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Obama's Evolving Stance On NASA
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Aug 18, 2008 08:49 AM
mknewman writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting a change in Obama's stance on NASA, saying his position on space exploration continued to evolve Sunday as the Illinois Democrat endorsed a congressional plan to add $2 billion to NASA's budget and agreed to back at least one more space shuttle mission."
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Science: Obama's Impending NASA Decisions 405 comments
eldavojohn writes "From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?"
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Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Insightful)
If you adjust for inflation, NASA's budget is about half [wikipedia.org] of what it was during the space race years in the 60's. You can't go to Mars on that. You probably can't even go back to the moon on that. And a paltry $2 billion isn't going to make much of a difference.
Obama is no more serious about NASA's lofty aspirations that Bush or Clinton. It's just political pandering for Florida. And I am tired of hearing promises from politicians that they know damn well they can never deliver on.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
However... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Obama is no more serious about NASA's lofty aspirations that Bush or Clinton. It's just political pandering for Florida. And I am tired of hearing promises from politicians that they know damn well they can never deliver on."
Usually, I'd agree with that, however, I think you're ignoring the "new cold war" aspect here. China is developing an aggressive space program, and if they say they're going to the moon, they mean it.
Frankly, I think McCain is a little more inclined to beef up NASA precisely because of that aspect, and Obama will say damn near anything to win Florida. But it's also possible that he's reconsidered his positions on space because if he becomes President, he knows people aren't going to let him slide on the space race.
Parent
Re:However... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the recent renewal of "old cold war" tensions.
One thing commonly pointed to by politicians in reducing spending on NASA is the current cooperation with other countries. If Russian turns into a rival again, then I suspect space rivalry will again follow. Nothing like a little nationalism to shake the purse strings.
Parent
Re:Russia/USA is not a real problem. Yet. (Score:5, Funny)
> Why are we (US) so up in arms over Russia messing with Georgia?
We here in the US do _not tolerate_ a nation which invades and occupies another sovereign nation.
Parent
Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:4, Insightful)
Of curse he is. The candidates are going to say whatever they have to and then do whatever they want when in office.
I'm voting Libertarian when I can and then voting against the incumbent - regardless of what party he belongs to. We need term limits in Congress. If we got rid of this career politician horseshit, we'd have MUCH better representation in Washington.
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Funny)
I'm voting Libertarian when I can and then voting against the incumbent - regardless of what party he belongs to.
If you vote Libertarian, aren't you already voting against the incumbent?
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Insightful)
Some will say that by voting Libertarian he is in fact helping the incumbent. At least this is what the other party will always whine about.
Personally I think this is silly. Look at the last presidential election:
There is nothing wrong with Ralph Nader or anyone else running as a third party. The reason the democrats didn't win the last presidential election wasn't because of Ralph Nader but because they failed to appeal to the people who voted for Ralph Nader. Of course, it's always easier to blame someone else for their shortcomings...
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Insightful)
We need term limits in Congress.
As a voter you have every right to vote against incumbents if you wish. Making term limits a law simply covers up for the fact that most voters don't pay attention. Forcing them to choose someone new doesn't really address that. Making them have to suffer with the person they put in office until the next election does teach a lesson that sometimes gets learned. Term limits will require a constitutional amendment and I suppose I don't have to lecture you on the odds of that happening (not good, in case you don't know).
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Insightful)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
That's a nice lyric from The Who but there are actual real differences between Obama & Bush. He seems to list specifics of a planned removal [barackobama.com] from Iraq:
Barack Obama believes we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 â" more than 7 years after the war began.
I think what's lacking when it comes to candidates is there's no accountability. I like to see goals listed out that are achievable, realistic & measurable. But when they are elected and these goals melt away or the politician is so deluded the think they're achieving these goals, I just cringe.
... but what can I do but vote for the candidate that at least (for now) is saying what I want my Commander in Chief to say?
It happens to every politician every election for every position. You're right in saying that everyone's tired of failed promises. But there are some larger issues that Obama has (at least for now) claimed definite goals for. I'm not an Obama supporter but I can find his plans for removal from Iraq for better or for worse.
