Political discussion thread

Hackett.  While I think exploring space would be wicked cool, personally, and I'd love to live in an advanced age where I would have an opportunity to do it, alas I don't think it's a good idea for two reasons.  First, the most obvious question, outside of our solar system, would be how?  FTL technology does not exist, even if it is possible, which is highly debatable at best.  That would leave a trip of at least a few thousand years to the closest star. 

Second, and probably as important if we were to gain the ability to travel ftl, we are still a "savage child race".  All space exploration would gain us, if we did find new worlds with new life is the ability to exploit the resources of others (assuming they are less advanced than us) and a new colonial imperialism would arise.  No thanks.  Bad enough we've done that and continue to do that to our own people.  Let's leave those others out there alone. 


Edited by The Doctor - October 19 2012 at 18:12

thellama73 wrote: Will any of this happen? Of course not, but it could be done if there was the political will to do it.

thellama73 wrote: HackettFan, you are either trolling or else you have no idea what you are talking about. I suspect both.

Altogether serious. For growth you need new products, new technology, top of the line jobs, a workforce with enough skills and education, more manufacturing. The space program gets or helps get you this. Trade agreements...well just cross your fingers. It's the same idea as stimulating the economy with investment in infrastructure, as Democrats would like to do. I realize you and others may have some aversion to government investments of any sort, but I've never heard any substantive argument against it other than those in question just don't want the government to do anything, period (again, my complaint that libertarianism is less philosophy and more ideology).

HackettFan, you are either trolling or else you have no idea what you are talking about. I suspect both. 

thellama73 wrote: HackettFan wrote: thellama73 wrote: The real solution is to cut as much as possible from discretionary spending, phase out social security and medicare over time and implement pro-growth policies that will increase revenues without raising tax rates.Will any of this happen? Of course not, but it could be done if there was the political will to do it. I have too much money invested in Social Security, so that should be a definite keeper. I think we need to keep Medicare and delete the part of the legislation that says 65 and older. We need to promote growth by having an active and vigorous space program. I can't tell if this post is sarcastic or not.I know a lot of people have money invested in Social security, and it would be unfair to cheat them out of getting back what they payed in. That's why I said phase it ot gradually so that doesn't happen.How does a space program stimulate growth?

All the money spent on the space program was spent here on earth. It prompted us to build things, solve problems, create spin-off products, hire people, encourage children to be interested in science and technology. It's outlandishly stimulative.

"Ladies and gentleman, I like my opponent, I think he's a decent man. But he wants to cut millions of dollars of our Other at the time when we need it the most! Every other developed nation invests heavily in Other, but instead of move forwards, he wants to go backwards to a time when Other only counted as three fifths of a person and Other was expected to stay in the kitchen. That's not the recipe for a prosperous America, and if elected I will make Other my first priority!"

Probably.  It's just a huge undefined block.  Reminds me of companies I've done accounting for, where they have huge amounts of expenses categorized as "Other Expense" or "Miscellaneous".  I'm always like, what the hell...

Epignosis wrote: This was our budget in 2010.  The blue bar is the money our government took in.  The red bar is what our government spent. But to show you how horrifying this is, look at peach block- that's mandatory spending.  We can't cut that even if we wanted to.  Our discretionary spending is represented by the yellow block.  That's what we can cut.  That's a tiny fraction of our receipts that is going to controllable spending.  And as the debt grows, that scarlet bar called "Interest" grows and grows too, extended mandatory spending. Cut PBS and the other "department" related expenditures and we'll still be borrowing money. Cut funding to the military and we'll still be borrowing money. I've shown elsewhere that the top 25% of income earners pay 86% of the income tax, and that you would have to tax them at 98% of their income to balance our budget. Any real solutions?

thellama73 wrote: The T wrote: ^Eventually, with a good space program, one day one year one century we will find intelligent life somewhere else. That will open a whole new world for trade, and if they are less developed than us (very likely, since we found them first) they will actually need our fantastic products. We can even sell them old-model spaceships at a discounted price so they can start opening their horizons a little.  Yes, space program is the way to growth. Misa liken it.  But if the aliens are less developed then us, won't we just give them food stamps and medicare and unemployment insurance, thereby increasing our entitlement obligations?

^Eventually, with a good space program, one day one year one century we will find intelligent life somewhere else. That will open a whole new world for trade, and if they are less developed than us (very likely, since we found them first) they will actually need our fantastic products. We can even sell them old-model spaceships at a discounted price so they can start opening their horizons a little.