Cut military spending to 1% of GDP. This includes money in the FBI, NASA, and other departments.

Problem solved.

Wait, you think that totals 1.7 trillion/year??

1% of GDP is about 150-160 billion, if you could make that decision, your cool with losing the majority of all of those functions? Temporarily we could probably protect our own country on that budget, not long term I'd guess. I don't know but I would think we're obligated to close to that number just in military pay and benefits, also, if thousands of the people in these departments we're fired all at once.... bad economy? You would be okay with all those folks getting fired?

What about the reputation we would have in the world if we never helped other countries in a crisis? Probably, you don't think it's our business but what about extreme examples like WW2? 20 years from now we would definately be way behind in war tech if we had that budget.

It's cool to think about, I never would have thought someone would respond with that.

We were running a surplus, we went to war twice, we didn't raise taxes to pay for it. Now we have a deficit. Seems the place to cut its where we went over budget. We didn't get here overnight, we won't get out off here overnight.

Many counties get by on 1%, I see no reason why we can't.

Many counties get by on 1%, I see no reason why we can't.

Most countries don't need much of a defense budget because they have us acting as the world police. If we cut back they may have to pick up the slack.

Propose you own plan to reduce deficit!

I'm dealing with this right now. I've never dealt with it before and no one I know has any solid solutions IMO.

I've thought about gold/silver but it's so high.... I can't bear the thought of losing massive money again like I did on my last property. Maybe it is a good solution still?

I've been studying other currencies, with nothing solid to go on but my gut.

The best currency I've found is the australian dollar. This is only based on the fact that they have a Triple AAA credit rating internationally, the future forecast on their credit is stable, their national debt is only 22% of the GDP compared to 89% in the USA. Also, they offer 6.6% in just a 12 month cd. Aside from that, I've been doing some internet marketing to australians lately and as a result I've spoken to alot of the normal folks over there, a few dozen. They seem to be generally happy with their countries economic future and many of them have good salaries when compared to here even though their cost of living is generally higher.

I called the commonwealth bank of australia and they are emailing me some forms to bring to my bank to basically get notarized so that I can start up an account wo physically being there. They are the biggest bank there and I feel safe putting my money there as opposed to a bank in the carribean or the like.

In the last month the Aussie dollar has gone up 6% compared to the us dollar.

I really don't see our country doing anything significant anytime soon in terms of our national debt or the economy.

In a sense I feel bad for taking my money out of our economy but I have no voice to make economic policy here so what do i do?

Help me out here.

Jay... ur way to smart to say that.. anyways it could not possinly make up 1.7 trillion.

This is a hot topic nowadays, the right wants major reforms, the left wants relatively minor ones.

From what I've seen, we have 14.3 trillion in debt, we're set to bring in about 2 trillion this year and we're spending about 3.7 trillion, a 1.7 trillion deficit this year alone. Our debt is about 89% of our GDP, the only country higher is japan, others are close.

From wiki: Total debt is budgeted to increase from $11.9 trillion in FY2009, to $13.8 trillion in FY2010, and $15.1 trillion in FY2011.[3][4]

2010 budget:

-Social security 695 Billion
-Other mandatory 571 B
-Medicare 453 Billion
-Medicaid 290 billion
-interest on debt 164 billion
-Defense approximately 700 billion

What do you believe will happen if we don't reduce it? No big deal or big deal?

What would you cut over what period of time and why? Will this negatively or postively impact the economy and why?

Do you have a better solution than cutting costs? Maybe raising taxes? What taxes would you raise and to what percentage? Why did you pick those?
Will this negatively or postively impact the economy and why?



Honestly, I'm just interested in what us main street folks believe. There's some really smart folks here and I'd like to here your solutions.

Dissallow effective taxation rates below a certain level for those whose annual income is a certain number of times above the average cost of living? Seems overly complex, but the fact that GE didn't pay taxes is really irritating. On the other hand, we need some donations to support non-profits, education, and research, so it'd have to be finessed somehow.

Cut military spending to, say, 1.5 times the next highest spender (China seems to be the leader at the moment, and they have the largest standing army in the world, with nearly double the number of active duty personnel, although we're about commensurate when you compare totals of actives and reserves). This would save us about $300 billion a year from what we're spending now, and not prevent us from being effective in 1 major conflict, and a few minor conflicts, per year.

Raise taxes across the board, with an eye to normalizing the taxes collected from each bracket so each group feels the sting equally. Unfortunately, that involves, like my first suggestion, coming up with an average cost of living for each bracket, and that could get very complicated.

Cancel the wedding in England.
De-throne the Queen and all her heirs. Take all the royal property , money, jewels and spread it among the people who need it.

Most countries don't need much of a defense budget because they have us acting as the world police. If we cut back they may have to pick up the slack.

Oh right, since you make such a difference.

I don't believe that was the implication. Just that since we put so much effort into being the world's police the rest of the time, other countries are pretty justified in leaving it to us when international intervention is actually called for, if nothing else because we were gonna spend the money on the military anyway.

Cancel the wedding in England.
De-throne the Queen and all her heirs. Take all the royal property , money, jewels and spread it among the people who need it.

I don't believe that was the implication. Just that since we put so much effort into being the world's police the rest of the time, other countries are pretty justified in leaving it to us when international intervention is actually called for, if nothing else because we were gonna spend the money on the military anyway.

Is it because we asked you to, or because you want to?

All right, we get it. You hate America. Cool.

That doesn't make what I have to say any less accurate, or mean that I don't agree with some of what you have to say.

The US and Canada committed similar proportions of their navies to the conflict in Libya. We sent a carrier group, you guys sent somewhat less than 5 ships. Now, if we hadn't spent the money on those ships, if our Navy was commensurate with yours, the allied ability to project power into that region would be seriously crippled. No other country, on the planet, is justified in developing that kind of force projection ability because the US is already doing it. It doesn't matter if the US was coming off a major war, or because the hawks in power needed something to jack off to. The point is we have it, so you guys don't need to develop a similar level. Can you imagine what the "military" response would be if something along the lines of 9/11 happened in, say, Belgium? There would've been a lot of wheeling and dealing to make sure that the US was on the side of Belgians so that a response would even be possible.

I'm not saying you have to like it, I'm saying that the world has come to depend on the big dumb bully to fight for their interests, even if he picks dumb fights the rest of the time.

To the topic at hand, we wouldn't have to spend so much money on "defense" if we could reign in our aggressive tendencies, but the downside is that then we'd piss off our allies who were happy to support us with words,but didn't have the forces to send.

Stop being the god-damned World Police.
Legalize and tax it.
Problem solved.

=1.7 trillion/year?