If Obama can't deliver $2 billion to NASA, I'll be pissed. This may be political pandering (in fact, I'll guarantee it is) but I really don't care. I would like to see more money devoted to NASA and our progress to human proliferation through space.
The odds are high that if elected he'll never follow his Iraq plans or he'll alter them or claim there's new data that makes it impossible
Parent
Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Interesting)
HA! Upwards of $464 BILLION in debt is just fine for Bushie, but 2 BIL for funding for NASA, that's crossing the line. Thanks for the laugh early on monday morning.
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Iraq vs. Going to the moon. (Score:4, Insightful)
As I recall last time I did some Googling, for what we have spent on Iraq so far we could have had something like 16 Apollo programs in today's dollars.
Steve
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather take a candidate that'll tell me the honest truth, even if it isn't popular.
Ron Paul lost. Badly.
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Re:Let's end the ruse (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, though, how this would be done.
Remember that private business' goal is maximum profit for minimum input. If you rely on private business for a space race, as odd as it may sound, we'd get a space system akin to what the Communist system was like. Shortsighted, concentrating on immediate goals and without any value for later expeditions. And worst of all, dangerous as hell.
The Soviet Union lost the space race early on, long before Apollo. It was lost due to a lot of reasons, but one of them was the pressure for quick achivements. First man in space, first spacewalk, first triple crew craft... The key for these quick 'n dirty successes was reuse of designs that were never meant to be used as they actually were used. Voskod was designed as a two person craft. Actually, it wasn't really designed at all, it was a refitted Vostok capsule. And for the three person flight, they crammed in some sort of auxiliary seat.
The whole thing was a damn death trap. It's a miracle that nothing bad happened. Actually, Leonov's spacewalk was a near fatality. If you believe in luck being quantifyable, the Russians used their whole allotment of luck in space for those two flights.
I would expect the same from a "private" space race fueled by some sort of prize for the winner. They'd slap together something that can barely accomplish what is required but nothing else, hire some poor idiot for half a million bucks (after all, they only gotta pay if he succeeds, so it's well within the profit margin), strap him onto the flying coffin and liftoff!
Parent
11-12% Increase (Score:5, Insightful)
By comparison, the DoD budget was $439.3 billion in 2007 [wikipedia.org] but my gripe with U.S. fiscal spending is probably a bit off topic here.
Evolution vs. pandering? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is interesting to me how when one politician changes his stance due to recognition of the will of the people, he is vilified as a panderer or "flip-flopper." Yet it is called evolutionary when the other does the same thing.
Could we not just as easily say that both are listening to the people who would put them in office? Or at least letting us think they are listening to us.
Evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
Is Obama's stance really evolving? I think it's clear that his policy on NASA is a result of intelligent design.
Better this than unfunded mandates. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because it's much better to tell people we're going to go to Mars, and then not give them sufficient money to do so, resulting in other programs getting cut. Even John Glenn referred to Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" as an unfunded mandate [space.com].
And it's not like this is the only unfunded mandate shoved down NASA's throat -- how much is HSPD-12 costing all of the agencies?
Disclaimer : I've been a contractor at NASA, and one of my projects lost their funding for more than year because of the Mars program ... by the time we got funding again, we couldn't get the team back together, because they had been assigned to other projects.
Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
He changed his mind! It's clearly pandering of the worst sort!
I really wish we could get rid of this ridiculous focus on changing views. Emerson summed it up nicely, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." In this case, it would have been foolish of Obama to be consistent -- he was wrong. He was persuaded otherwise. Is this somehow a bad thing, a moral failure? Yeah, it was advantageous of him to come to this conclusion, but it's almost always advantageous to change from a wrong conclusion to a correct one.
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about changing your mind. It's about evaluating why someone held their previous position.
Did they simply have bad information?
Have they suddenly had a fundamental philosophical change that alters how you should look at their entire world view, and every policy pronouncement of theirs that is built on that platform?
Is their value system still only half baked, and this is just a sign of them slowly getting their act together?
Remember, Obama is the guy that just the other night (in that quasi-debate-format thing he attended with McCain in Colorado) who, when asked about when "human" life begins in the womb (as it relates, of course, to the abortion issue) said "that's above my pay grade." Wow. Never mind WHERE you are on that issue, isn't that - right there - THE most fundamental thing you have to wrestle with
Why wonder about his real thoughts on space/science when one of the signature hot-button science/philosphy issues of modern times seems to be beyond his much-lauded intellect and communications skills to talk about? That was a VERY telling moment, if you ask me.
