Are we broke or not?!?!?!

Are we broke or not?!?!?!

We have more homeless people in the United States than we know what to do with (including many veterans) because we are told we don't have funding for them.... but we can take in thousands and thousands of refugees (before and after this current "crisis"), find and secure them an apartment, make it "livable," etc.
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We have overcrowded classrooms (which lack basic supplies in many instances) and we are told that we need more money for the school systems that we do not have... but we have enough money that we can leave the borders wide open and allow anyone to come in illegally and enroll their kids in public schools (which often requires schools to hire translators).
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The list of contradictory items goes on and on from medical issues to having the costs of tolls and public transportation going up and up and up. Taxes on all sorts of things going up (either on the consumer end or on the production end which filters down to the consumer end anyway).

I'm so sick of the government constantly reaching into my pocket because we are broke.... then ignoring that "brokeness" whenever they see fit.

I just want to know..... ARE WE BROKE OR NOT?!?!?!?

a reply to: eluryh22

I'm right there with your feelings. It makes no sense as to the so called "logic" the elites bring forth in well, just about every situation. I've always wondered if/when America will be considered 3rd world. It's a slippery slope and we are only going faster and faster. Makes me wish I lived back in the old'n days where we were without, to the extent of this tyrannical system we have to live in nowadays.

We are sticking 40 percent of the federal budget on a credit card, so yes we are broke.

a reply to: eluryh22

I agree,this is all nonsense. That is why I say that this is NOT the greatest country in the world. I would expect by far better out of a country that was the 'greatest'.

We have let the government run amok and are finally waking up and seeing the consequences of it. But now it will be terribly hard to rein in the beast. Corporations are running this show and they don't give a rats ass who lives or dies. Remember how they fed all of us the unions are evil propaganda? Boy that is one thing they do well,shove propaganda down people's throats. And they still are. Everything you read in the news is spun the way they want. All the commercials are geared for you to consume. All the terror bull# is done to make you VERY AFRAID. And the drums beat on......

a reply to: eluryh22

Well said.

a reply to: Dimithae

Corporations are running this show and they don't give a rats ass who lives or dies. Remember how they fed all of us the unions are evil propaganda? Boy that is one thing they do well,shove propaganda down people's throats. And they still are. Everything you read in the news is spun the way they want. All the commercials are geared for you to consume. All the terror bull# is done to make you VERY AFRAID. And the drums beat on......

And we keep drinking the Kool-Aid and lining up for the trains.

Corporations and Government are doing what is best for them. Nothing is going to change until we start doing what is best for us.

You can't get pissed when the you pick up a snake and it bites you, when you knew it was a snake before you tried to take hold of it.

a reply to: eluryh22

No, broke would imply that we are presently lacking funds, but leaves the window open for better times down the road. The United States is bankrupt, meaning the nation has more debt that it can manage to pay.

a reply to: eluryh22

I'm curious about something. If you're really wondering whether we have enough money to do these programs, why start with immigration? Our MIC takes far more money than our immigration programs.

Just off the top of my head, we've spent somewhere between $5 trillion to $8 trillion on our Dept of Defense just in the last 10 years. That's what we should be focusing on if we actually want to reallocate our taxpayer funds for the caused you mentioned.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

Actually, what I said was, "The list of contradictory items goes on and on..."

I could have easily picked any number of (seemingly countless) areas/issues.

a reply to: eluryh22

Different segments of the government have their own budgets. More money is appropriated to one or the other as needed. Since when has government ever shared with the left hand what the right is doing? I constantly wonder if people are that clueless about how their own government works when they compare homeless people to refugees....

a reply to: enlightenedservant

In theory military spending finds its way back into the US economy, creates American jobs, and serves tax payer interests beyond simple defense... (note I say "in theory.") Charity does not do these things, frankly.

Say you find yourself $10 short someday. You're holding in one hand your lunch, which you bought for $10 that morning. The other hand held a $10 which you now seem to have lost... Which one grieves you the most and which do you blame for the shortage? The lunch, which gave you a physical return on the $10 spent on it... something tangible which you are now holding in your hand, or the lost $10 which is gone and has left you nothing to personally show for it? That's how I view taxes at this point... if I'm not getting something to show for those taxes, something REAL, not something emotional or subjectively of arguable value, I may as well have just wadded my tax dollars up into a ball and flushed them down the crapper myself.

a reply to: superman2012

I'm not sure how that answers anything. As you correctly pointed out,

More money is appropriated to one or the other as needed

So, after shuffling things around, do we have the money or not?

Please note that yes, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek about this because we essentially print money like it's going out of style and ever since we went off the gold standard.... as he mumbles while walking off to pour a glass of something.

originally posted by: eluryh22
a reply to: superman2012

I'm not sure how that answers anything. As you correctly pointed out,

More money is appropriated to one or the other as needed

So, after shuffling things around, do we have the money or not?

