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Originally Posted by aresprophet
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None of this is true. Not a sentence of it. The money spent on defense and welfare is largely a fixed amount (at the federal level anyway), federal government programs often outperform the private sector in terms of administrative overhead, and the "efficiency" of government is a non-issue when you consider that it is meant to fill roles that the private sector will not, cannot, and should not. It's not there to make money, it's there to perform certain essential functions regardless of efficiency.
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I don't know where you're getting that from, but it's demonstrably false. The money we spend on defense and welfare is *not* fixed by any reasonable definition of the term. The dollar amount, percentage of GDP, and dispersal of funding fluctuates significantly from year to year for defense spending. Moreover, as recently as a few months ago, Congress passed a bill that required ~$450 billion in defense spending cuts over the next 10 years. That's, by definition, not fixed. It changes constantly. It's a safe bet that with increased tax revenue would come more expenditure on defense, and had we already increased tax revenue, those defense cuts likely never would have been realized.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aresprophet
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I thought "comfort" wasn't something we were supposed to guarantee? I'd rather live on welfare than slave for 40 hours a week on minimum wage, but that's not the reason we have high unemployment.
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Comfort is not a right, but it should be attainable for the employed. A minimum wage that provides a modicum of comfort for the employed would go a long way toward eliminating the need for many welfare programs. And yes, a large reason for the number of unemployed is the fact that working minimum wage is less desirable than simply collecting welfare. You can't improve your lot on current minimum wage, so why bother? There's no shortage of jobs at Subway, McDonald's, or a million other businesses that pay minimum wage. The fact is that millions of people choose not to do that kind of work because minimum wage isn't worth the effort to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aresprophet
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Yes, actually, it is. Because you can't throw hundreds of billions of dollars (in the case of health care trillions of dollars) at problems without those dollars coming from somewhere.
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Who decided it was desirable to "throw" hundreds of billions -- or trillions -- of dollars at health care? The current health care system doesn't work, no matter how much you tax the wealthy. We already spend more per citizen on health care than any other nation in the world -- what is more money going to fix? Dumping more money into it will just delay the inevitable, which is reform. Our national health care programs are insolvent, and our private health care industry is broken. "Tax the rich" sounds nice if you're not rich, but it's not actually a solution. It's a bumper sticker. There has yet to be a comprehensive, fair, and workable healthcare solution presented -- no matter how much revenue is brought in.