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What is Wrong With the United State?


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3 minutes ago, JamesHackerMP said:

His abuse of power will be controversial. What did you think I meant??

It's not an abuse of power when its constitutional, by definition.  Based on your assertions I'm not getting the impression that you understand what separation of powers means.

Edited by Dougie93
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2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

It's not an abuse of power when its constitutional, by definition.  Based on your assertions I'm not getting the impression that you don't understand what separation of powers means.

Abuse of power isn't constitutional. As you said, there's supposed to be checks and balances in the American system.

Edited by JamesHackerMP
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20 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

No, it proves nothing.   The United States isn't more or less "wrong" because it has or has not maintained its infrastructure to your liking, just like any other nation.

U.S. federal, state, and local jurisdictions fund projects based on many different criteria and priorities.

It proves one of my my many points exactly, which thanks to overspending on defence and a lack of planning, the US is literally falling apart in many areas.  Eventually something will have to be done about its decaying infrastructure, but having delayed so long in so many areas it is going to be much more expensive.

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Just now, Iznogoud said:

It proves one of my my many points exactly, which thanks to overspending on defence and a lack of planning, the US is literally falling apart in many areas.  Eventually something will have to be done about its decaying infrastructure, but having delayed so long in so many areas it is going to be much more expensive.

Defense spending is 12% of the federal budget, and 4% of GDP, give or take. However, I agree with you about the infrastructure decay.

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5 minutes ago, JamesHackerMP said:

Defense spending is 12% of the federal budget, and 4% of GDP, give or take. However, I agree with you about the infrastructure decay.

Even so, that 4% of GDP is almost 600 billion.  A lot of bridges could be repaired with just half that money. 

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Just now, Iznogoud said:

Even so, that 4% of GDP is almost 600 billion.  A lot of bridges could be repaired with just half that money. 

I just said I agreed with you about the decaying infrastructure. 

Not to get off topic, but yes there is waste in the defense budget (e.g., the F-35). How much would you slash the defense budget, then?

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15 minutes ago, JamesHackerMP said:

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying about our checks and balances. Care to clarify?

The Congress can take the authority away, by holding another joint session and withdrawing the authority to take military action by any other means than formal declaration of Congress.

Congress gave the President the power, they can take it away any time, hence the checks and balances are entirely in place.

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1 minute ago, Dougie93 said:

The Congress can take the authority away, by holding another joint session and withdrawing the authority to take military action by any other means than formal declaration of Congress.

Congress gave the President the power, they can take it away any time, hence the checks and balances are entirely in place.

That's what I was trying to tell you.

The president acting contrary to the intent of the act would be abuse of power.

Edited by JamesHackerMP
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5 minutes ago, JamesHackerMP said:

I just said I agreed with you about the decaying infrastructure. 

Not to get off topic, but yes there is waste in the defense budget (e.g., the F-35). How much would you slash the defense budget, then?

I think that rather than attempting to get NATO allies to increase their spending to US levels I would be more in favour of gradually decreasing it to the NATO average.  A great deal of US spending goes into maintaining a global presence; something that none of its rivals even attempt and its military R&D alone is almost greater than the entire military budget of nations like Russia and China.

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Just now, JamesHackerMP said:

That's what I was trying to tell you.

The president acting contrary to the intent of the act would be abuse of power.

The intent of the act was to give him freedom of action, it's not an abuse just because you are a cry whining panic monkey, that the President then use the freedom of action mandated to him by act of congress.

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Just now, Iznogoud said:

I think that rather than attempting to get NATO allies to increase their spending to US levels I would be more in favour of gradually decreasing it to the NATO average.  A great deal of US spending goes into maintaining a global presence; something that none of its rivals even attempt and its military R&D alone is almost greater than the entire military budget of nations like Russia and China.

That's likely because we're the remaining global superpower. When they were a superpower the Soviets did the same thing, spending to maintain their global presence to check the United States.

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4 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

The intent of the act was to give him freedom of action, it's not an abuse just because you are a cry whining panic monkey, that the President then use the freedom of action mandated to him by act of congress.

I don't think that was necessary. If you cannot argue like an adult, find another message board.

In the mean time, I'm so terribly sorry I had the gall to disagree with you. I hope you weren't offended.

Edited by JamesHackerMP
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Just now, JamesHackerMP said:

I don't think that was necessary. If you cannot argue like an adult, find another message board.

Anytime you want to stop crying, whining and panicking, we can commence to arguing about something, in the meantime you're just blabbering hysterically about "abuse of powers" which prima facie are not the case by even cursory glance at the constitution. 

If you do not wish to be an embarrassment to the American republic, perhaps you should do some more research before you publish to the internet prattling nonsense in the name of Americans. /shrugs

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2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Anytime you want to stop crying, whining and panicking, we can commence to arguing about something, in the meantime you're just blabbering hysterically about "abuse of powers" which prima facie are not the case by even cursory glance at the constitution. 

