USA planning to shrink armed forces

[Kellhound]

I'm finding the USA's views on healthcare rather puzzling.

You find the quality to be good, but coverage to be poor, you're strongly dissatisfied with the costs, and regard the system as a whole as having major problems or being in an outright crisis, but you seem to think nothing should be done to fix the problems.

I have great coverage at a reasonable cost, and don't think there are major issues for most Americans.

[Skroe]

Like I said, if the MILLITRY THEMSELVES deemed they didnt need somehting, why should congress WASTE money on something THEY THEMSELVES SAID THEY DONT NEED?

Because the Military does not have all the answers. It, like ANY OTHER organization... really any other gathering of more than 4 people, is very, very political and cultural.

The Air Force for example, has been trying to kill the A-10 since the early 1990s. They tried killing it in the 1990s because at that time, the Air Force was run by Ex-Fighter Pilots from Vietnam and Korea, who were extraordinarily chauvinistic against the very concept of a non-sexy aircraft specialized in close air support towards the army. The only reason they kept it, is because if they didn't, the Army would have taken over the A-10s, and the Air Force didn't want the Army having fixed wing manned aircraft (their turf).

The A-10 went on to be indispensable, during the Iraq War. The AH-64 Apache got unexpectedly chewed up because the Republican Guard laid some pretty smart traps. It had a pretty bad war. The A-10 on the other hand, was the vehicle that decimated those same Republican Guard divisions that last week of March 2003 when Media morons completely out of the loop were declaring that the "bogged down Army" in Southern Iraq was walking into a Quagmire, and maybe it would get to Baghdad in August 2003 after 10,000 casualties.

The Army is no better. For the first couple years of Iraq Peacekeeping, they deployed poorly armored Humvees and antiquated body armor for Iraq divisions. As everyone knows now, it wasn't nearly enough. Soldiers families took to sending more advanced body armor bought on the commercial market. The Army had the MRAP program - which it DID NOT WANT - with it's V-shaped bottom bodies and anti-IED design, basically forced on them. The Early Iraq War was run by Heavy Armor ex-cold warriors, who were the best at the world at the kind of thing that they just did - destroying another conventional army (the Iraqi Republican Guard), but didn't have any institutional knowledge about stability operations. There was actually an institutional stigma against it. Senior officers promote upcoming officers who share their philosophy, and it took years to drain the swamp of the Tommy Franks mold leadership. It wasn't until David Petraeus took over in Iraq, that the army's internal dynamic changed to a degree, but only to a degree: you can see how much some of it's leadership is still fixated on a very specific way of doing business, with how they Mothballed the entire MRAP fleet the second they had the chance to do so.

The Navy? They're just as bad. The DDG-1000 Zumwalt class carrier, they defended for a decade. And in many ways, it is a very, very advanced warship and there is nothing else like it in the world. But in many ways it's completely inadequate compared to the Arleigh Burke class it was supposed to be replacing. But they defended it, until Robert Gates pretty much put his foot down and said "this ship is a sitting duck against air defenses, costs 3 times as mutch as promised and lacks capability it's predecessors had. Enough." The Navy was forced, against it's wishes, to start planning for the so called "Flight III" Arleigh Burke class that will begin production in 2017, and last about 20 years a rate of 2 Destroyers per year. The Arleigh Burke is not stealthy, and lacks some of the technological innovations of the Zumwalt class, but it has more VLS tubes, is cheaper, and more reliable. It's pretty much the pinnacle of pre-stealth destroyer design. That's why the Navy plans on keeping the design through the 2040s. And similarly, the Ford class today... the first of which is almost done being built... when the 11th of the class launches in 2050, it will serve until 2110 under current plans. That means the Navy will have had the same basic design going from 1970 to 2110, because it is a perfected design in many ways that, is not, you know, this, which is what the Navy wanted, until Congress put their foot down in 2002.



The military does not always know best, especially when it comes to buying things. They're as guilty of institutional inertia and culture wars as much as any organization.

In 2014 the US Air Force does not have a Medium Bomber... something between an F-16 and and a B-1B, with range and payload greater than any F-16 or the F-15E, but less than a heavy bomber, and in far greater numbers than the B-1, B-2 or B-52. The F-111 was that aircraft, until 1996, when the Air Force killed it in favor of the F-15E and the "F/A-22". The F-22's combat radius, for example, is one third that of the F-111. Why? Again. The fighter jocks of the 1990s wanted the ultimate air combat fighter in the F-22.... they really didn't care too much about air to ground. So they cut extremely capable aircraft to preserve the budget for their flying Ferrari.

