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Speaking of redistributionist fiddle-faddle...

Mon, 08/18/2008 - 23:03 — Ben

William McGurn delves into Barack Obama's affection for taxation in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. The crux:

Mr. Obama, by contrast, started out much more directly, suggesting that if you make $150,000 or less you may be poor or middle class. A family with an income above $250,000, he went on to say, is "doing well." And if you find yourself in that category, he's going to target you for a tax hike -- all in the name of creating "a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code."

In fact, the idea of fairness is at the heart of his whole economic argument. And he goes back to it in almost every public appearance.

He talks about it as a general theme: "It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share."

"Fair share" is a matter of opinion. The question is: Pay our fair share for what?

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Tue, 08/19/2008 - 05:48 — Joel

Well...

... there is that war in Iraq. And Afghanistan. Defense spending comprises about half the federal budget, I believe. Somebody's got to pay for that.

Tue, 08/19/2008 - 07:23 — Monkey Brad

Ahem...

Adding $200 B of off-budget money doesn't get us near half. Only by adding the approximately 18% of the budget (according to one anti-war site I checked) that covers pensions and possibly medical for retired military personnel does one rhetorically secure numbers near 50%.

Tue, 08/19/2008 - 07:46 — Joel

Re: Ahem

You don't count that as defense-related spending?

OK. Defense spending is still a really, really, really huge part of the budget.

Now, I'm not suggesting we stop spending money on defense. But Ben asked a question: What are we spending our money on? And I think, frankly, that's the beginning of the answer -- not to disparage defense spending, but to be realistic. The government is doing a big expensive thing that conservatives want it to do. Again: Somebody has to pay for it.

Tue, 08/19/2008 - 08:34 — Dr. Zaius

Re: re: Ahem

Joel writes:

The government is doing a big expensive thing that conservatives want it to do. Again: Somebody has to pay for it.

And the government is doing vastly bigger and more expensive things that liberals want to do — and those projects dwarf defense spending. And, for the record: I am saying that we stop spending money on some of these programs. Mandatory entitlement spending is going to cripple our economy and government, as it is doing to Europe's welfare states.

The dirty secret of Washington is that "discretionary" spending, of which Defense is a big part, is but a relatively small fraction of overall federal outlays. And "discretionary" spending is the only part of the federal budget that Congress has any year-to-year control over. So politicians are fighting for what are really tiny pieces of a thin slice of the federal pie.

Tue, 08/19/2008 - 16:09 — Monkey Rothbard

We can stop both

We should dramatically reduce ALL spending. However, to Joel's point, I find it laughable that pro-war conservatives don't consider defense spending to be redistribution of wealth. Defense spending is the biggest public works project ever.