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You still keep having this isolationist attitude that would have lost us WWII, kept us nailed to the Earth, and lacking even a national transportation system.
Spending nothing gets you nothing.
You don't think we've accomplished enough in this country's history that we could live comfortably without throwing money at research the past 10 years? You are still ignoring the fact that this country has no money to spend.
1. Fighting for a resource does not validate its use or its hazards. How many died strictly from its use, not from people fighting over its worth?
It IS comparable. Saying that nuclear is safe because noone has fought over it is not reasonable, especially considering the initial cost and technological requirements to even realize them.
When all you have to do is dig a hole in the ground to get something, chances are you will get more people fighting over it than something that requires a national budget, AND research (hmmmm, research) to actualize.
Yes it does. You are denigrating the lives of all Americans that have died over in the middle east. By relying on a resource overseas, we have created a situation that endangers more lives than a nuclear power plant ever will. It's not about who, what, when, or why. At the end of the day, it's about who lost their lives. Oil is killing more Americans than nuclear ever will, and just because the former is done behind the guise of freeing Arab nations doesn't mean we get to ignore the lives of those who die.
For the amount we spend on military bases in other nations, you could easily afford to pay the research projects 10-fold.
I agree. We don't have money for that either.
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Again, you are mixing numbers. The debt is important, but that requires additional regulation on credit that was eased by lobbiests over the past 20 years or so. Also, the debt should be measured against the GDP of the neation in debt, and while unfavorable for us, it is by far not a record.
Complete nonsense. A lionshare of America's GDP is based upon positive numbers obtained through expanding the trade deficit even more. The debt you refer to is the national debt and not the trade deficit. No nation has ever held as much debt as the US currently has and the past 10 years have shown that we cannot pay it back through productive means and we even have had trouble paying it back by printing money. Hyperinflation, here we come.
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And you are blaming that on research? Please, spare us. Get the numbers.
I didn't blame it on research. But you can't spend money you don't have. Spending money on research will only ensure that our currency and economy go through complete collapse within a decade.
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Like I said before, you do not throw money at a problem, you need to spend it wisely, but stopping spending on things that are more worth it (liek research) rather than keeping a DEAD company like GM afloat is just not smart.
Fundamental problem, governments never spend money wisely. It boils down to the fact that you rarely if ever spend someone elses money as carefully as your own. You keep bringing up things like the military and GM. You act as if I support either of those spending programs. We should reducing spending on all federal programs right now. Just because we screwed up with GM doesn't mean we need to screw up some more by spending more money we don't have. Two wrongs don't make a right.
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You just stretched a hypothetical there. Who says their money will not be worth anything? Who says research and research alone is responsible for the financial crisis? You are making things up and painting a worst case scenario that does not exist.
Bull crap. Their money won't be any thing because the only way the government is able to fund your precious research is through the process of printing currency, which always leads to inflation. Given the fact that we already have almost 10 trillion dollars in paper promises sitting overseas and an additional 10+ trillion sitting at home while our domestic money supply is currently 1 trillion, this only ends one way, massive inflation.
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Cut military spending by 50% (primarily deployment and hardware) and what will that do?
Give Americans money to spend.
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The economy will never "fix itself". It got itself into this in the first place. Before regulations were in effect regulating loan practices, they used to go in a regular cycle of collapse due to lack of investor confidence in loaned amounts and futures. We started regulating that and made banking rather boring, but a hell of a lot more stable and safe.
They didn't collapse. Every panic in the first 130 years of this countrie's history was met with a 2 year recession followed by strong economic growth. A recession is a healthy corerction, not the end of the world. The only time it ever got out of control is when the government tried to fix the problem. They only made it worse and gave your grandparents the Great Depression. Economies always fix themselves unless the government prevents it.
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That is the problem, if it takes 10 years to materialize, when do we start? 3 years before we need it? You Nostradamus? You know that 10 years from now is not when we will need Solar Power as a cheap and VIABLE alternative?
We have more than enough natural resources in this country alone to give us enough time to make the transition. You still don't seem to understand that you are advocating a policy that will bankrupt the country. Solar power is useless when you can't afford it.
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No one has ever liked spending money on science. Except the Germans maybe and look where THAT got them...