Parent
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
The "when does life begin" question was clearly intended to give the assembled crowd (all rabidly pro-life evangelicals) a canned applause line for McCain and an uncomfortable moment for Obama. Obama fumbled with it because he couldn't just come out and say he was pro-choice in a crowd full of pro-lifers that he was attempting to pander to, and he couldn't have said "life begins at conception" like McCain did because he would alienate his base. Of course, McCain's response, although beloved by the "moral majority" types, is also wrought with potential craziness (is a miscarriage neglicent homicide?).
"Above my pay grade" is a pretty silly response for someone running for the highest office in the land (although I think he was probably trying to say that only God can make that determination, rather than saying some higher Earthly official could do so), but it's difficult to say what a good answer would have been in that particular circumstance.
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Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a little honesty, instead of Clintonian slipperyness and weasle-wording it? How about, "There's no point trying to pin down a day on the calender when the nervous system of a fetus is not, and then - an hour later - is sophisticated and functional enough that we'd all call it a baby human. But likewise, I'm very comfortable saying that everyone in this room has swatted a mosquito with a nervous system vastly more advanced than that of the dozen cells in an early embryo. This issue isn't about pinning down a date, it's about erring widely on one side or the other of a long period of time, and using reason." Well, perhaps a little more soft-sell than that... but isn't that supposed to be - in the absence of any other real experience - his actual main selling point?
Parent
How about a vision for space (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the article, it really just comes across as Obama trying to push the shuttle layoffs to the right so they don't take place during his first term in office.
It's unfortunate, but I would really like to see him and McCain come up with a strong vision for space to spur international and private sector investments with a corresponding push in maths, sciences and engineering.
As trite as they may be, I could get excited about a candidate that pushed:
Note that I don't say "NASA". I think NASA has a very important role to play in the development of space technology but at some point they have to be out of the business of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) operations.
myke
ROI (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the return the US gets for its NASA spending is greatly under calculated. The last space race caused the US to focus on creating engineers and scientists through education. Look around you for the benefits.
Today I sometimes feel we are raising generations of people who will order a "Bud" because they can't read or pronounce Budweiser.
What pisses me off about NASA and welfare. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's perfectly acceptable to waste billions of dollars paying uneducated dolts to sit around and do nothing but create more useless babies.
But it's not acceptable to pay smart eggy headed scientists a whole lot less, people who have to be really fracking smart to actually work and do sciencey stuff using their brains and finding out stuff about the universe and world we live in.
Plus the scientists don't usually have a mess off leech-like children, if a NASA engineer does mate it is usually one child or two, which is below replacement levels. Plus their children are usually made to go to school and actually do somethign with their lives because the smart eggy headed scientist types are usually better at raising children that their child crapping counterparts.
I say, End all welfare programs and shovel all that money to NASA, we may have to worry about not having enough people, but by golly we will damned well have our permanent base on the moon, so when all of the breeding stock left on earth blow themselves up over their little sky god we can at least re-colonize the earth, or at least still preserve the best of humanity.
In Defense of Obama... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a staunch Republican, but, I think trying to characterize his policy shifts as a sort of a flip flopper is rather inconsistent with what he's trying to do. Obama is just a left wing pol trying to guide his opinion about how government should be run in response to an evolving set of facts on the ground and I really don't have a problem with him changing his mind as long as he stays consistent with his core beliefs of being a hardcore liberal.
Where Kerry had a problem was that he made a political career out of being a total pacifist, lead anti-war protests across the USA and was instrumental in ending the USA's commitment to Viet Nam, but then he turned around and voted for the Invasion of Iraq in 2002 to get pick up a few votes and then ran not as a Dove but as a Wartime leader during the Democratic convention. That's a huge flip flop.
But what Obama is doing is nothing of the sort. He might, ideally, like, to get rid of NASA because he'd rather spend the money on something else... a lot of Dems feel that way. Walter Mondale famously tried to gut the Apollo moon landings because he wanted bread and butter for the poor. So, its not a big flip flop for Obama to shift on NASA back and forth because the whole left wing has been doing it for a long time.
