Thread: It's finally over

Originally Posted by Xei

So... taxes.

I think what he means is that there isn't a war tax in the sense that you have to pay it separately from your regular federal income tax. It isn't like a social security tax or anything. You would only pay more in taxes during a war if the government raised taxes on your income level.

It doesn't make any mathematical sense though... war does cost money. So sooner or later... you'll have to pay for it. Of course, it's customary these days to choose later, but you'll still have to pay. Doesn't really make any difference if it's nominally a 'war tax' or not...

You pay for the military, not the war. That cost is relatively the same in war times as it is in peace times (it costs a lot to train soldiers and maintain a military.) Whether you experience a tax hike depends on how catastrophic the war is. If things go well and you make a profit, then you don't have to pay for it because it payed for itself. Think of it like a security system. You pay for a security system to be installed at your house and for the sake of this argument lets say you have to pay a certain amount every year for upkeep. You don't have to pay extra everytime the alarm goes off, that's just doing it's job. We pay money for the military to be ready to go to war at a moments notice, they don't need a fundraiser. Maybe the government could choose to increase the military's budget during a war, that could be a valid argument, except the military's budget has been growing at a fairly steady rate since WWII in both times of peace and war. So I am just saying that you would still be paying more or less the same amount of money to the military whether they were in Iraq or not. I keep hearing the argument of "that money should have gone to education," as if the military is reaching directly into the pockets of the education department. That money would have gone to the military no matter what, they just chose to do with it something that a lot people think was wasteful.

They pay for it by printing money. When they print money you devalue all current money in the market place by a little to give the money you are printing value. So in a lot of cases we are not directly paying in taxes, we are paying indirectly through the inflation caused by the government printing money.

Also the only reason that is true caprisun, is because we been in war nonstop since WW2. There really isn't a peace time in the US, we are always at war. Even when war isn't declared we are in all sort of international conflicts, where are troops are fighting some where.

Originally Posted by Xei

So the money for wars comes from... where?

Well if they didn't increase taxes or add new ones (which doesn't sound like something the Bush government would've done), they'd reallocate money from other social programs and/or put it on the national debt (which accrued $7.5 trillion since 2001).

I also disagree with Caprisun that a military at peace is roughly as expensive as a military at war. There are still (and probably more) training exercises during war (in addition to normal combat) and recruitment is stepped up. The majority of your operations are conducted halfway around the world and a lot of military resources are used for civilian reconstruction projects. Then you have to factor in casualties and materiel loss... $$$

We are building permanent military bases there. It's a form of colonization.

Except that its a money pit, and we don't get any money back from any of our 'colonies'. Which we actually have a lot of all around the world.

Originally Posted by Alric

Except that its a money pit, and we don't get any money back from any of our 'colonies'. Which we actually have a lot of all around the world.

Well, we're not doing it for the U.S. We're working for the banks.

So you are arguing that the US spent no more money going to war in Iraq than if it had left it's military at home? you can't tell me it doesn't cost more to operate a military in wartime than peacetime. Not to mention, the US's military spending has been insane long before the Iraq War. We should have cut back on military spending decades ago, but right-wingers flip out about the threat to our nation every time someone tries.

Originally Posted by Alric

They pay for it by printing money. When they print money you devalue all current money in the market place by a little to give the money you are printing value. So in a lot of cases we are not directly paying in taxes, we are paying indirectly through the inflation caused by the government printing money.

There isn't anything to say about this other than is just isn't true.

Originally Posted by Alric

Also the only reason that is true caprisun, is because we been in war nonstop since WW2. There really isn't a peace time in the US, we are always at war. Even when war isn't declared we are in all sort of international conflicts, where are troops are fighting some where.

There have been four "official" wars since the end of WWII, each one lasting 5-6 years. That leaves plenty of peace time. We have special forces deployed around the world on peace keeping missions around the clock, but that doesn't constitute a war.

Originally Posted by horsey101

So you are arguing that the US spent no more money going to war in Iraq than if it had left it's military at home? you can't tell me it doesn't cost more to operate a military in wartime than peacetime.

Well I did. It seems counterintuitive at first but it makes sense if you really think about it. Soldiers are either overseas fighting real battles or they are here simulating battles. In many cases it costs more to simulate a battle than it does to fight a real battle.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

I also disagree with Caprisun that a military at peace is roughly as expensive as a military at war. There are still (and probably more) training exercises during war (in addition to normal combat) and recruitment is stepped up. The majority of your operations are conducted halfway around the world and a lot of military resources are used for civilian reconstruction projects. Then you have to factor in casualties and materiel loss... $$$

Military spending remains relatively constant. Recruitment isn't necessarily stepped up during wars, at least not successfully since the military has been seriously hurting for recruits since the start of the war. The troops at home continue to train while the rest go overseas, going overseas doesn't cost any more than training at home, so it remains constant. Material loss has been especially insignificant in this war and we don't automtically replace every tank, hummer, and helicopter that we lose. As for civilian reconstruction, I don't know but I doubt that really puts a dent in the budget.

