Cut the military spending by 80% (down to $122B). Or roughly that of China. Use that money ($488B) to balance the budget.
Comparing our military spending to a country that uses essentially slave labor doesn't really make a lot of sense.
nor that has the ability to have a billion soldiers die because they didn't have the money to spend on sophisticated weaponry.
The other big giant glarring elephant is the medical industry. Or more aptly there is no market forces in healthcare. Roughly $600B for medicare. Whether you do away with entitlement spending, the need is still there. Seniors arent just going to disappear. So the spending is merely passed on, and it's massive. It's in the trillions between SS and medicare. We can cut NDD entitlement spending in half, actually totally do away with all forms of welfare and we're left with about +$76B. That means EIC programs which would raise 47% of peoples taxes by about $3k. It's still fractions compared to the military and medical expenses public and private.
There was a recent re-deployment of equipment, or re-allocation in Europe. Expect, some troop movement in the near future. The Big Red may have returned too soon.
Relative to purchasing power China's defense spending isn't far below ours. An aerospace engineer who costs $120k per year in the US probably can be had for $30k in China. Spending a few percent of GDP for global military domination is very cheap.
Then don't bitch about taxes and don't support a flat tax because it will significantly raise taxes on most of the country.
Insurance has the impact, which is why Obamacare is not a fix. When the consumer only cares about the copay, that is the result.
Insurance doesn't get to choose the best hospital at the lowest rate for the individual being carted away in an ambulance. Not to mention costs have been soaring for decades.
So why exactly would a flat percentage be more unfair to the rich than a flat $ figure would be to the poor folks? I see this argument all the time, and think it is horsesh!t. Why is getting to keep 90% (or in the case of rand pauls proposal, 87%) of your income unfair? It doesn't matter how much you make, you get to keep the same percentage of your income. To me, this is much more realistic than asking both millionaires and poverty stricken folks alike to pay the same $3k. Why is it fair for the guy who makes $300k to only have to pay 1% but the guy who makes $30k has to pay 10%, and the kid who makes $3k to pay 100%? This is what led us to our current, and screwed up system we have now. If we went to a flat percentage based income tax, with no loopholes, and simplified our tax code to just a few pages, we could eliminate the majority of the IRS, which would save the government (us tax payers) a TON of money, which would in turn lower our tax rate further.... This system is the most fair system possible next to eliminating the income tax all together and making all public funding voluntary.
I like how liberals are always going on about social security.... How about attack the welfare leaches before social security? At least social security is supposed to be used by people who pay in to it originally, welfare, not so much... Never have agreed with social security, but think it should stay longer than welfare...
Obamacare solved all that. Everyone's insurance bill dropped by $2500. Obamacare solved all problems with healthcare in the US. It's perfect.
Costs began to soar when insurance became prevalent. It is the disconnect between the patient and cost of care, and it started decades ago.
Unfortunately, we are now, and have always been, living in a world where we cannot allow ourselves to be militarily weak. To cut our military budget very much would invite even more aggression toward us. I do agree that our military budget could benefit from some non-politically driven decisions however.
That is the truth. I recently had a colonoscopy and was laying on the gurney in the operating theater waiting for the Doctor to come in. I was looking at all the medical equipment and mentally estimating the cost. I figure that there was about two million bucks worth of equipment in that room alone and there are four or five theaters in that rather small hospital. It does seem though that the cost of medical care could somehow be lessened. Where would one start if doing that?