Re:Evolving? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how not being able to change your mind or agree with someone else's proposal is now a thing of weakness in a politician.
The thing I like about Obama is that he pushes for compromise, builds consensus, and isn't just out to fuck over the other party.
But no, no, the fact that he is open to funding something that wasn't a priority for him originally, is this HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM because OMFG HE CHANGED HIS MIND~!@!@$#~!
Fucking zombies.
Parent
Re:Evolving? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea what facts/information he had before his decision, and what facts/information he has now. Unless you're inside Obama's head, your presumption that he's pandering is just that, a presumption, and a partisan one at that.
J. H. Christ. This is almost as bad as the whole "if you don't support Obama, you must be racist" deal. Almost.
The fact of the matter is, Obama has in recent weeks has completely 180'ed his position on several key issues. There has been no indication of why he changed his position on the issues. For someone who basically won the nomination based on his oratory skills, don't you think he should at the very least be able to articulate what changed in the course of a week weeks- to months?
And the fact that people who call him out on such things are either labelled partisan or bigoted is outrageous.
Parent
Re:Here' an Idea (Score:5, Informative)
Let's Put our Astronauts in Shuttles that don't use fuel and go green!
The exhaust of the main engines of the space shuttle is water.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I see a lot of this around. I don't understand how people can be so dumb as to think that Democrats are the heavy spenders. The Republicans have, ever since Reagan, been trying to outdo each other by lowering tax but raising spending. See here [businessweek.com] for a discussion. It is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are the big spenders. And if you believe that you can run a deficit for decades without harming anything, then you're a fool. And McCain has admitted that the economy isn't his cup of tea, as evidenced by his proposed cuts to the fuel tax. At least Obama knew enough economics to oppose that.
Given the current crisis, I'd vote for Obama on that alone. What economic knowledge he's demonstrated makes him far more qualified a candidate than McCain or Clinton, despite some of his other failings.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama claims that he will eliminate our dependence on middle-east oil in 10 years. Anyone who believes that is deluding themselves. At least McCain is willing to admit it's a weakness, rather than pretend he knows better.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Informative)
OPEC supplies 53.8% of our oil imports (a little over 5.25 million barrels per day out of a little over 20 million barrels per day used).
The rest of our imports (the other 5 or so million barrels per day) come from countries like Mexico and Canada.
If people bothered to look up the numbers instead of just ASSUMING every damn thing, they would see that it isn't that difficult to fathom that in 10 years, if we cared to try, we could replace a QUARTER (not the 100% naysayers seem to want to believe) of our Oil with alternatives.
Such as T. Boone Pickens plan which ould eventually replace 38% of current oil consumption with Natural Gas.
That would be more than enough to NEVER have to buy another barrel of Oil from OPEC.
OPEC being the countries that, generally, may not have our best interests at heart.
Obama's plan is a hell of a lot better than McCain's that basically wants to drill off shore to MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER, but won't actually help things at all (at most, 200,000 barrels a day, versus replacing 5 MILLION BARRELS a day with Obama.)
People, it's simple math.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/us-imports-of-o.html [greencarcongress.com]
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Obama replacing 5 million barrels a day tomorrow? Tuneups and inflating tires? McCain has made it pretty clear he is for all alternative fuel source AND drilling. With the inelastic nature of oil, any increase in the supply will lower prices and drastically. T Boone Pickens by the way is not a green guy, he is just for reducing the burden of foreign oil. He is also for off shore drilling, shale production and ANWR drilling. There is no reason we can't do everything. If we started drilling tomorrow there will be some online in 2-3 years, the democratic talking point is 10 years+ but that would be for all 100%. I am all for getting off oil but the simple fact is that it cannot happen overnight, but in the interim, there is no reason to be sending so much money out of this country.
Again, you make fun of simple things like Tuneups and properly inflating tires BEFORE ACTUALLY READING A DAMN THING ABOUT IT.
While it wouldn't maybe help the INDIVIDUAL very much, the ENTIRE COUNTRY would benefit a decent amount.
In fact, if the ENTIRE COUNTRY did these LITTLE things, we could WITHOUT A DOUBT save the same amount of Oil McCain's 'Day Dream' of offshore drilling MIGHT produce 10 YEARS from now.