The joke of it? In 2014, which the F-22 is easily the most capable air-to-air fighter, compared the F-35 from a technological stand point, it's a dinosaur. It took so many years to build, by the time it flew, its guts were technologically obsolete.

[Paarthurnax]

All good things, the US defense budget is out of control and needs to be reigned in quite a bit.

[Ausr]

Military personnel. And I sure hope they considered closing down the bases in japan, germany and other countries before the ones here. This is just a big fuck you to people that want to seriously cut spending in the right areas. Plus Obamacare is unconstitutional so you know.

No, it's not unconstitutional. Unless you wish to show us where it was proven so. But, you won't because you can't.

[Kellhound]

No, it's not unconstitutional. Unless you wish to show us where it was proven so. But, you won't because you can't.

Yeah, it actually caused a major increase in the power of the government to "force" people to buy pretty much anything so long as the penalty for not doing so is a tax.

[Ausr]

Yeah, it actually caused a major increase in the power of the government to "force" people to buy pretty much anything so long as the penalty for not doing so is a tax.

You skipped the portion that implied that he should show us proof and not just a remark.

[Kellhound]

You skipped the portion that implied that he should show us proof and not just a remark.

There is no proof, it was deemed Constitutional, in a very troubling increase of Federal power.

[Skroe]

Military personnel. And I sure hope they considered closing down the bases in japan, germany and other countries before the ones here. This is just a big fuck you to people that want to seriously cut spending in the right areas. Plus Obamacare is unconstitutional so you know.

Your geopolitics understanding is retarded.

You want to give up our alliances with the world's 3rd and 4th largest economies, our forward staging basis in the world's most important strategic region (East Asia), and our hard won home turf (Central Europe). Why? To save a bit of cash?

Exactly how poor is your long term vision of the US's place in the world? Like... holy shit. China is the challenge of the first half of the century to the United States in particular... and you want to CLOSE BASES IN JAPAN? Like have you been paying attention at all? Even just a little bit?

China doesn't give a crap about your Ted Cruz politics, Nostop it. They want to eat your lunch all the same. A vigorous forward presence around the world - political, military, economic - will stop them stone cold and defend our place in the world, at the very top of it, as the world's only superpower. One. Not two. One. Our standard of living, our security, our power depends on it.

And you want to give up some of the most important tools towards that end? Which side are you on exactly? Because not doing all this stuff - and to be clear, your opinions be damned, we're not stopping - will fuck America like nothing else.

[Kellhound]

Your geopolitics understanding is retarded.

You want to give up our alliances with the world's 3rd and 4th largest economies, our forward staging basis in the world's most important strategic region (East Asia), and our hard won home turf (Central Europe). Why? To save a bit of cash?

Exactly how poor is your long term vision of the US's place in the world? Like... holy shit. China is the challenge of the first half of the century to the United States in particular... and you want to CLOSE BASES IN JAPAN? Like have you been paying attention at all? Even just a little bit?

China doesn't give a crap about your Ted Cruz politics, Nostop it. They want to eat your lunch all the same. A vigorous forward presence around the world - political, military, economic - will stop them stone cold and defend our place in the world, at the very top of it, as the world's only superpower. One. Not two. One. Our standard of living, our security, our power depends on it.

And you want to give up some of the most important tools towards that end? Which side are you on exactly? Because not doing all this stuff - and to be clear, your opinions be damned, we're not stopping - will fuck America like nothing else.

Besides, Japan pays us to be there....

[Deleted]

Your geopolitics understanding is retarded.

You want to give up our alliances with the world's 3rd and 4th largest economies, our forward staging basis in the world's most important strategic region (East Asia), and our hard won home turf (Central Europe). Why? To save a bit of cash?

Exactly how poor is your long term vision of the US's place in the world? Like... holy shit. China is the challenge of the first half of the century to the United States in particular... and you want to CLOSE BASES IN JAPAN? Like have you been paying attention at all? Even just a little bit?

China doesn't give a crap about your Ted Cruz politics, Nostop it. They want to eat your lunch all the same. A vigorous forward presence around the world - political, military, economic - will stop them stone cold and defend our place in the world, at the very top of it, as the world's only superpower. One. Not two. One. Our standard of living, our security, our power depends on it.

