• tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    If they overpaid people who are struggling for money, and who have no choice but to spend that money, then that’s their problem. They need to correct the amounts in the future, suck it up and take the loss. I’m sure someone in the organization can be blamed and reprimanded.

    We can take the excess out of the military budget, and try harder next time to make sure the math is right.

      • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Don’t forget, however, that we have a specific tax just for social security and not the military. I think some republicans would like people to forget this and see everyone on social security as some burden on tax payers.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        3% of GDP is fucking massive. Also, if you read the fine print, any costs related to veterans are shunted over to nondefense discretionary payments or other mandatory payments, which is a neat little accounting trick. Defense costs don’t include veterans. So where else in the budget are we hiding the fact that we’re paying for our wars?

      • noneya@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The scale is skewed heavily to minimize the appearance of the “defense” budget. Wonder why?

        • CodeInvasion@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          It’s literally an area chart. There’s no way to “skew” it in this format. $800B of $6,300B in spending is always going to be 12.6% no matter how you slice it.

          • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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            10 months ago

            Then why is the slice for defense smaller than Medicare despite being a bigger expense?

            I think it’s fair to say it’s visually skewed.

            • hpca01@programming.dev
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              10 months ago

              I think it’s the kind of chart they used… You can’t fit 2 same sized circles like that… They could have used a bar chart.

            • takeda@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              The difference is relatively small to matter, only 0.5% of the total. Also the reason they are separate is because our budget is divided as mandatory and discretionary.

              Discretionary is the budget that is not being paid when Congress can’t get their shit together.

      • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I doubt the military budget is properly spent. The joke about the $10,000 toilet seat isn’t a joke. Proper spending, accountability, and audits mean less wasted money, and that means more money to spend on other projects.

        (2018) Following requests for an investigation from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Air Force has clarified that it is no longer spending $10,000 for a toilet seat cover used on military planes. Instead, according to Air Force officials, 3-D printing now allows the Air Force to produce the spare part for just $300.

        There’s a lot of this type of thing going on. Just wasted money. Who set up that contract, and what is their relationship to the supplier. I’m sure we will find lots of kickbacks, corruption, and nepotism.

      • punkcoder@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, something else that is really inconvenient for a lot of people, is the comparison between the amount of money brought in by corporations and income taxes and individual people.

        • PoopingCough@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          What do you mean? From that wiki page it looks like personal income tax is more than 5 times what is brought in from corporations

          • noneya@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            I’m thinking that’s the point. Individuals carry five times the tax burden than corporations, yet we bend over backwards to protect corporations. Why?

            IMHO, corporations are responsible for so many of the countries’ problems, while contributing very little in support. No wonder why people are waking up and saying “fuck corporations” (or at least, “fuck the corporate tax structure”).

          • takeda@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            It came out many times that billionaires end up paying much lower rate of income tax than test of is or in some extreme cases none at all. Add to it that income from corporations is also quite small and it is clear that the middle class is actually paying for everything. We have billionaire freeloaders.

      • hpca01@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Wow I’m surprised how low the corporate tax revenue is compared to everything else. Someone should really look at that.