Budget Talk. Sensible Budget Talk.

Here you are! This is how the U.S. Government spends our money!

Let us take seriously the need to get our budget back into balance; that is to say, to get our income to match our expenditures. Some things will not make much of a difference. Those things are all grouped under Physical Resources. General Government expenditures are also large, but not compared to Human Resources and Military spending.

More specifically, there are three areas we can cut, realistically: Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and the Military. The other thing we can do is to raise our income.

Our military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next fifteen largest countries, combined!

Do we really believe that old people should have their pensions trimmed back, and their health care reduced? Do we really believe that we are the only industrial country in the whole world that cannot provide universal health care?

We need to do two big things: we need to reduce our military spending, and we need to augment our income. We do not need to be the policeman for the world. We do not need military bases all over the world. We do not need a war in Iraq, and never did, and we need to get out of Afghanistan. And we need to raise the tax rates on the people and corporations that make the most money. Start with the oil companies! They still get subsidies! Institute a small transaction tax on every financial investment gamble made in the markets. And we need a graduated income tax, where the people who make the most money not only pay the most, but pay at the highest rate. It does not have to be a punitive rate: just a fair one.

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