And you want to give up some of the most important tools towards that end? Which side are you on exactly? Because not doing all this stuff - and to be clear, your opinions be damned, we're not stopping - will fuck America like nothing else.

I'm glad that some people have the foresight to prepare for a conflict with China. It's inevitable.

The U.S. still needs to cut wasteful spending though and prioritize.

There's a great way to pay for a bigger military if people want it: create a better economy. But people are too selfish to solve that problem unless everything goes to hell.

[Skroe]

Besides, Japan pays us to be there....

Yup, and it also keeps the peace between Japan, and our other fantastically rich, hypertechnologically advanced ally, South Korea, the World's 15th largest economy and 12th on the Human Development Index. Two countries, that have a long and horrible history of murdering each other, but are on the same side, looking towards China and North Korea, with us as the conduit.

It's seriously unfucking believable that someone would want to get out of this hilariously amazing international position, as the guarantor of security and Major ally to two of the most technologically advanced and richest countries in the world , a few hundred miles from our greatest problem of the first half of this century, China. If there were analogs to Japan and South Korea in Latin America, you could believe China would be doing everything it could to put themselves in the position we've long been in, right off their coast.

It's just... unreal Nostop It would even think that. I have a feeling he's one of those Far-Right Conservative Americans who think the only things that matter in the world happen within our borders, in our fucking provincial political slap fights.

[Kellhound]

Yup, and it also keeps the peace between Japan, and our other fantastically rich, hypertechnologically advanced ally, South Korea, the World's 15th largest economy and 12th on the Human Development Index. Two countries, that have a long and horrible history of murdering each other, but are on the same side, looking towards China and North Korea, with us as the conduit.

It's seriously unfucking believable that someone would want to get out of this hilariously amazing international position, as the guarantor of security and Major ally to two of the most technologically advanced and richest countries in the world , a few hundred miles from our greatest problem of the first half of this century, China. If there were analogs to Japan and South Korea in Latin America, you could believe China would be doing everything it could to put themselves in the position we've long been in, right off their coast.

It's just... unreal Nostop It would even think that. I have a feeling he's one of those Far-Right Conservative Americans who think the only things that matter happen within our borders in our fucking provincial political slap fight.

People generally have little to no understand of international politics, and it shows.

[Celista]

Yeah the US must under no circumstances reduce its completely sane and reasonable military expenditure.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_expenditures

Whether or not spending like that is justified (I highly doubt it is), we'd likely have to spend far less on defense if we stopped going around and pissing off other countries under the guise of being world police/"ambassadors of freedom" *cough* as often as we do.

[Skroe]

I'm glad that some people have the foresight to prepare for a conflict with China. It's inevitable.

The U.S. still needs to cut wasteful spending though and prioritize.

There's a great way to pay for a bigger military if people want it: create a better economy. But people are too selfish to solve that problem unless everything goes to hell.

The only wasteful spending we really need to touch is entitlement reform and health care. But Americans are so utterly fucking full of shit about everything important until they have no other fucking option, we're going to ignore both until we have no other choice.

That's the true idiocy of Obamacare and why I was revolted by it from day one. We're so goddamn egotistical and idiotic about this shit, we treat solving our "heath care problem" like it's a great human achievement, like we're going to Mars or something. It's really a dumb as shit, entirely obvious accounting problem. The problem is, we don't want to make any compromises.

Japan is probably my favorite country in the world when it comes to health care reform, because no body will ever accuse Japan of being socialist. They're as voracious capitalists as we are. But they're also highly pragmatic. In the early 1990s they saw the future, with their massive elderly population and their small workforce, and they saw ruin. They fixed their health care spending in about three years. And they did it by attacking the actual root of the problem, the fucking cost of services. They put hard caps on what certain services and procedures cost, and they told insurance companies: you will set absurdly low rates, and if we don't like them, we'll set them for you.

It's been a terrific success. They have no healthcare problem, because they realized that a $77 bag of saline and a $2000 MRI is infucking defensible, free-market ideology be damned. Instead, $1.50 bags of saline and $80 MRIs, as they should be.

But not here in the Land of Bullshit. Here, we don't ask why we're spending tens of dollars on saline and thousands of dollars on what should be a routine diagnostic. Here we just accept the cost and try and spread it out, and inject some nonsense about incentivizing bending the cost curve. But the rest of the world figured it out: The solution to Health Care spending is just legislating it out of being a high growth part sector of the economy.