Please note that yes, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek about this because we essentially print money like it's going out of style and ever since we went off the gold standard.... as he mumbles while walking off to pour a glass of something.

lol fair enough. Pour me one too.

No. You are broke.

When I said as needed, I meant as one thing comes into the forefront and people cause a big ruckus over things.

They won't about vets, because simply, there isn't a shortage of people that will sign up. No idea why, but there isn't.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: enlightenedservant

In theory military spending finds its way back into the US economy, creates American jobs, and serves tax payer interests beyond simple defense... (note I say "in theory.") Charity does not do these things, frankly.

Say you find yourself $10 short someday. You're holding in one hand your lunch, which you bought for $10 that morning. The other hand held a $10 which you now seem to have lost... Which one grieves you the most and which do you blame for the shortage? The lunch, which gave you a physical return on the $10 spent on it... something tangible which you are now holding in your hand, or the lost $10 which is gone and has left you nothing to personally show for it? That's how I view taxes at this point... if I'm not getting something to show for those taxes, something REAL, not something emotional or subjectively of arguable value, I may as well have just wadded my tax dollars up into a ball and flushed them down the crapper myself.

In theory, that money allocated to military spending (and defense contractor spending) could also be infused directly into the economy through jobs programs for the homeless and large scale infrastructures projects. Even with taxpayer funded food programs, it's not like the companies are donating the food to SNAP. They get paid for it.

In other words, why is a $50 million contract to Raytheon going to help (the overall economy or the causes in the OP) more than a $50 million contract to a renewable energy company? And why can we allocate $500-$700 billion towards the Pentagon but can't use that money instead to the causes in the OP?

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
In other words, why is a $50 million contract to Raytheon going to help (the overall economy or the causes in the OP) more than a $50 million contract to a renewable energy company? And why can we allocate $500-$700 billion towards the Pentagon but can't use that money instead to the causes in the OP?

Uh, how's Solyndra doing these days? $530 Million+ in tax dollars LOST on something that amounted to little more than sunshine, farts, and warm fuzzies. Raytheon, meanwhile, employs over 60,000 people, provides massive research grant money to universities, and they paid $837 Million in taxes in 2014.

My point is that military and tech spending make money. The fast middle class growth in this country's history was during the spending boom of the cold war. Now, while I in no way want to see that resumed (as I feel the majority of that tech spending was a waste, particularly nonsense like the space race and the insane $10,000 toilet fiascos of the 80s), I will admit that it at least provided the tax payers with a positive return on investment in most cases. This other crap does not.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
In other words, why is a $50 million contract to Raytheon going to help (the overall economy or the causes in the OP) more than a $50 million contract to a renewable energy company? And why can we allocate $500-$700 billion towards the Pentagon but can't use that money instead to the causes in the OP?

Uh, how's Solyndra doing these days? $530 Million+ in tax dollars LOST on something that amounted to little more than sunshine, farts, and warm fuzzies. Raytheon, meanwhile, employs over 60,000 people, provides massive research grant money to universities, and they paid $837 Million in taxes in 2014.

My point is that military and tech spending make money. The fast middle class growth in this country's history was during the spending boom of the cold war. Now, while I in no way want to see that resumed (as I feel the majority of that tech spending was a waste, particularly nonsense like the space race and the insane $10,000 toilet fiascos of the 80s), I will admit that it at least provided the tax payers with a positive return on investment in most cases. This other crap does not.

LOL Wow, that's all you got? Solyndra? So how are those $640 toilet seats, $7,600 coffee makers, $436 hammers and that other Pentagon waste helping our economy? And what about that $500,000,000 or so that was supposedly spent to train 5 fighters in Syria? I don't believe those numbers are completely accurate but it drives the point home that there's plenty of Pentagon money that can be reallocated to helping the programs the OP mentioned.

And what makes you think Raytheon or these other companies can't work on civilian projects instead of just military projects? Many of these defense contractors already have civilian-related subsidiaries, like Boeing, HP & General Electric. So why can't the money for our defense contracts instead be allocated to "ending homelessness" contracts, even if the contracts go to subsidiaries of those same companies?

Or to put it a better way, let's pretend that socialists won the Presidency and a majority in Congress. Then we slashed the Defense Department budget by $400 billion. Then we increased the budgets for the social safety net by $400 billion, literally just reallocating the money to our initiatives. Do you really think Raytheon & Lockheed Martin wouldn't create a subsidiary or divert some of their existing resources to work on those social safety net programs? If not, their executives would deserve to get fired because that would be basic business sense.

a reply to: eluryh22

The government will just take the Social Security money and spend it on anything they want.

Social Security won't crash until the next president.