Budget sacred cows - the military is overpaid

Public employees are taking a bloody beating financilly now. Pensions are getting hit the worst. Employee insurance contributions are skyrocketing. Bureaucarcies are instituting private sector work rules and granting powers to outside private industry consultants to clean up the corruption in government.

The numbers are insane really (check the link). Somebody said cut by 2/3, but it almost looks like it could be cut by 5/6. I mean Germany and the UK seem like pretty safe countries and look at their military spending.

Cutting 500 billion looks good in theory, but the military spending has gone to such stupid amounts that this is something that could take up to 100 years to fix. But I guess now would be a good time to start. Why increase the debt ceiling?

abbas wrote:

crazy person wrote:

Son, the cost of freedom is priceless. Where would this country be if we never stopped the evil Iraqi empire? Or stopped the Libyan leader from massacring his own people (but let Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia do whatever they pleased.)

It's people like you that undermine the democracy of this country and place doubts in the minds of the young men and women protecting our country. Shame on you. Shame. On. You.

our country would be in the exact same place, none of those countries placed an actual risk on our country.the military is full of your high school dropouts, scrubs, and failures in life that couldn't make it in the real world so they let the government run their life. they arent heroes, theyre just doing their job to get paid

Dude your right on..but thats us! Many kids my HS worked their butts off for years. Took Calc ab& bc Organ Chem. Bio, Physics etc...They got into great schools...but me and my dudes just ripped shit off, damaged the whole school never studied. So I joined the Army! I'm a freakin HERO! All we do over here is try not to get dinged and wait to get out and cry post t. stress. We are all in here to get everything we can. What else can I do. We just worry that the Liberals will stop the wars to spend all money on, gays, minorities, all the boo hoo civil rights crap in this country. We got to keep our hero status you know!

Budget sacred cows - the military contractors are overpaid

Slight change-- but I think that this is now correct.

Retirerment with good pension after 20 years !!

try retireing on a army pension

you can get out with a pension you can't retire

quote: It is a waste to see someone 40 yrs old and retired with a good pension from the USA. Its a bizarre system

ncos gets about 38% after 20 years

you got kids to feed

more likely child support

jammy go

I expect you to head down to recruiting to get on the gravy train

This! Helicopter pilots can make some pretty sweet money. 28 days on at $10,000 per day and then 5 months off. 2 year contract. A cool million. Granted, it's search & rescue operation and probably has a pretty high mortality rate.

4runner wrote:

Budget sacred cows - the military contractors are overpaid

Slight change-- but I think that this is now correct.

1. You

Agreed. You can't be an idiot and last long in the military.

In today's Army....

1. You can not get into OCS without a degree. Not going to happen. They changed the rules. You MUST have a degree...not just college credits. I think you used to be able to get in with 90 credits.

2. You are NOT going to get promoted or are going to have a hell of a time getting promoted above Staff Sgt (E6) without a degree.

As soon as you get in, even as an E1, they are pushing you to do correspondance courses and/or get college credits through online degree programs.

All of the successful E7s and above I know either have multiple degrees or are working on their 2nd degree. Yes, the are typically online degree programs but it is what it is. Knowledge is knowledge.

Everything I learned in college I could have learned in one month through self-study! I've done a one month course in the army (Tech Escort) that would likely have been a semester long college course! The army knows how to cram as much information as possible into as little time as possible and into as many powerpoint slides as possible!!!

Hooah!

Alan

Yeah lets get rid of an efficient medial system that has high ratings for quality of care and patient statisfaction and replace it with something that costs 20-30% more. Guess you didn't learn anything from the medicare advantage experiment.It is fine to say cut pensions. In the end you will have to pay more in salary. It will work out the same in the end.

Meg Whitman wrote:

Privatize the VA Hospitals and cemeteries.

Eliminate the VA.

End taxpayer funded retirements for new Pentagon militants and civiians.

Permanently close US militant, CIA, weapons dumps, civilian settlements, and occupation zones, in Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Germany, Turkey, Japan, Spain, England, Korea, etc.

That's my plan. What's yours ?

Pensions are not part of the DOD budget. Veterans pensions (54 billion) and Veterans Affairs (87 billion) are not part of the DOD budget. I assume this is to make it harder to figure out what we spend on defense. Given no one has asked for more than about 1 trillion in defense cuts, 540 billion would be a pretty big dent.