We'll arrive at that same conclusion, one day. Obamacare is shit because it accepts the absurdity of what we pay in the hope of incentivizing (rather than directing) lower prices. Republican counter proposals are awful because it embraces free market garbage that is inapplicable to health care and even peer hypercapitalists countries refuse to waste their time on.

But Americans, for all our wisdom and technology, love to talk, and love swimming in bullshit and declaring it the fountain of youth. Fixing health care in America has been a "thing" since the Great Society, maybe even the New Deal depending how you look at it. Japan? Three years. That should shame us.

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Whether or not spending like that is justified (I highly doubt it is), we'd likely have to spend far less on defense if we stopped going around and pissing off other countries under the guise of being world police/"ambassadors of freedom" *cough* as often as we do.

It's still less than the 5% of GDP we should be spending. That's the marker analysts have long said we should aim for.

It's a lot of money because again, America is a fantastically wealthy country with an absurdly big economy. It can afford it.

[Theinquisition]

The only wasteful spending we really need to touch is entitlement reform and health care. But Americans are so utterly fucking full of shit about everything important until they have no other fucking option, we're going to ignore both until we have no other choice.

That's the true idiocy of Obamacare and why I was revolted by it from day one. We're so goddamn egotistical and idiotic about this shit, we treat solving our "heath care problem" like it's a great human achievement, like we're going to Mars or something. It's really a dumb as shit, entirely obvious accounting problem. The problem is, we don't want to make any compromises.

Japan is probably my favorite country in the world when it comes to health care reform, because no body will ever accuse Japan of being socialist. They're as voracious capitalists as we are. But they're also highly pragmatic. In the early 1990s they saw the future, with their massive elderly population and their small workforce, and they saw ruin. They fixed their health care spending in about three years. And they did it by attacking the actual root of the problem, the fucking cost of services. They put hard caps on what certain services and procedures cost, and they told insurance companies: you will set absurdly low rates, and if we don't like them, we'll set them for you.

It's been a terrific success. They have no healthcare problem, because they realized that a $77 bag of saline and a $2000 MRI is infucking defensible, free-market ideology be damned. Instead, $1.50 bags of saline and $80 MRIs, as they should be.

But not here in the Land of Bullshit. Here, we don't ask why we're spending tens of dollars on saline and thousands of dollars on what should be a routine diagnostic. Here we just accept the cost and try and spread it out, and inject some nonsense about incentivizing bending the cost curve. But the rest of the world figured it out: The solution to Health Care spending is just legislating it out of being a high growth part sector of the economy.

We'll arrive at that same conclusion, one day. Obamacare is shit because it accepts the absurdity of what we pay in the hope of incentivizing (rather than directing) lower prices. Republican counter proposals are awful because it embraces free market garbage that is inapplicable to health care and even peer hypercapitalists countries refuse to waste their time on.

But Americans, for all our wisdom and technology, love to talk, and love swimming in bullshit and declaring it the fountain of youth. Fixing health care in America has been a "thing" since the Great Society, maybe even the New Deal depending how you look at it. Japan? Three years. That should shame us.

- - - Updated - - -



It's still less than the 5% of GDP we should be spending. That's the marker analysts have long said we should aim for.

It's a lot of money because again, America is a fantastically wealthy country with an absurdly big economy. It can afford it.

Not disagreeing with you here, but isn't the cost of a MRI machine in the millions of dollars? I think that's why a routine MRI costs so much, they gotta make minimum payments on those machines

[Celista]

That's the true idiocy of Obamacare and why I was revolted by it from day one. We're so goddamn egotistical and idiotic about this shit, we treat solving our "heath care problem" like it's a great human achievement, like we're going to Mars or something. It's really a dumb as shit, entirely obvious accounting problem. The problem is, we don't want to make any compromises.

I actually agree with some of your points but you'd never get conservatives to agree to put initiatives in place to control health care costs, that would smack even more strongly of socialism than Obamacare. Also economists tend to think price fixing is a bad idea, I can't tell you how many economics classes I had to sit through where the professor brought up the example of rent-controlled apartments in New York and would bitch about how that was just a terrible fucking idea. Economic theory in the courses I took (my undergraduate major was finance, but my minor was in economics) was interesting because no one really talked about the outliers, whether in regards to price fixing or economic systems or services....it was pure promotion of free-market ideology. I'm not sure if that's indicative of theory trends overall or if I just attended a university with a mindblowingly conservative economics department.

