1 Against(?) 26

So if you had to make a bet and your odds of winning were one in 26 what would you do?  If you had to arm wrestle 26 people combined against you would you feel confident you’d win?  Say you’re walking down the alley after a movie by yourself and 26 people came up against you to beat you up would you feel confident in your ability to defend yourself and that you would actually win?  Well…instead of using 1 against 26, switch it out for the U.S. Military versus the next 26 countries in military spending.

This is a little known fact among the world and especially among Americans, but the U.S. military outspends the next 26 countries in military spending…COMBINED!!!!  I'm not pulling your leg.  Check it out.

 

In the words of Yahoo’s famous song/phrase.  YAAAHOOOoooOOOooooo!  That’s a lot of green amigos!  For a good example on green and grasping it woo buddy you ought to check this site out.  Since I'm discussing military stuff and just did a post on the war on terrorism check this link out.  http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/cost_of_war/cost_of_war.html

 

So the next 26 countries…many of them are allies.  If you found out your friend, neighbor, or family member bought not only enough…hmm…socks 

 or guns 

 or buses

or pencils

or swimming pools

 for themselves but just extra/beyond their actual needs what would you think?  Paranoid?  A freak?  Wasteful?  I mean really what would you think?

 

NOW.  We've got the fiscal cliff coming.

 

The cliff is simple really.  President Bush cut taxes.  Some of you remember getting checks in the mail from the government.  I remember my parents opening up their check in the kitchen one evening and it was $600 bucks or so if I remember correctly.  Well the tax cuts are set to expire. 

I've done a little research and in the United States the average paycheck is going to go down 20 bucks a check.  That is 80 bucks a month or 960 a year.  Just for my wife and I that is just under $2000 a year. 

At the same time they're going to raise taxes we also have obamacare to deal with which will make your paychecks just a little less since your premium is going to go up a little.  On top of that with last years debt ceiling fiasco they're going to cut government spending, which is good and bad depending on how you look at it.  You could look at it this way... http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/food_stamps/food_stamp_nation-SNAP.html or this way... http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_government_budget/us_govt_budget.html. 

 

Ultimately we make too little and spend too much.  Now immediately for my little world I understand losing out on $2000 bucks.  I also understand that the fiscal cliff will result in approximately $500 billion for the government and now for my ah-ha moment. 

 

Where could we get an extra $500 billion, not lose out on things we actually need or want, and not raise taxes????  Do you remember the first of this blog post 20 years ago?  I do.  We could cut military spending to the level of China, the next biggest spender and get the $500 billion w/o a tax increase.  AND...and and and we'd still have a pretty damn good military considering we're STILL spending  three times the amount we ought to if we do rough math and china has a billion people and the US has a third of that and yet we spend the same amount as China. 

 

Lightning vs Terrorism...Who wins???

Fun fact.  You’re more likely to die from a lightning strike

 

 

 

then from terrorism.

 

 

 

 

  Let that sink if for a second.  You’re more likely to die from a lightning strike then from terrorism.  Some people would say, “oh…that’s interesting”.  In light of spending during this ‘fiscal cliff’ season I’d like to ask this question.  If AMERICANS are more likely to die from lightning then from terrorism, by the way this is 5 MILLION times more likely, why aren’t we spending the type of money we have on terrorism to stop lightning deaths and prevent them?   

 

$1,391,247,700,196.00 

 

That is 1.3 TRILLION dollars, almost 1.4 trillion.  That is how much we’ve spent so far on the war on terror.  We’ve spent that much on preventing something that kills fewer Americans than lightning strikes.  Go figure. 

 

One question I’ve learned to ask recently and it is ancient roman cause I’m a badass and know how to speak ancient roman is…duh duh duhnnn Cui Bono? 

 

 

Who benefits?

 

Think about private contractors for military defense (Blackwater anyone???) and military production companies.  Not too mention the….OILLLLLL.  If you haven’t already watched Faranheit 9/11…you should.  If not to get the oil side of the story, but for the absolute corruptness/riggedness of the political process when bush jr. first got elected.  Anywho check it out yallllll.

Unions and grocery stores

Yesterday my coworker was talking about how union jobs are good. At first blow my
mind cringed thinking on how ‘great’ unions seem to be for the auto industry here in the
US, which reminds me of something else.  See end of this post.  Her husband works for a union in Kennecott Mine and she said that when they were at the grocery store that he said that cashier’s
shouldn’t encourage people to use the self-checkout in stores like they were cause then that means
they’ll be out of a job.

My logic went like this. Imagine you pay a cashier $10 bucks an hour. And you have
10 cashiers at all times of a store being open. Imagine a store is open 14 hours. That
is 1400 dollars spent per day to hire all the cashiers to check and bag your groceries for
you. Now imagine you open up two self check out lanes, but that that self check out lane
costs $3000 for the fancy touch screen and everything else needed for a regular check
out line like the scale, scanner, printer for your receipt, and the neat cash/coin dispensers
they have. That is $6000 for two. Now to hire a really experienced cashier that can
handle any problems on the two self check out lines you have to pay them $12 an hour
or a 20% increase from $10 an hour, but you don’t have to have two cashiers there and
so you technically save on labor $112 a day. To break even you need to have those two
checkout lanes not completely and utterly break down for…54 days, i.e. $6,000 divided
by the cost savings of having one worker at $12/hr per day versus two at $10/hr. Beyond
that you’re saving on labor costs and not only that. Your customers don’t have to wait
in line for a cashier that is new, smells, talks too much, gives you wrong change, forgets
your receipt, or whatever else you might hate about lines at the checkout stand.

I feel the following questions are then needed. Is the cashier that is getting paid $12 an hour sad
about that versus $10 an hour? Is the store sad that they’re saving money on the labor
side of things in less than 2 months? Is the store sad that they now have two ways of
having their customer’s check out? Is the store sad that they can now invest that money
into other cost saving features in the store? Is the customer sad they’re missing out on
the problems previously described? Is the customer sad that they have to pay LOWER
prices cause now the store doesn’t have to charge as much because they hired additional
workers it doesn’t need? The answers to all these questions are the same: of course not!

With the election it seems Obama won Michigan and much of Ohio because of the auto
bailouts, which gasp…has tons of union workers who have a scarcity mentality and can’t
connect the fact that getting rid of unions would be a good thing as demonstrated by the
above example.