Is the USA uncivilised?

[Warren Dew]

In the USA, the biggest chunk of tax money is spent on the military, and in supporting indefensible wars overseas.

False. U.S. military spending is only about 20% of the total budget, and is dwarfed by social welfare spending of various types.

[Blind groper]

Warren

What that graph fails to show is the health spending on returned veterans. The author of the book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" about the cost of the Iraq war made the very strong point that the main long term cost of that war is the decades long care of returned veterans, for both physical wounds, and psychological trauma.

Add that to the military spending, and the cost of the USA military activities is greater than any other category.

[Seth]

Warren

What that graph fails to show is the health spending on returned veterans. The author of the book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" about the cost of the Iraq war made the very strong point that the main long term cost of that war is the decades long care of returned veterans, for both physical wounds, and psychological trauma.

Add that to the military spending, and the cost of the USA military activities is greater than any other category.

Goalpost shifting.

[JimC]

Warren

What that graph fails to show is the health spending on returned veterans. The author of the book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" about the cost of the Iraq war made the very strong point that the main long term cost of that war is the decades long care of returned veterans, for both physical wounds, and psychological trauma.

Add that to the military spending, and the cost of the USA military activities is greater than any other category.

Goalpost shifting.

Maybe, but also showing that the indirect consequences of sending people to war are both real, and very expensive...

[laklak]

Maybe, but also showing that the indirect consequences of sending people to war are both real, and very expensive...

It'll be a lot better once we exclusively use battlebots and drones. If they're injured you just repurpose them into a toaster.

[JimC]

Maybe, but also showing that the indirect consequences of sending people to war are both real, and very expensive...

It'll be a lot better once we exclusively use battlebots and drones. If they're injured you just repurpose them into a toaster.

[Seth]

Warren

What that graph fails to show is the health spending on returned veterans. The author of the book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" about the cost of the Iraq war made the very strong point that the main long term cost of that war is the decades long care of returned veterans, for both physical wounds, and psychological trauma.

Add that to the military spending, and the cost of the USA military activities is greater than any other category.

Goalpost shifting.

Maybe, but also showing that the indirect consequences of sending people to war are both real, and very expensive...

Who ever claimed it wasn't?

[Jason]

Please morally and ethically justify the collectivist idea that the labor and property of the individual are not his to dispose of as he pleases, but rather his labor and property are the property of the collective and subject to the collective's direction and disposal.

The answer really depends on where you start; both by definitions and existing social construct. Morality and ethics are both highly subjective. We'd have to agree on a defined battlefield to engage or just dismiss the position of the other - after all, I don't particularly want to adopt your morals and ethics to debate the issue.

Since that's never happened in the.. 7 or 8 years I've been around the same boards as you now I'll just point out that if you already live in a 'collective' society, as you do Seth, then you have already benefited from the labour and property of the collective and thus have an obligation to, at the very least, repay your fair share up to the point where you cease benefiting from the 'abrogated' labour and property of your fellow Americans. When you stop benefiting, your ethical obligation to contribute your share will cease. But there is a catch. Take the funding of public schools for example: you will always benefit from paying taxes that are used, in part, to fund education as an educated populace is a safer, more efficient, and mutually beneficially advancing populace. You may argue that a society where you pay for services only you, or your family, directly use would serve everyone better, or at least be more free, but you've locked yourself in an catch-22 by asking for ethical justification of obligation in a system already in place where you have already received benefits and continue to do so. So I ask you to please morally and/or ethically justify a cessation of ethical obligation inherent in the current collectivist political system in which you, and much of the first world, live.

[pErvinalia]

I've tried explaining this to Seth 10's of times in the past. He won't get it.

[Seth]

I've tried explaining this to Seth 10's of times in the past. He won't get it.

Oh, I get it, it's just that you've never once actually provided a rational justification for enslaving others to your service.

[pErvinalia]

It's the social contract. You are implicitly accepting it by choosing to live in society. If you don't like it, nick off.

[Seth]

Please morally and ethically justify the collectivist idea that the labor and property of the individual are not his to dispose of as he pleases, but rather his labor and property are the property of the collective and subject to the collective's direction and disposal.

The answer really depends on where you start; both by definitions and existing social construct. Morality and ethics are both highly subjective. We'd have to agree on a defined battlefield to engage or just dismiss the position of the other - after all, I don't particularly want to adopt your morals and ethics to debate the issue.

