If you were in charge what would you cut to balance the budget ?

Your plans don’t cut the budget. And by eliminating higher education, you imperil the ability of training a workforce to innovate to grow the economy.

Trying to “balance the budget” is country specific. I would cut U.S. spending on unnecessary weapons and overblown aircraft, such as the F-35 fighter which has been a budget buster since it started.

@zenvelo I would only have (stem) programs funded. Higher education is in my mind mostly useless. I think that military research spills over to the citizens of a country. I agree with you. I’m just starting the thread.

I would meet only Nato requirements to keep military spending down.
I would only give corporations tax breaks if they prove they are indeed expanding and hiring new employees not running off with the loot.
I would crack down on large corporations that are cheating on their taxes.

The military. By at least half.

Yup. Military spending. Then I’d raise taxes on the wealthy.

There’s absolutely no macroeconomic reason to “balance the budget”. It’s a pernicious and destructive myth.

But if I were in charge of government spending, I’d cut military spending and reallocate resources to publically funding universal health care, and education—to all ages and regardless of field of study—to renewable energy production, carbon neutral infrastructure and transportation, energy efficient housing, and to long-term R&D

I also see no reason to fetishise STEM above other intellectual and creative fields of study—we need philosophers, historians, and various types of intellectuals and thinkers as much as scientists—and scientists would do well do broaden their own intellectual focus rather than ignoring the very philosophical basis of their endeavours.

“I also see no reason to fetishise STEM above other intellectual and creative fields of study—we need philosophers, historians, and various types of intellectuals and thinkers as much as scientists—and scientists would do well do broaden their own intellectual focus rather than ignoring the very philosophical basis of their endeavours.”

Aye, you go @Kropotkin! You know what’s up!

Kevin O’Leary from Canada once said that he would lay off all government workers who had odd social insurance numbers. I think he was serious. He is running for Progressive conservative party leader of Canada. @Kropotkin Thanks for the retort. Fetishise STEM lol.

Corporate welfare. Military, especially military budget losses to crazy-bad deals & dumping money into Halliburton, and foreign campaigns. Homeland Security. Trump’s wall. Tax holes for the excessively rich. The public privacy violation budget. Switch to single-payer healthcare that does not allow the inflated US prices we’ve fallen into under the insurance industry.

“I also see no reason to fetishise STEM above other intellectual and creative fields of study—we need philosophers, historians, and various types of intellectuals and thinkers as much as scientists—and scientists would do well do broaden their own intellectual focus rather than ignoring the very philosophical basis of their endeavours.”

The most pretentious people I have ever met were STEM students (engineering students especially), and I wish they would understand this.

Seriously. Egos visible from Mars on some of those people.

Donald’s “working weekends” and Melania’s facials.

@Pachy GA

I think we should funnel about half of our defense spending into education and investment in renewable resources and medical research

Our bloated-ass military budget, and we sure as hell wouldn’t drop any $25 billion on a useless wall either.

Isn’t there enough money in the world for just about everything, since most of it isn’t even physical? Either way advertisement is something I’d cut out. Wasting money on shit to make people spend mo…what the fuck? Announce things, talk about them, sure, but does advertisement really need to be everywhere?

I would simply means-test Social Security and Medicare. If you make over 118,500 a year. Thanks for your contribution. You make a lot, you should be alright.

Start there and let the CBO crunch the numbers and see how much cash that frees up. Then go from there.

I would put together a task force to get medical costs down. I’d focus on medical professional commuting fraud and pharmaceutical prices and profits being regulated.

I’d make sure the government isn’t paying more for goods and services than other companies for the same items. This is everything from paper clips to laying down roads.

Military spending probably can be cut to some extent, I hear we waste a lot on that budget, but before I cut it, I want to make sure we improve veteran health care, although a lot of the VA system is very good contrary to what the media and politicians put out there.

Increase wages so the government doesn’t have to fund food stamps and other similar programs so much.

I’d increase the budget for vocational training programs, so when we decrease imported goods, we can increase manufacturing and workers like carpenters and metal workers can get more jobs that pay better wages.

@jca I wonder if we need more money for vocational, or just need to start offering the programs? Did you mean high school? Or, programs after high school?

@JLeslie: I mean anything to create craftsmen, whether it’s in HS or after HS.

@jca I’m just thinking if it’s in high school, maybe they don’t have to do much change in terms of budget. They need a teacher for whatever “shop” class, but maybe they get rid of a different elective. In my high school we had vocational teachers, and some of the students did a half day, and then apprenticed for credit outside of school. I think that was a good plan for many of the vocational professions.

My husband looked into an auto mechanic school 10 years ago and it was $10k. Now, the same school is $30k! That’s a lot of money. I find it shocking. If you call the school all they care about is getting you in classes so they can collect your money. It feels like you’re being worked over by the salesperson.

I’m thinking even if it’s in HS, they still need to buy equipment (lathes, saws, planes, safety equipment, etc), which can be very expensive.

@jca True. There would be an investment in the equipment at minimum.