I don't mind it at all. I cherish it. In fact, my employment situation outright DEPENDS on it. What you still don't seem to understand is that we don't have any money.
but you make statements like "you wouldnt have your electronics without government research." i think you are just making assumptions based on your own beliefs (which i disagree with).
what national transportation system are you referring to?
The railroads and national highways.
There were very few of either when we relied on private interest (mainly Gold).
If we wanted just Corporate USA to do these, we would have had lines to Texas and California and few stops in between! (Oil and Gold baby!)
As for electronics, you have to start going back a bit and see how much money was cranked into electronics research through the military and through the Space Program (especially after Sputnik).
I will have to look a bit, but I believe that is about the time IBM got its big start, although I will have to see who hired them first!
You don't think we've accomplished enough in this country's history that we could live comfortably without throwing money at research the past 10 years? You are still ignoring the fact that this country has no money to spend.
1. We still have money to spend. We are spending more than what we have.
2. Define "comfortably". That used to be a time when you had a decent roof over your head, land to farm, and a decent outhouse.
Never mind that half your children died of Mumps, Measles, Rubella, Polio and other now (through governmentally sponsored vaccination programs) greatly reduced maladies.
The general population has ALWAYS been comfortable with the status quo. the only thing that keeps us changing is if something either is pushed on us by another OR we are "motivated" by the possible threat from another.
Were you even around before they had remote-contols for TV?
You are denigrating the lives of all Americans that have died over in the middle east.
You are holding their lives up to a false standard. YOU are making the association and not even providing the numbers to back it up.
I am not saying that I think Bush was correct when they said it was to "free" Iraq. They were trying to get a land that could support itself once stabilized and also be our new "pal" in the middle east (The Saudis are a real PITA).
But what I AM saying is that you are taking a resource that has been around 100 years, taking on the deaths of individuals fighting DIRECTLY over it (not in the rule of the land, JUST the control of the oil fields, which is a much harder number to isolate), and comparing that to a technology that only first world countries had the resources to even develop.
And ignoring the whole WWII through the cold war race to develop nuclear warheads and eventually nuclear power. I am sure noone died in the persuit of a technology like that.
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By relying on a resource overseas, we have created a situation that endangers more lives than a nuclear power plant ever will.
Again, no proof. What happens when Oil runs out? We still kill people over there for sand? Nuclear does have a longer, pardon the pun, half life than oil but its main problems are NOT directly comparable.
Its problems are more insidius, and quite expensive to handle correctly. Without proper oversite and managemeny, nuclear waste is very destructive, and trying to compare the small % we get from Nuclear today to what we would need and saynig that waste disposal would be a snap sounds like you are working for Mr Burns!
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It's not about who, what, when, or why. At the end of the day, it's about who lost their lives. Oil is killing more Americans than nuclear ever will, and just because the former is done behind the guise of freeing Arab nations doesn't mean we get to ignore the lives of those who die.
No, you are bearing a false standard. Our nations energy issues should not be decided en memoriam. Stop drawing links between the Iraq wasr and why we need Nuclear. It does not fit.
the only thing that DOES fit is the need for an alternate energy source. And until we develop fusion, you know, like the SUN, we are going to still be faced with the same problems we had from the get-go.
1. We still have money to spend. We are spending more than what we have.
No we don't. Your average American has 10k in credit card debt. Your US government has 10 trillion dollars in debt. We are borrowing money because we don't have any.
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2. Define "comfortably". That used to be a time when you had a decent roof over your head, land to farm, and a decent outhouse.
Do I really need to define it. It would be easy maintain the standard of living that we had during the 1980s and early 1990s. The standard of living in this country the past 10 years has been in "lala land" and was not based on prosperity at all. It was based on an asset bubble that was financed by borrowing money from overseas without paying any of it back.
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Never mind that half your children died of Mumps, Measles, Rubella, Polio and other now (through governmentally sponsored vaccination programs) greatly reduced maladies.
Rofl, so now we are going back to the 1800s? You are fear mongering. We aren't going back to a standard of living that low unless our government keeps acting this irresponsible.
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The general population has ALWAYS been comfortable with the status quo. the only thing that keeps us changing is if something either is pushed on us by another OR we are "motivated" by the possible threat from another.
This is false. The general public has been satisfied with the status quo as long as they had a decent standard of living. That standard of living is rapidly deteriorating and the general public won't begin to get angry until it's too late.