I'm afraid the same holds true for ANWR. I'm not super concerned about the envirnment up there because I don't think the handful of wells that would be drilled would hurt anything, BUT it wouldn't help us either.
It would certainly help the Oil Companies who could pull the oil out of the ground for PENNIES and sell it for top dollar.
For those who don't know, Oil is priced based on GLOBAL markets, not production cost. SO drilling in the Continental United States is a sweet proposition for Oil Companies because they can pull it out of the ground for nothing but the production costs, BUT CHARGE LIKE THEY BOUGHT IT OVERSEAS.
As long as a SINGLE barrel of oil comes from outside the United States, ALL OIL PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES WILL COST PRETTY MUCH THE SAME regardless of the production costs.
Speculators have driven the price up some, but not nearly as much as people blame on them. Besides, speculation has its purpose. Speculation is why you can lock in a price for heating oil NOW, and KNOW FOR CERTAINTY what you will be paying this winter.
This goes the same for McCain's ludicrous 'Gas Tax Holiday'. If you remove the Federal Gas tax (which is less than 25Â for gasoline), then gasoline distributors will simply raise their prices by the EXACT amount removed. There is nothing in the law to prevent this, accept a few, older, arcane price fixing rules that would be IMPOSSIBLE to prove.
All John McCain would have done (if the Democratic Congress hadn't stopped him) is robbed the Highway Department of revenue needed to maintain the countries road system.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26222711/ [msn.com]
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, if the ENTIRE COUNTRY did these LITTLE things, we could WITHOUT A DOUBT save the same amount of Oil McCain's 'Day Dream' of offshore drilling MIGHT produce 10 YEARS from now.
Please provide STATISTICS to prove your POSITION.
http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/maintain.shtml [fueleconomy.gov]
Again, it's simple math.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Obama replacing 5 million barrels a day tomorrow? Tuneups and inflating tires? McCain has made it pretty clear he is for all alternative fuel source AND drilling.
So, essentially what you're saying is that we should ignore actions that will actually have the effect of lowering demand by increasing fuel efficiency, and that can be done now by individuals, and instead we should go with the stupid fucking dittohead plan of offshore drilling, which has greater long term costs than gains, and has no short term gains at all?
Yes, lets drill drill drill. No, it won't do anything to help anyone. Sure, the resulting environmental damage will wreak havoc on all kinds of tourism and other important industries, but in the long term it will also have a statistically insignificant effect on oil prices!
I mean, what the fuck? How can you be so blindly, happily, willfully fucking ignorant? How can you simply bend over and let an elephant fuck you in the ass, screaming "Thank you" the whole time?
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, you'd think they would already be doing that if it would make them money.
But would it make them money? If the price of oil stays high due to a perceived lack of supply, that makes them more money per barrel, which means more profit. It makes sense for them to exhaust oil reserves in the middle east first, because these are the most dangerous to own due to the political climate in the area. How many oil fields were burned in the last Golf War? The price of oil is likely to go up in the long term, due to it being a finite resource, and keeping a big supply within the area of the greatest demand makes good long-term economic sense. No one is likely to attack the USA to take their oil, while the same can not be said for smaller countries (increasingly so when Russia and China start to get low on oil). Keeping oil in the ground in the USA looks like a good long-term investment. Why drill it now, when yo can drill it for the same cost but sell it for twice as much in a few years?
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
As a commodity becomes increasingly scare, you'd expect to see increasingly complicated systems used to effectively distribute the last of it. The increase in speculation is an effect, not a cause, of our current oil crisis.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't just wish away regulations that are impairing. It requires both legislative and executive power to do so, and the chances are that environmental lobbyists will oppose removing the regulations that make it pointless to drill on these lands.
What's kind of silly is that we look at the problem as a dependence on oil. This isn't the real issue. America has a dependence on hydrocarbons, once you get past that perception hurdle, you'll realize how easy it would be to significantly reduce our dependence on oil. There is one hydrocarbon that America has extremely huge reserves of, that's cheap, and isn't too problematic to get to.
Coal.