Yes, it doesn't surprise me that you would be unwilling to adopt reason and logic in order to debate the issue, since Marxism has no moral or ethical foundation and defies both reason and logic.

Since that's never happened in the.. 7 or 8 years I've been around the same boards as you now I'll just point out that if you already live in a 'collective' society, as you do Seth, then you have already benefited from the labour and property of the collective and thus have an obligation to, at the very least, repay your fair share up to the point where you cease benefiting from the 'abrogated' labour and property of your fellow Americans.

There you go again confusing the moral and ethical obligation to pay for what you use with wealth redistributionism. It sure would be a good start if you would quit throwing up strawmen and red herrings right off the bat.

When you stop benefiting, your ethical obligation to contribute your share will cease. But there is a catch. Take the funding of public schools for example: you will always benefit from paying taxes that are used, in part, to fund education as an educated populace is a safer, more efficient, and mutually beneficially advancing populace.

Well, that's at least a semblance of a rational argument, although it's entirely irrelevant to the issue under discussion.

You may argue that a society where you pay for services only you, or your family, directly use would serve everyone better, or at least be more free, but you've locked yourself in an catch-22 by asking for ethical justification of obligation in a system already in place where you have already received benefits and continue to do so.

But that's not what I argue, so once again you are serving up herring on straw.

So I ask you to please morally and/or ethically justify a cessation of ethical obligation inherent in the current collectivist political system in which you, and much of the first world, live.

Lame evasion. Do try to keep your arguments somewhere in the same galaxy as the point under discussion, which has nothing to do with one's moral and ethical obligation to pay one's fair share of the costs of amenities available to or used by one as a member of a community.

Please pay attention.

[Jason]

I did. If you'd extend yourself a little more than sequential bland dismissals we might get half a yard from nowhere.

How about you tell my why it's immoral or unethical or whatever to pay for what you use with what you call wealth distribution? It would probably help if you stopped calling yourself a libertarian and just said you don't like paying taxes that go to support welfare programs, but that's probably asking too much.

[Seth]

It's the social contract. You are implicitly accepting it by choosing to live in society. If you don't like it, nick off.

There you go again with your usual, and quite boring, obfuscatory evasion. No "contract" of any kind is valid without my assent. That may be given in writing (preferred) or through one's actions that impose an obligation to comply.

Each time I flush the toilet or walk on the road I physically assent to being assessed my fair share of the costs of providing those services, and therefore I am morally obligated to pay that debt.

But under what rationale or logic do you assume that I have ratified a contract for involuntary servitude to persons I have never met and have not accepted personal financial responsibility for? Simply asserting that I do so by not "nicking off" is just an evasion. Furthermore, under your theory the Jews had no right to object to being baked and buried by Hitler because they didn't "nick off" when the "social contract" was changed without their assent.

Which makes your evasion worthy of a four-year old insofar as intellectual depth is concerned.

[Seth]

I did. If you'd extend yourself a little more than sequential bland dismissals we might get half a yard from nowhere.

If you'd quit being evasive and trotting out non sequiturs and red herrings things would go better.

How about you tell my why it's immoral or unethical or whatever to pay for what you use with what you call wealth distribution?

There you go again, wandering completely off the point. How about you tell me what I have "used" that justifies taking my money and giving it to some person who has less of it than I do for no better reason than that? That is rather the point after all.

It would probably help if you stopped calling yourself a libertarian and just said you don't like paying taxes that go to support welfare programs, but that's probably asking too much.

It would help more if you were capable of actually formulating a well-reasoned, on-point argument that I could rebut rather than descending, as usual, directly to ad hominem, obfuscation and misdirection.

But I don't hold out too much hope, since I've only met one individual in my decades of debating this issue who has ever actually accepted the challenge to an intellectual debate on the subject. And he wasn't a Marxist, he was an intellectual of high order capable of debating a subject for the intellectual fun of it.

I've never yet met a Marxist who had the intellectual capacity, much less the ability or willingness to fairly argue the merits of collectivism by going toe-to-toe and staying on point. They always, invariably and inevitably resort to personal insults as a diversionary tactic when they realize that I'm their intellectual superior in every way and that their collectivist dogma cannot possibly stand critical examination.

And you're proving it once again.