I wasn't talking about official wars at all, since most of the wars we fight in are anything but official. I wasn't talking about peace keeping troops either, except in cases where the 'peace keeping' troops are activity at war. For example I wouldn't consider us at peace right now, even though we are not officially at war with anyone. Its obvious we are fighting at least two wars in other countries at the moment. This is what the US calls peace though.

Semantically, without a declaration of war, it isn't considered a war. A police action or heated dispute, perhaps, but not war.

Yea but that is just semantics, and doesn't really help your argument at all. Since people are dying, and troops are deployed and fighting in battles on large scales. In other words they are in war mode, and spending far more than they would in actual peace. Which we havn't had for a very long time.

Alright, so in other words, our "peace time" is really "war time." And if that is true, then the war in Iraq didn't really cost us a hell of a lot more than we were already spending. After all, what is one more conflict in a world where our military is constantly at work?

The problem is 50 years of war is taking a great toll on our country, and is pretty much bankrupting us.

We spend a hefty portion of our GDP on the military and defense, no doubt, but I would hardly say it is bankrupting us solely on its own. Health care isn't exactly effective or efficient spending, which is one of the things the new bill tried to fix. Protectionism is something I wouldn't call smart spending, either. There are all sorts of costs and concerns in our nation. War is part of the problem, but far from the entire picture.

Alric, special forces operations don't consitute war any more than a S.W.A.T. team drug bust does. And it can't bankrupt us if it's our most profitable enterprise.

I wasn't talking about special forces, I was talking about places like Iraq. Where 50,000 troops are stations, they drive around in tanks. People shoot at them they shoot back, troops die, things blow up. That is war and its expensive.

Also war isn't profitable at all. Its a total drain on everything, not a single cent is made in the process. How can you say its profitable?

The US defense budget for 2011 is going to be 1 trillion dollars. That is assuming they stay within budget. At a trillion dollars for a single year, you can hardly say the that the spending is only part of the problem. It is a HUGE MAJOR part of the problem.

Defense makes up about a fifth of national spending. Now stop yapping about how war is bankrupting us. War is only a part of the larger category of "defense," anyway. As Caprisun pointed out, it costs money to operate bases in the U.S. and train new recruits. It also costs money to develop new weapons.

Originally Posted by Alric

I wasn't talking about special forces, I was talking about places like Iraq. Where 50,000 troops are stations, they drive around in tanks. People shoot at them they shoot back, troops die, things blow up. That is war and its expensive.

Also war isn't profitable at all. Its a total drain on everything, not a single cent is made in the process. How can you say its profitable?

The US defense budget for 2011 is going to be 1 trillion dollars. That is assuming they stay within budget. At a trillion dollars for a single year, you can hardly say the that the spending is only part of the problem. It is a HUGE MAJOR part of the problem.

Ok, that's Iraq. You said we were in a perpetual state of warfare and cited the special forces as a the driving force behind that situation.

War can be very profitable, and not just in a monetary sense. You can win valuable allies in war which gives you power and security and that could help you economically. It doesn't always have to be direct, but we can also profit from the production of military equipment. To say we don't make a single cent is very short-sighted.

Saying defense is only a 5th of our spending so its not a big deal, is pretty silly. Since its obvious we are wasting huge amounts of money across the board. Of course it costs money to do all that other stuff, but when you just keep stacking more spending upon more spending, what you get is a bankrupt country. Its pretty clear to everyone that the US is nearly bankrupt, and that we are only making things worse as time goes on. If you want to argue that other areas are killing us too, that is fine. I will agree that things like social security is bankrupting our country as well, but that doesn't change the fact that war is a huge part of what is killing our country and our economy.

I didn't cite special forces. I said peace keeping troops, who stay around for years fighting people and the dozen or so 'small' wars we fought.

You could probably argue that a nice portion of defense spending is a necessary evil. Imagine the publicity America would have gotten if we had invaded Iraq, killed Saddam, then left. The country would have been left in shambles. The least we could have done was stick around to help rebuilt. It wasn't an attractive option, but probably better than the alternative. Not invading altogether would have been better for short term GDP, sure, but now we at least have a sort of ally in the middle east, and that is an area where we could use one.

Of course there is wasteful defense spending too. (Do we really need to keep troops in Japan still?) But there is waste in everything the government does. It would be nice to trim it, but that seems rather difficult to do. I don't think the U.S. dropping everything and running back home from all across the world is a good idea. Our presence is still needed in some nations. It costs money, sure, but it isn't singlehandedly robbing the U.S. of all money.

We already have allies in the middle east. We didn't need Iraq as an ally, and we didn't need to invade just so we could have a military base in the area. It was all unnecessary from the start.

Of course it was unnecessary. I don't like the Iraq war anymore than you do. What I'm saying is that it didn't have a huge impact on our economy.