Did you know that South America has a gallon of gas priced under $1 USD? They're not losing money on it, and it's not subsidized. How are they doing it? Simple, they're turning coal into oil products. South Africa also buys most of their coal from the US. How long do you think it would take to get a couple coal gasification plants?
Think about it.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
And McCain has admitted that the economy isn't his cup of tea, as evidenced by his proposed cuts to the fuel tax. At least Obama knew enough economics to oppose that.
Given the current crisis, I'd vote for Obama on that alone. What economic knowledge he's demonstrated makes him far more qualified a candidate than McCain or Clinton, despite some of his other failings.
Obama has demonstrated nothing. I agree with Obama's decision not to support a gas tax holiday, but Obama's flip-flop stance on releasing the Strategic Reserve to combat high gas prices proves that he's probably even stupider than the average politician. And that he proposed this strategy a mere month after announcing that he wouldn't, while criticizing McCain for his reversal after 8 years when the price of gas has increased by 6x, shows that he's the consummate politician-- and that's certainly no compliment.
The whole point of the Strategic Reserve is to be used for emergencies. Obama wants to withdraw light crude from the reserve and then refill it with heavy crude. This presupposes a drop in gas prices, which certainly is no guarantee. It also undermines one of the reasons why the reserve is important; say, a hurricane wiping out refineries. Replacing light crude with heavy crude which requires MORE refining runs counter to logic.
I'd have wished that Obama was smarter and opposed the gas tax holiday for sane reasons. Now, it just seems like he was trying to differentiate himself from Clinton and McCain.
Parent
Taxing the rich more (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless, it's been shown [washingtonpost.com] that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do.
A flat tax rate would tax the rich more than the poor (same percent of a higher income is more). Our system with a higher tax rate definitely taxes the rich more than the poor.
At what point does it stop being obvious that you need to take even more money from rich people and even less from poor people? When your tax rates get so high you're starting to cause your most productive workers to leave the country?
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Re:Taxing the rich more (Score:5, Informative)
When your tax rates get so high you're starting to cause your most productive workers to leave the country?
That's a red herring and you know it. The fact is, the absolute tax rate matters not a whit. What matters is America's relative tax rate as compared with the rest of the industrialized world. And, as far as I can tell, America still has the lowest overall tax rates in the West.
If I'm a worker, and I think America's tax rates are too much, where am I going to emigrate to?
Parent
Re:Taxing the rich more (Score:5, Informative)
The argument is that a wealthy person can afford to pay a greater share, since their basic needs can be met with a much smaller slice of their income than a poor person.
If a person makes 100,000 dollars a year, and is taxed at a rate of 25%, then they still have 75,000 dollars to support their lifestyle, whereas a person making 10,000 dollars would have only 7,500 dollars left if taxed at the same rate.
In short, it's a much bigger deal when you have less money. Every bit is important.
The argument isn't that rich people use more or less services, but that the burden should be shared equally, and a flat tax puts a heavier weight on people who make less.
There is also the argument that it is better to tax the poor less, because that is more efficient than having to provide government programs to support them...It's the same argument that we use for making people who don't have children pay taxes to support public schools. Even though they're getting no direct benefit from supporting the schools, they're reaping indirect benefits from a more educated population.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the tax rate is less than 100% on the additional income, there is still incentive to earn more. Furthermore, if you subscribe to the school of thought that motivation to earn is relative rather than absolute, then this loss of incentive may be even smaller than is commonly thought.
The progressive tax system is necessary regardless of the effect it has on motivation, but because there are social costs that has to be paid. Costs which can not and are not internalized by market forces. It is only natural for us to require those that enjoy the fruits of our society more to contribute correspondingly more to it.
Even a flat income tax system that has a cut-off point (to not tax low earners) is progressive (a two-rate progressive tax).
Furthermore, welfare systems have problems with abuse, as with any other benefit system. Most systems now have time-limits on people qualified to work claiming benefits or social insurance. It doesn't mean that increasing the tax on the top 1% of the earners in the population will lead to more people on welfare. In fact, it argues the opposite in that we need to distribute the tax load more evenly and have other methods of motivating people to work and to improve productivity, including things such as modifying the way we distribute benefits.
