James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change
andyt @ Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:40 pm
boomer retirement = military action. Wow. Yep, let's keep killing each other but take away retirement for a whole cohort of people.
eureka @ Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:22 pm
Psudo Psudo:
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
My favorite policy proposal is to stop spending all this treasure and blood fighting ach other, and everyone work together and use the money we spend on wars to develop energy options such as nuclear fusion and space-based solar collectors. Thta's probably why I'm a scientist as opposed to a policy anaylst. ha ha ha.
There's a lot more US treasure tied up in the Boomer retirements than in military action. =]I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
Indeed! The subsidies for oil could be ended. Not only the federal.
Zipperfish @ Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:08 am
Psudo Psudo:
There's a lot more US treasure tied up in the Boomer retirements than in military action. =]
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
Well I would argue that spending money deliberately kiling each other is a waste of life and money. Whereas feeding old people is not a waste of money. In my moral world anyway.
As I said, I probably spent too much time as a kid watching Star Trek and listening to John Lennon.
eureka @ Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:27 am
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Psudo Psudo:
There's a lot more US treasure tied up in the Boomer retirements than in military action. =]
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
Well I would argue that spending money deliberately kiling each other is a waste of life and money. Whereas feeding old people is not a waste of money. In my moral world anyway.
As I said, I probably spent too much time as a kid watching Star Trek and listening to John Lennon.
Are you sure about that. The present government seems to think that feeding old people might be a waste of money.
Zipperfish @ Tue Mar 20, 2012 7:54 am
eureka eureka:
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Psudo Psudo:
There's a lot more US treasure tied up in the Boomer retirements than in military action. =]
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
I like the idea of cutting existing federal spending and putting a portion of those cuts toward energy innovation.
Well I would argue that spending money deliberately kiling each other is a waste of life and money. Whereas feeding old people is not a waste of money. In my moral world anyway.
As I said, I probably spent too much time as a kid watching Star Trek and listening to John Lennon.
Are you sure about that. The present government seems to think that feeding old people might be a waste of money.
I suppose it might be more efficient to grind them up into particles and shoot them into the atmosphere to stop global warming.
Or here's an efficient isdea: feed the homeless to the hungry. Two problems solved. You're welcome.
andyt @ Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:35 am
The homeless are the hungry. Surely it would be better to feed the old folks to the homeless. Or vice versa, that would work too.
Psudo @ Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:11 pm
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Well I would argue that spending money deliberately kiling each other is a waste of life and money. Whereas feeding old people is not a waste of money. In my moral world anyway.
As I said, I probably spent too much time as a kid watching Star Trek and listening to John Lennon.
I don't disagree with the comparison as written, context aside. But I do disagree with "deliberately killing each other" as the entire goal of military spending. When war breaks out, the front lines turn into deliberate killing. But of the 2 million US soldiers, only something like 150k of them have been at the front line at any given time in the past decade or two. So what are the other 90% of those folks up to? Security at embassies and government functions, protecting international commerce, patriotic ceremonies, disaster relief, technological research and experimentation... that's where military spending is really going, and "deliberately killing each other" is not an accurate description of it.As I said, I probably spent too much time as a kid watching Star Trek and listening to John Lennon.
Take your Star Trek example: those guys weren't looking for a fight, but they fought often enough. They had about the same 10:90 split of fighting to other, more positive behavior. But you're citing them as a peacenik counter-example. What's the difference here?
Support for the military is not support for war. One of my favorite conservative principles says it's the opposite: a powerful and capable military ruled by a desire for peace and order is a discouragement to war. I think Captain Picard would agree with that.
My point wasn't a moral one; I'm not saying military spending is more moral than boomer retirements. It's a practical point: boomer retirements are going to do more to redirect funds away from energy research than military spending. If you dispute all other reasons for that assertion, there is still this: the military can legally be cut, but citizens can sue the government to attain the funds promised them by Social Security law even after some hypothetical and career-suicidal legislators pass laws cutting it. More of those promises every year ensures an ever-increasing cost that we cannot ever opt out of (at least not without defrauding the retirees by fiat, something I cannot fathom holding up in court or morality). That's a greater threat to energy spending or, indeed, any non-entitlement spending and perhaps potentially even to the solvency of the US government itself some decades down the line.
I'm not saying "break these promises;" on the contrary, we must keep them. I'm just saying "Stop making so many new promises that we can't keep them all." I'm happy to cut defense spending, too, but that's just gravy. Entitlements are the meat of the fiscal problem.
Some kind of retirement plan is a moral thing. But we can easily bankrupt ourselves trying to buy a more moral world. Is morality a commodity now, too? I think a more moral world can only come about if the primary engine of the change is the people acting individually; if government spending or fiat is the primary engine, you incite jealousy and unrest rather than compassion.