russia, China)
We can’t cut the military budget by half…that’s not even a somewhat reasonable request.
tiger1307:
since you support free college tuition, what about free high school tuition? If Northeastern University should be tuition free, how about Boston Latin prep school? Phillips-Exeter? Andover? If not, why not?
(Yes, not really free, just paid for by the 1%.)
bad example - Boston Latin is a public school. :)>-
So how exactly would that work?
We cut the budget in half and there will be tons of people who work for the military, including the companies that support the military, subcontractors, everyone from janitors and support staff up through engineers and maintenance workers out of jobs and unable to send their kids to college, much less spend money on things like food and rent.
Now, cutting foreign aid would be somewhat different since the percent of spend in the U.S. would be less (although there still would be a lot of people who administer and manage those programs who would be fired.
The media is completely amazing. They keep focusing on people like this with the scary story of $150k in debt (oh no!) and billions and billions and even trillions of dollars of debt (oh double no!).
The just don’t like to put any perspective on this and that is a disservice to the public and to the issue itself.
At least US News gets it.
For the graduating class of 2013:
- 70 percent graduated with debt.
- The average debt was (gasp!) $29k
- That is an increase of (gasp!) 2% over the previous year.
Plenty of people pointed out that the $150k was a choice - a choice which apparently many students did not make.
thanks for the correction.
The figures in post 158 are about 800 billion. If we cut it in half that is 400 billion. The cost numbers I have seen per the N Y Times October 2015 article for public higher education are around 60 Billion. That would still leave 340 billion to put the displaced people in the military at work in education, alternative forms of energy and fixing the aging infrastructure for our country. Just think what building high speed rail might do for the economy of this country or building new schools and at the end of the day we would still have the most expensive military in the world
Ok, so what you are saying is that for the 400B you want to cut, you would take out 60B and give them other jobs worth 340B. So they get a salary cut of 15%. Well, that makes sense. I am sure that will make it easier for them to pay for food and rent with only a 15% salary cut.
High speed rail?! LOL. Like the government debacle going on in California?! Original budget 33B. Construction just started this year…and ooppsie, the budget has already gone up to $66B. Check out how well the Bay Bridge is doing.
The military also has impact on other parts of society (hello Internet, hello Jet travel, hello communications infrastructure, hello material science, etc. etc)
@tger1307 LOL!! $60B for college education costs?? Only in gov’t budgeting. Seriously. Simple math. $60B divided by 12.3M (the # I found for # of students enrolled in college.). Wowsers, that equates to ~$4900 per student. Seriously??? Yep…right out of a gov’t dream funding handbook.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek yeah, government math. maybe that is $60B/month 
It is how part of the playbook…say it costs X, get the job and then whoops, it is 2X, then 3X, then… Check out the Big Dig, the Bay Bridge, etc. etc.
Again, this is all such a silly argument since the average debt (for the 70% who even graduate with debt) is about the cost of a well equipped Camry. That ain’t a bad deal for 4 years of education, food and housing and it certainly isn’t some horrible tragedy.
(of course if those outliers who the media loves, those that take on hundreds of thousands in debt, weren’t included, the average would be lower)
@TooOld4School - While it is true that many students in Argentina work part-time, the largest university, Universidad de Buenos Aires, is also free of charge. All the others, e.g. Universidad San Andres, Di Tella, El Salvador, la Catolica, cost only a tiny fraction of what tuition is here.
Furthermore, most classes are taught by (honorary) professors or lecturers at night who also hold a full-time day job. Like most everything in Argentina, professorships can only be secured via personal connections.
Most students live at home until they get married or move in with a significant other. Out-of-town students may live with a relative or commute into the cities. My understanding is that Argentina had pretty good secondary and tertiary education until 20 or 30 years ago. Those Argentines who want to be academics or scientists usually leave the country for less corrupt shores.
from tiger
It really depends on the state and the type of ‘mortgage’ (people often call deeds of trust 'mortgages). California uses DOT most often.
I did a research project for all the states. About 1/3 have non-recourse mortgages/DOTs, some have a choice between a DOT with a quick foreclosure procedure or a mortgage with a longer foreclosure process. Many states have foreclosure with recourse (to college the rest of the debt) but it is more complicated so the debt holder chooses a shorter method of getting the house back. The excess debt can be charged off or the lender can try to collect in many states. There was an exclusion for this charge off if certain conditions were met by the debtor (primary residence was the biggest one), but that expired in 2013 so those who have discharged debt should be careful how the discharge is worded.
Taxes are generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Oh sure let’s cut the military budget in half. Those Sailors that regularly deploy for 9 months won’t mind being gone for 18 months instead. And they sure don’t need new ships with new technology. They can just keep using the nuclear contaminated ones they have now. Just as long as we can have free college for kids who didn’t have the courage to earn the GI Bill.
@twoinanddone three year old and older taxes are dischargeable in bankruptcy. 11 uscs 523(a)7 you may want to look it up
@mom2aphysicsgeek there are currently around 6 million students at 4 year public universities. Average tuition is about 10,000. 6 million times 10,000 is 60 billion. I hope that helps you. You may also want to read the new york times article during october 2015 regarding this subject
@skyoverme I am not sure of your criticism of the bay bridge. It is beautiful. It was necessitated as you recall because of earthquake concerns. It is the widest bridge in the world. Not sure of your criticism of high speed rail in California except that it costs money to build
@tiger1307 So does that mean you support funding free 4 yr tuition but leave the 7 million CC students without free tuition? Do you really believe that situation would remain without change? (No way I believe it.) Would the funds be fixed for 6M students or how would it be funded when demand increases bc tuition is now “free?” (And when demand increases and it forces tuition costs to increase due to needing more building space, etc, where does the $$ come from for the increased costs?)
What do you mean by this? Maybe you are confusing the U.S. navy with the Russian navy?
tiger1307 generally has no clue what s/he is talking about… using erroneous information in a counterargument does not help.