Our prosperity is dependent on what is untouchable

[ThomWV]

Defense spending is the god of the budget, it alone is untouchable. Imagine the country we would have if we took that distinction away from defense and gave it to Education? Full federal funding for all schools and all school equipment, a huge budget for research in better ways to educate, and every employee and public employee with the full protections afforded by the Federal Employee's unions. Try that and see what happens to our economy, to our society, and to the general prosperity of the world for that matter.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Wouldn't be prudent.

Think, man. Do you want a lot of bomb & tank manufacturers seriously pissed at you? (They won't bomb you; they'll just unelect you.)

Besides, America depends on having a military big enough to take anybody's oil away from them no matter where they are and no matter how hard they tantrum when we do it.

[indepat]

4. But taking their oil away from them through bombardment, invasion, and occupation, no matter the

collateral damage, carnage, and human suffering, does not constitute a war of aggression, war crimes, nor acts of terrorism because all these are America's god-given rights and besides we wear the white hats. If anyone is dubious of these observations, the record would seem to speak for itself. :patriot:

[Jackpine Radical]

5. We are a peace-loving nation

and we'll bomb the crap out of anybody who says different.

[dkf]

2. A lot of our R&D comes from the military.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Sure; the impulse to destroy each other

is the true mother of invention.

[dkf]

7. Sad but true.

[ZombieHorde]

10. A dramitic increase in education will increase the number of scientists, engineers, and inventers on

this part of the globe.

I believe, in the long run, spending money on education will produce more R&D than the money we are spending on our military.

[subterranean]

11. A lot of R&D comes from NASA too. And the National Institutes of Health.

[leveymg]

3. Such an America would be a major threat to the top 1 percent - we'd tax them - how unAmerican!

The very rich would be a bit poorer, their kids would have to work for a living (inheritance tax would be brought back), and middle-class families wouldn't go broke or deeply into debt late in their working lives to pay for Higher Education.

In other words, social security - again, how unAmerican!

[90-percent]

8. Question

How is America doing as far as extracting oil from Iraq?

Didn't the Iraq government make post war oil deals with Russia and China. To the exclusion of the USA?

All that invasion and death of American's and Iraqi's, and we didn't get the oil?

MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED

-90% Jimmy

[ZombieHorde]

9. Unfortunately, our populace is not educated enough to understand the importance of education.

Kind of a catch 22.