In regards to Obamacare, at least now the poor get some health care and that will likely cut costs now due to preventative care being ridiculously cheaper than the poor going without medical coverage, having their health problems balloon up to be ridiculously expensive procedures that the poor simply cannot afford to pay and whose bills are discharged through bankruptcy.

[tylenol]

Whether or not spending like that is justified (I highly doubt it is), we'd likely have to spend far less on defense if we stopped going around and pissing off other countries under the guise of being world police/"ambassadors of freedom" *cough* as often as we do.

You live in the most peaceful period in human history for a reason, it's like having a buff, roided up dude (America) in a room with 2 smaller dudes (China and Russia I guess?) and both smaller dudes hate the huge buff roided guy but they can't do anything because he is huge and the huge guy doesn't really know the 2 smaller dudes hate him so he has no need to do anything to them...so they do business

It's like all that TSA shit a couple years ago (I have no opinion on what they do/did) but they beefed up security at airports and everyone bitched and moaned, privacy blah blah blah, if they stopped 100% and something happened who would the people (who wanted the TSA to stop this) blame? thats right....the TSA for not doing enough

[Ausr]

The only wasteful spending we really need to touch is entitlement reform and health care. But Americans are so utterly fucking full of shit about everything important until they have no other fucking option, we're going to ignore both until we have no other choice.

That's the true idiocy of Obamacare and why I was revolted by it from day one. We're so goddamn egotistical and idiotic about this shit, we treat solving our "heath care problem" like it's a great human achievement, like we're going to Mars or something. It's really a dumb as shit, entirely obvious accounting problem. The problem is, we don't want to make any compromises.

Japan is probably my favorite country in the world when it comes to health care reform, because no body will ever accuse Japan of being socialist. They're as voracious capitalists as we are. But they're also highly pragmatic. In the early 1990s they saw the future, with their massive elderly population and their small workforce, and they saw ruin. They fixed their health care spending in about three years. And they did it by attacking the actual root of the problem, the fucking cost of services. They put hard caps on what certain services and procedures cost, and they told insurance companies: you will set absurdly low rates, and if we don't like them, we'll set them for you.

It's been a terrific success. They have no healthcare problem, because they realized that a $77 bag of saline and a $2000 MRI is infucking defensible, free-market ideology be damned. Instead, $1.50 bags of saline and $80 MRIs, as they should be.

But not here in the Land of Bullshit. Here, we don't ask why we're spending tens of dollars on saline and thousands of dollars on what should be a routine diagnostic. Here we just accept the cost and try and spread it out, and inject some nonsense about incentivizing bending the cost curve. But the rest of the world figured it out: The solution to Health Care spending is just legislating it out of being a high growth part sector of the economy.

We'll arrive at that same conclusion, one day. Obamacare is shit because it accepts the absurdity of what we pay in the hope of incentivizing (rather than directing) lower prices. Republican counter proposals are awful because it embraces free market garbage that is inapplicable to health care and even peer hypercapitalists countries refuse to waste their time on.

But Americans, for all our wisdom and technology, love to talk, and love swimming in bullshit and declaring it the fountain of youth. Fixing health care in America has been a "thing" since the Great Society, maybe even the New Deal depending how you look at it. Japan? Three years. That should shame us.

- - - Updated - - -



It's still less than the 5% of GDP we should be spending. That's the marker analysts have long said we should aim for.

It's a lot of money because again, America is a fantastically wealthy country with an absurdly big economy. It can afford it.

Believe FDR had a plan for another set of Bill of Rights which included affordable or free healthcare but he unfortunately died before he could propose it.

[Skroe]

Not disagreeing with you here, but isn't the cost of a MRI machine in the millions of dollars? I think that's why a routine MRI costs so much, they gotta make minimum payments on those machines

They range from $200,000 to $2 million, and have a life type of 5-7 years, and are typically used every 30 minutes. If we're generous and say they're used once every hour (which should factor in times late at night they're used once every couple of hours), a simple math problem shows:

$2000*24 hours*365 days = $17,520,000 per year.

at $80, it yields $700,800.

[Theinquisition]

They range from $200,000 to $2 million, and have a life type of 5-7 years, and are typically used every 30 minutes. If we're generous and say they're used once every hour (which should factor in times late at night they're used once every couple of hours), a simple math problem shows:

$2000*24 hours*365 days = $17,520,000 per year.

at $80, it yields $700,800.

What if you figure in electricity, maintainence, and liquid helium refills?