what is the military price of oil use, $500B or $0

He obviously does not know how to read a chart. Social security has obligations but not the money people paid into it. This means if you account for it as a pension fund, it has been running deficits all these years. An accounting trick by the government allows them to not account for its obligations. Social Security will runs huge deficits ast the baby boomers retire as the top of the pyramid will become bigger than the bottom. It needs reform soon.

The cost of the cold war is the main part of military spending. Even when you grab every dollar and claim its military like funding for homeland security you can not get close to 14Trillion. But the number is high.

 

This includes the figures for wars and dod spending. You will note it is very high, but it also was not a constant number. There was a big rise starting from 2001

Talking About Military Spending and the Pentagon Budget

As the chart below shows, current defense spending levels – even without funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – are higher than at any time since World War II when adjusted for inflation.


The question is should veterans benefits be part of the military budget discussion
http://nationalpriorities.org/en/blog/2012/05/21/you-ask-we-answer-funding-veterans-plus-military/

Veterans benefits are also 3% of the mandatory budget. These all are millitary costs, but ending the current military spending for "defending our oil" will not drop these costs. We have obligations to support the men and women that have served our country, whether we agree with the politicians or not.

 

I agree with big cuts in military spending. It is strange that some people think a cut to 9 carrier groups from 11 are harsh cuts and fight against them. This is at a time where no other country has more than 1 carrier group. Bad things can happen, but couldn't we mothball 5, and just keep 6 out there to keep the troops trained? The other big area pointed to is the nuclear arsenal, do we really need to be able to blow up the world hundreds of times? Nuclear weapons don't really act as a deterent to terrorists, and the chinese, russians, and US don't really need the ones we have.

It seems that some republicans want to increase military spending, while the bulk of democrats and republicans seem to want to keep it around where it is, the highest levels non war spending levels since WWII. A few in both parties want to make drastic cuts and we should support them in this. If sequestration happens, and I hope that it does, Penetta ought to be able to choose which programs to cut, and not have automatic across the board cuts. At least then we will have a $100B in cuts a year, and when people see we have not become weak, more cutting can happen.

I don't know if it was unfunded wars that caused the budget debt, but altogether too high spending. Even if the wars would have been funded we would be in bad shape. Unchecked federal spending on bad foreign policy or any other program hurts the country. The country also paid to bail out the banks. Its not that we are not taxed enough, it is we are pissing money down a rat hole. That doesn't mean we should not close loopholes, remove subsidies, and raise marginal tax rates on the wealthy, it just means its a spending problem not a taxing problem. Europe with their high taxes and no war in Iraq has bigger debt problems than the US.

As for raiding social security, its just an accounting trick. Social security is really a ponzi scheme, except since the government can print money it never has to go broke. The money has never been invested for the pension fund, it goes into treasuries that the government prints, and these are not enough to pay the obligation. The system needs to get repaired, but any attempt by a politician runs into a mine field. I really don't expect to get any of my social security back when I retire. Maybe we could do an oil tax to help pay off the obligations for those retired or close to retirement, and a fixed pension plan for the young.

 

The direct dod budget estimates for war for oil policy seemed to be
$60B-$130B / year

The estimates of the cost of afghan and Iraq War seem to be
$600B-$4T so far. If we exit afghanistan in 2014 these costs go away until the next oil war.

Current interest on 30 year treasuries is 3%, which means for every $100B in deficit spending costs $3B in interest every year.

Veterans benefits are about $110B/year. Some want to put half of this as oil costs. But most of these benefits go to veterans of cold war military. It is hard for me to put a value on future and current veterans benefits for the policy. If anyone has a good clue that should be included.

This is true.
My point about $0 is this. The country really gets no oil security from this policy. We could tax the oil and pay for the military, but then we keep the policy. But the problem is more the policy, it is the lives and money wasted.

We were attacked on 911. I would have been fine with deficit spending for a short afghan war, and paying for it later. But the policy is what got the US involved in Afghanistan in the first place. Its the policy that moved us from a defensive war, to an offensive one in Iraq. If putting an oil tax gets more people against putting our brave men and women in harms way for control of oil, that might have some benefit.

 

I started this topic so you could vent on your high military costs on an appropriate thread. Please at least keep it on this topic. Social Security doesn't really have much to do with it.

But I'll against my better judgement try to educate you on social security.

Social security is already in deficit by a large amount.

A normal pension fund takes money, invests it, then pays it off in retirement. Social security really represents a modified ponzi scheme. In a ponzi scheme, the pyramid doesn't collapse until it runs out of money. When people talk about when social security goes into deficit, they really mean the date that the pyramid scheme would colapse if it were not run by the government. The date can only be estimated, since it requires knowledge of when the top of the pyramid (retired workers) becomes larger than the bottom (workers). The size of the top is related to how long people live, the bottom is determined by unemployment and saleries. But there are important differences between this and a ponzi scheme.

As in a ponzi scheme, the runner of the scheme, the congress, takes any surplus that the workers pay out to the retired. But since it is the government. The government prints treasuries for the money it takes, as an IOU. This creates debt, but it is money that the country owes to itself, and is not accounted for in the budget. This only gets accounted for when the pyramid starts colapsing, and the government must raise taxes or print more money to pay off this debt.

The biggest difference though is that the government can compel people into the pyramid scheme. Looking at the demographics, new workers added to the pyramid will never get back as much money as they put in. Some will, since they will live a long time, but most will pay extra. Every year until the system is fixed the amount of money that will be paid back to the workers at the bottom decreases. But politicians have no incentive to fix the system, those at the top, people 50 and over, vote in much higher numbers than those at the bottom.

 

Some newer estimates for costs of the Iraq war have been coming out. I'll modify the range from

$784B-$6000B.

First in direct costs I found it interesting to put it in perspecives of previous wars
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
Which is interesting that Iraq with a much lower death toll cost nearly as much as vietnam in direct spending,

It should be noted that Vietnam took a much larger percentage of gdp, and indirect costs as well as the big measures fatalities and injuries were much higher.

It is interesting to see how some of the higher estimates account for costs
The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond

Iraq war ends with a $4 trillion IOU - MarketWatch

What Did the Iraq War Cost? More Than You Think. - US News and World Report

 

If you look at anual military costs, they are much smaller than the deficit. Simply being unfunded in the budget is not the problem. The stimulus package has had a much higher cost year over year, and I would argue since this was new spending it really is unfunded.

The big problem is the government spends too much. If we analyze how much the country needs to pay for a defensive military, it is clear much money can be cut.

While it is true the public desire the United States to stay the strongest country in the world, I would disagree with the idea that the public does not want to cut military spending.

Public Opinion Snapshot: Cut Military Spending, Tax the Rich





When you add the all and combination that likely means 56% are for cutting the military budget, 38% are against it, and 6% don't know or don't care. Some would argue medicare and social security don't come from the same taxes, but payroll taxes are a large proportion of taxes paid by those in low and middle incomes.
Note along with raising marginal taxes on the wealthy the majority of the people would like to close corporate welfare programs and end subsidies to coal oil and ethanol. Its the politicians not the people that seem to be in favor of the military spending and oil subsidies.

IMHO the military budget for CENTCOM, as well as the Iraq war, was not costly because it was unfunded, it was and is too costly because we spend too much. Anyone that talks about unfunded being the problem, simply wants to raise taxes instead of cutting military spending.