d*****g
发帖数: 1616 | 1 http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/05/2059233/First-Pictures-
**The u.s. is like the decline of Rome. Most of the budget spent on the
military to little gain. **
/*The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is
overspending on the military. It's not. Don't get me wrong; yes there's lots
of pork in the U.S. military budget which could be cut. But it doesn't
comprise most of U.S. government spending, nor is it the cause of the U.S.'s
budgetary woes. And a good part of the reason we're in the buget mess we're
in now is because people like you who think that it is implement solutions
which don't address the real problem.
U.S. military spending is actually one of the few parts of government
spending which has been more or less steadily declining since WWII, both as
a % of the budget [urban.org] and as a % of GDP [cbo.gov]. It started
climbing after 9/11, but it's still close to the lowest it's been since WWII
[truthandpolitics.org].
What's killing the budget (indeed, where most of the money is spent) are the
social programs; specifically, medicare and medicaid. They're projected to
grow so quickly [cbo.gov] that even if you stopped all military spending,
dropped it to zero , all the money that saved would be eaten up by growth in
medicare and medicaid within 20-25 years. In other words, in 20-25 years we
would have no military, no military spending, and our budgetary problems
would be the same as they are now.
The first step in fixing a problem is to correctly identify what is causing
it. The Congressional Budget Office hires a lot of really smart people to do
nothing but identify the causes of the budget problems, and publishes a
nifty report on it [cbo.gov] about every 2 years. Please go read it. Put
aside any moralistic preconceptions you may have about which parts of the
budget are good or bad. Look at it purely from an accounting standpoint -
which parts are decreasing and which parts are ballooning out of control?
The parts that are ballooning out of control are what we need to address to
fix the problem, the parts that are decreasing are a much lower priority. */
$$It's not scalpels that are expensive. It's MRI's and PET scans, and more
to the point, that when you're dying, and your doctor is, in essence,
working on commission, you and your doctor both are very willing to try any
and every high-tech, high-cost diagnostic and treatment, to put off dying in
the hopes that you'll be that 1-in-100 miracle cure. Here's a good article
about this problem [newyorker.com] written by an oncology surgeon in The New
Yorker a couple months ago, where he talks about how 25% of Medicare's
current budget is being spent by people who are in their last couple of
months of life, and that money provides an average of less than two months'
delay in death. $$ | l******d
发帖数: 189 | 2 共和党要保住军费，民主党要保住社会福利项目，这是众所周知的。这篇，代表的是右
派观点。
但即使你去问右派老年人，要不要把medicare砍掉，我相信回答大多数是否定的。
lots
's
re
solutions
【在 d*****g 的大作中提到】
: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/05/2059233/First-Pictures-
: **The u.s. is like the decline of Rome. Most of the budget spent on the
: military to little gain. **
: /*The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is
: overspending on the military. It's not. Don't get me wrong; yes there's lots
: of pork in the U.S. military budget which could be cut. But it doesn't
: comprise most of U.S. government spending, nor is it the cause of the U.S.'s
: budgetary woes. And a good part of the reason we're in the buget mess we're
: in now is because people like you who think that it is implement solutions
: which don't address the real problem.
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