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Were you even around before they had remote-contols for TV?
Were you? I'm 28 years old. This has nothing to do with experience. The types of policies ran by the federal government and our central today have always led to economic collapse and poverty. If you are older than I am, you should remember the stagflation of the 70s. Given the fact that our monetary and fiscal policies dwarf the insanity that existed throughout the 70s, it's going to be much much worse.
You are holding their lives up to a false standard. YOU are making the association and not even providing the numbers to back it up.
I am not saying that I think Bush was correct when they said it was to "free" Iraq. They were trying to get a land that could support itself once stabilized and also be our new "pal" in the middle east (The Saudis are a real PITA).
But what I AM saying is that you are taking a resource that has been around 100 years, taking on the deaths of individuals fighting DIRECTLY over it (not in the rule of the land, JUST the control of the oil fields, which is a much harder number to isolate), and comparing that to a technology that only first world countries had the resources to even develop.
No I'm not. We are over there for one reason, oil. If you believe otherwise, you are easily brainwashed.
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And ignoring the whole WWII through the cold war race to develop nuclear warheads and eventually nuclear power. I am sure noone died in the persuit of a technology like that.
There's a big difference between Nuclear Warheads and a Nuclear Power Plant. We fight over oil because we want to consume it. We didn't build nuclear bombs in pursuit of a good source of energy. We built it to win a war.
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Again, no proof. What happens when Oil runs out? We still kill people over there for sand? Nuclear does have a longer, pardon the pun, half life than oil but its main problems are NOT directly comparable.
When oil runs out, you will not see a single nation have any interest at all in the Middle East.
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Its problems are more insidius, and quite expensive to handle correctly. Without proper oversite and managemeny, nuclear waste is very destructive, and trying to compare the small % we get from Nuclear today to what we would need and saynig that waste disposal would be a snap sounds like you are working for Mr Burns!
Rofl, I didn't say we shouldn't have any oversight over nuclear power. I said we should stop fighting it like it's going to destroy the world.
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No, you are bearing a false standard. Our nations energy issues should not be decided en memoriam. Stop drawing links between the Iraq wasr and why we need Nuclear. It does not fit.
I'm merely pointing out hypocrisy. Most people who scream about how nuclear power is going to cost American lives have no problem with sending their soldiers over to an oil rich nation to fight pointless wars.
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the only thing that DOES fit is the need for an alternate energy source. And until we develop fusion, you know, like the SUN, we are going to still be faced with the same problems we had from the get-go.
I think you are mistaking my position. I know for a fact that we do need an alternative energy source. There's no question about it. But you cannot sacrifice the health of the economy, which is already falling off a cliff to try to pursue that source. Is it seriously asking that much to wait 5-7 years for the economy to get healthy again before you start advocating policies to blow money on things?
There were very few of either when we relied on private interest (mainly Gold).
If we wanted just Corporate USA to do these, we would have had lines to Texas and California and few stops in between! (Oil and Gold baby!)
As for electronics, you have to start going back a bit and see how much money was cranked into electronics research through the military and through the Space Program (especially after Sputnik).
I will have to look a bit, but I believe that is about the time IBM got its big start, although I will have to see who hired them first!
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Originally Posted by Ninjahedge
The railroads and national highways.
so without the government we would be walking? come on. we are supposed to thank the government for building stuff by wasting tons of our tax dollars and then collecting tons of money in taxes and tolls? this is just silly. government MAY be helpful in facilitating private investment in projects like roads and rail but throwing away tax dollars is silly. its pretending that because the government did it that its free. thats totally not true. we pay for every mile of road and rail and we pay a big premium because the government got involved.
so without the government we would be walking? come on. we are supposed to thank the government for building stuff by wasting tons of our tax dollars and then collecting tons of money in taxes and tolls? this is just silly. government MAY be helpful in facilitating private investment in projects like roads and rail but throwing away tax dollars is silly. its pretending that because the government did it that its free. thats totally not true. we pay for every mile of road and rail and we pay a big premium because the government got involved.
Heh, the government created a massive speculative bubble in teh 1800s based on railroad building. They didn't do the public any favors. Most of them went bust and ended up losing money and becoming useless in the end. Kinda like the tech bubble. We watch a ton of companies like Pets.com ultimately turn out to be useless.
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