M.C. Confusing wrote:

lol Veterans pensions are 54 billion a year. Out of the almost 690 billion in the DOD budget. That wouldn't even put a dent in the 4 Trillion they need to cut.

enough with the sacrifice and cost of freedom. this is exactly the retoric that gets the pay raises but the truth is more kids have died from gun violence in the cty of chicago than coallition forces deths in afghanistan in 2012. our security comes from our engineers and scientists not our soldiers. if there werent so many folks willing to blow people up at the whim of currupt politicians there wouldnt be so many wars.

yes, US military personnel, with salaries, housing, benefits, retirement, currupt disability pay and lavicious jobs with defence contractors are overpaid in every sense

obviously the US military knows little about ,military history, economics, political science or current events

why does US have to spend more than next 17 countries to defend itself? simply part of the corrupt military industrial complex fearing off fears and ignorant patriotism of uneducated populace.

tony TT wrote:

obviously the US military knows little about ,military history, economics, political science or current events

why does US have to spend more than next 17 countries to defend itself? simply part of the corrupt military industrial complex fearing off fears and ignorant patriotism of uneducated populace.

Can't argue with you on that,

To everyone on this thread talking about military personnel being overpaid: Go to Afghanistan for 6 months, leaving your wife/husband and kids at home, and then talk about how salaries should be cut. Remember, these soldiers are sacrificing themselves for you. They sacrifice even if they come home safely. Try living one day with this reality and see if your opinion changes.

Once again blaming the worker for the waste. The military budget is overblown, but the expenses on the person are needed. What isn't needed are no big contracts and so called 20,000 dollar toilets at the pentagon to cover up corruption and waste.

bright idea wrote:

To everyone on this thread talking about military personnel being overpaid: Go to Afghanistan for 6 months, leaving your wife/husband and kids at home, and then talk about how salaries should be cut. Remember, these soldiers are sacrificing themselves for you. They sacrifice even if they come home safely. Try living one day with this reality and see if your opinion changes.

And whose decision was it to invade Afghanistan (an excuse to then invade Iraq)? All this can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush and his military contractors.

Selective bombing would have been more effective and 1/100th the cost. As always, follow the $$$$ trail.

Why wasn't Bush campaigning in the 2010 & 2012 elections?

He is in hiding - a recluse.

salary sucks & your boss can order you into harm's way at any time. Living conditions overseas can be quite spartan.

Oh - and you run a very real risk of being maimed or killed.

Back home, assclowns who couldn't carry ytour jock question your worth..

Pathetic that you choose to disrespect service members making $20k, but apaprantly have little problem with over fed, under worked bureaucrats making an average of $100k+ and retiring with huge pensions.

You're a d-bag.

bright idea wrote:

To everyone on this thread talking about military personnel being overpaid: Go to Afghanistan for 6 months, leaving your wife/husband and kids at home, and then talk about how salaries should be cut. Remember, these soldiers are sacrificing themselves for you. They sacrifice even if they come home safely. Try living one day with this reality and see if your opinion changes.

Sorry Yanks, as we found, when money drains from a nation, power also drains.

A nation that loses control of its finances, loses control of its destiny.

We ran the world for a century, even occupied a quarter of the world’s surface and its peoples, because we were also the richest country in the world.

It all fell apart when we could no longer economically afford the huge cost.

The US ‘defence’ budget is 41% of the total amount the WHOLE world spends on arms.

This compared to the 8.2% the Chinese spend and the 4.1% the Russians spend.

This in a country that has a national debt of over $16 trillion and has to borrow over $1 trillion every year, just to stay afloat.

Ever heard of the Potemkin Villages?

A lot of the interest on your national debt actually goes to pay for the Chinese Red Army, as they hold so much US debt.

When was the last time the USA was actually under threat from any nation in the world that would justify such a huge military budget?

The catch-22 situation with such a huge military machine, is one is irresistibly tempted to use it in frivolous enterprises, against the vital interests of the people of the USA - as with Iraq and Afghanistan.

And at the same time, unbelievably, avert your eyes for years and years to the bona fide threat to your society - from south of your own border.

50M "americans" are on food stamps and we're doling out subsidized housing & obamaphones to freeloading thugs, but we need to cut military pay/benefits?

I agree there are military cuts to be made, but why cut a guy's $20k salary? Why not close a few dozen (or a few hundred) overseas bases? Why are we paying to defend Euro-punk losers and Asian ingrates? We need to keep some key bases that would help us strategically in a war vs. China or Russia, but there's no point in having bases all over Europe.

Why do we have an embassy compound in Bagdhad that's larger, more opulent & more expensive to maintain than the Vatican?