Parent
Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting to Social Security, you tell me ONE THING wrong with making sure people have something when they retire. I'm so sick of these 20 YEAR OLDS bitching because they are asked to contribute a fingernail slice of their income to help those who came before them.
Ok. I'm 30 something. Here's my ONE THING. I will probably never see a dollar of it myself. The system is intended to work for me when I need it. That's the "security" part of it. But now, the way it's headed, I'm really only seeing the "social" part of it. If they continue to fuck it up and leave it business as usual, I'll have paid a lifetime into a system that won't pay me a dime back. That's the problem. Social Security isn't supposed to be about duty and responsibility, it was supposed to be about insurance for the future.
You'd be pretty sour if you knew you paid car insurance all your life without an accident, and when you finally did have an accident, there'd be nothing for you.
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll worry about myself - I can invest my money better than the government can - but why should I help you retire?
I'm so sick of these 20 YEAR OLDS bitching because they are asked to contribute a fingernail slice of their income to help those who came before them.
Well, I was 20 well over 10 years ago and let me tell you - once you add ss with medicare, you're at 15.3%. You consider that to be a fingernail slice? You think it should be 20%? 25%? I for one would gladly give up every penny i've put in just to be able to get out.
That is as selfish an snobbish as those (not that I'm accusing you of this, BTW) who scream they'd go to Canada before being Drafted.
If we ever have to draft that just means it isn't worth fighting for - look at WWII - many people gladly joined because it was a cause worth fighting for.
NO ONE has any sense of DUTY or RESPONSIBILITY now days.
Damn right - if they were responsible we wouldn't need Social Security!
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I work for my Father (my parents are divorced). He owns a Publishing company, who itself owns seven Newspapers.
Trust me when I say I do pretty well for myself.
However, I still do not WASTE money on garbage, as a lot of people who make a lot less do.
You can make fun of the fact that I live at home all you want, it doesn't change the fact that I pocket more cash than most people I know who make more than I do.
I simply didn't see the need to tie myself up with a house/apartment rent BILL when I didn't have too.
It has been my experience that the people who bitch most about bills are the ones who INCUR the most Bills.
You cut off luxuries (yes, they are luxuries, not necessities) of Cable/Satellite, DSL/Cable and then come talk to me about how much of a burden taxes are.
SO, your defense for being called out is to define yourself as a rich kid living at home.
Sorry man, you fail.
Maybe if you realized you were pushing your responsibilities off to your Dad you would get it. Yeah sure , YOU'RE not paying for the stuff you say other people waste their money on - your Daddy is.
Bragging that you're pocketing more cash than people who choose not to suck off their parents longer than they have to isn't really that impressive. You seem to have a lot to say about how well you are doing and how we should all follow your lead. The reality is your lead is actually copping out and pushing those responsibilities off to another person.
Yeah, that's enlightened.
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that you are posting on Slashdot, you're probably rather technically oriented and rather secure financially. Consider those less fortunate than yourself: people who grew up without an education, or without ever having seen a computer. Consider the people who work at Tim Hortons sixteen hours a day, go home, watch some hockey and sleep.
Sure, you might argue that they're not contributing to society. But would you not be in the same position if not for some accident of fate? Do these people deserve to live any less than you do? Don't they deserve to experience life just as much as you do? It's not as if they can't afford medical care through any fault of their own. (And even if they have made mistakes: well, who here hasn't a made a mistake that might have ruined his life?)
What you're advocating is Social Darwinism. That's a consistent, but empty strategy that ignores all human feeling and empathy. Sure, it makes sense, but it ignores what makes us human in the first place.
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Re:Obama Should Love NASA (Score:5, Informative)
He finds ways to justify all sorts of unconstitutional, unnecessary spending of the American tax payer's dollar (like his proposed $80B/year for international poverty), so why not NASA?
And how much has Bush spent on his initiatives for Africa, like AIDS reduction?
Fighting global poverty doesn't seem to be limited to Democratic Administrations and for that we can be thankful -- for all his other faults, GWB has actually done a few good things with his Africa policies.
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Re:I like Obama subjectively but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every couple of weeks the ideas change.
Citation needed. Other than his position on NASA, which changed months ago (this is only a minor evolution in his most recent position), I can't think of any specific examples to support your claim (not that they don't exist, I just can't think of any). Can you?
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