If you do not wish to be an embarrassment to the American republic, perhaps you should do some more research before you publish to the internet prattling nonsense in the name of Americans. /shrugs

OK....this has degenerated into a personality conflict. I refuse to get involved. There's plenty of other people here I can debate with. The rest of us have been acting like adults.

Edited by JamesHackerMP
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2 hours ago, Iznogoud said:

It proves one of my my many points exactly, which thanks to overspending on defence and a lack of planning, the US is literally falling apart in many areas.  Eventually something will have to be done about its decaying infrastructure, but having delayed so long in so many areas it is going to be much more expensive.

 

Nope...the United States actually spends more on infrastructure than many other nations in the world, and has done so fairly consistently since the bulk of the interstate highway system was competed in the early 1970's.

70-yrChart2.png

 

https://www.enotrans.org/article/70-year-trend-federal-infrastructure-spending/

Edited by bush_cheney2004
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On 1/23/2019 at 9:41 PM, JamesHackerMP said:

That's likely because we're the remaining global superpower. When they were a superpower the Soviets did the same thing, spending to maintain their global presence to check the United States.

The USSR was completely outgunned in the arms race.  At one time it was spending over 20% of its GDP in an attempt to keep up with the US while the US never went higher than 6%.  The nuclear arms race itself never did make much sense - it was purely a contest of terror.  With tens of thousands of weapons on each side the overkill factor was ridiculous.  By comparison Britain and France stopped at just a few hundred, believing that was a sufficient deterrent. 

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23 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Nope...the United States actually spends more on infrastructure than many other nations in the world, and has done so fairly consistently since the bulk of the interstate highway system was competed in the early 1970's.

70-yrChart2.png

 

https://www.enotrans.org/article/70-year-trend-federal-infrastructure-spending/

Ahh, but does it spend enough?  The US can easily outspend nations like Italy or Germany which are only a fraction of its size and population but still be lacking in many areas.  From your graph it appears that infrastructure spending in the US peaked about 50 years ago.  Given the fact that this infrastructure is now very old and outmoded why aren't there higher levels of spending? Mind you I will concede that a good deal of modern infrastructure spending in the US seems to be coming from the private sector, especially in the realm of green tech.

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Just now, Iznogoud said:

Ahh, but does it spend enough?  The US can easily outspend nations like Italy or Germany which are only a fraction of its size and population but still be lacking in many areas.  From your graph it appears that infrastructure spending in the US peaked about 50 years ago.  Given the fact that this infrastructure is now very old and outmoded why aren't there higher levels of spending? Mind you I will concede that a good deal of modern infrastructure spending in the US seems to be coming from the private sector, especially in the realm of green tech.

 

That is the entire point of the graph....much higher spending levels are associated with early construction of the massive U.S. interstate highway system, which is now funded by a Highway Trust Fund from fuel taxes that also go to fund transit.   The federal government provides matching funds for state/city projects.    Also significant to any criticism about defense spending priorities instead, the interstate highway system was built with national defense in mind.

Transit now has a permanent funding piece that takes resources away from other projects and maintenance.    My own metro area now has three light rail commuter lines that did not exist 20 years ago, and another is planned/funded to start building next year.

Funding levels have been fairly consistent over the past 50 years, with "problems" and new infrastructure co-existing the whole time.

 

 

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11 hours ago, Iznogoud said:

The USSR was completely outgunned in the arms race.  At one time it was spending over 20% of its GDP in an attempt to keep up with the US while the US never went higher than 6%.  The nuclear arms race itself never did make much sense - it was purely a contest of terror.  With tens of thousands of weapons on each side the overkill factor was ridiculous.  By comparison Britain and France stopped at just a few hundred, believing that was a sufficient deterrent. 

You're right about that. Maybe that was part of what Eisenhower warned about (the "military-industrial complex and its threat to democracy"). Some defense contractors got rich off of building all those ICBMs and nuclear warheads.

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20 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

That is the entire point of the graph....much higher spending levels are associated with early construction of the massive U.S. interstate highway system, which is now funded by a Highway Trust Fund from fuel taxes that also go to fund transit.

Transit now has a permanent funding piece that takes resources away from other projects and maintenance.    My own metro area now has three light rail commuter lines that did not exist 20 years ago, and another is planned/funded to start building next year.

 

 

 

I think you are missing the point.  One of the infrastructure problems listed was the lack of maintenance on bridges and highways.  Apparently the level of spending is simply not enough to deal with all of the deterioration of the system.  And transit in the US still lags behind of other industrialized nations, especially in high speed rail. 

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1 hour ago, Iznogoud said:

I think you are missing the point.  One of the infrastructure problems listed was the lack of maintenance on bridges and highways.  Apparently the level of spending is simply not enough to deal with all of the deterioration of the system.  And transit in the US still lags behind of other industrialized nations, especially in high speed rail. 

 

And I think you are missing the point.....high speed rail is not and has not ever been a high priority in the United States.    

The United States has almost double the OECD average for passenger miles travel per year, leading all OECD nations by far:

 

main.png

 

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26192

Edited by bush_cheney2004
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