Sometimes I despair of you. This whole video is filled with factual errors. Government spending has risen in real dollars over the time period he indicates as defense spending has declined. His whole hypothesis is predicated on nonsense. He might as well claim that we have no moon base because Republicans are still keeping slaves, just like Lincoln did in 1860. I can't see the difference.
Now watch the video again and listen to his claims. It has no basis in reality at all. What is he talking about? He's either an idiot, ignorant of the facts or is deliberately lying. One thing's for sure. His audience has to be ignorant in order for him to get away with it. Perhaps that's the greatest tragedy of all.
None of this changes the fact that the McMansion argument is based on lies. I guess it wouldn't do to claim that entitlement spending had eliminated the moon bases.
KT - Wow! I'm impressed with the research you did.
I actually hadn't given the details as close scrutiny you had. I had mainly keyed in on the comment that the country had gone insane. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that its snarky. We can't blame everything on Reagan - just as he can take credit for everything that happened. But from the 80's on the public completely interest in science and space exploration. Priorities changed. They cared more about fantasy than reality. Remember the greed is good eighties. On top of that NASA fell apart because they lost their brain trust and swapped in inept management.
The nineties took us even further down the road with cyberpunk and virtual reality. Why should we care about real exploration, when we can immerse ourselves in a virtual world. When we were kids they thought TV was the brain killer, little did they know the power of computers and the net.
Thanks for being so nice in your reply. I can always count on you for that. I run off, shouting and waving my arms, and there's Kelly, calmly reasoning and offering a kind word. I don't know why you've put up with me all these years.
:-)
What hit me in that video was the total incongruity with facts.
Fact: Following the tax cuts (which even Clinton with a Democrat congress didn't repeal) the economy has grown substantially.
Fact: The government has been taking a larger and larger piece of this growing economy.
Fact: The government now has a larger slice of a larger pie.
Fact: Military spending as a function of the economy has shrunk almost every year for the past 20 or so.
Fact: Military spending gets a smaller piece of the bigger pie.
Hypothesis 1: The government doesn't get enough money and that's why we don't have a moon base.
Hypothesis 2: Military spending is taking money away from moon bases.
Huh? He's either an idiot or a liar. I lean towards the latter. Note that the Democratic presidential candidates are all singing from this very same hymnal.
As for NASA, I have to admit I don't understand the mechanisms at work here. I attended one conference at JPL and came away unimpressed. It looked like they were just dorking around, spending money on their own pet projects with no real direction. It was a communications conference and I could think of low cost, commercial solutions to all of the problems they were solving.
It may be that NASA's research community has become entrenched and is now simply pursuing research in areas that they want to research, sort of like the way tenured university math professors do. It also indicates, as you have said, a glaring weakness in NASA's management as they haven't forced their people to work on the right problems.
Lastly, my father was intimately involved in the space shuttle program, or rather, trying to kill it before it got started. NASA lied to Congress about its cost and thus killed the Air Force's satellite rocket programs and took their money. The shuttle has turned out to be far more expensive than they claimed and it could be that the shuttle has simply eaten them alive.
In the last 30 years, the worst presidents for NASA have been Carter and Clinton. The best two were Reagan and Bush I. I haven't found any data for W, but my bet is that he's spending just as wildly with NASA as he does everywhere else.
Having said that, I want to reassure you and help you put your brain back in your skull with one easy-to-repeat phrase that should help restore your balance.
7 comments:
Sometimes I despair of you. This whole video is filled with factual errors. Government spending has risen in real dollars over the time period he indicates as defense spending has declined. His whole hypothesis is predicated on nonsense. He might as well claim that we have no moon base because Republicans are still keeping slaves, just like Lincoln did in 1860. I can't see the difference.
This is the truth:
http://www.cato.org/research/fiscal_policy/facts/govt_spending.html
Now watch the video again and listen to his claims. It has no basis in reality at all. What is he talking about? He's either an idiot, ignorant of the facts or is deliberately lying. One thing's for sure. His audience has to be ignorant in order for him to get away with it. Perhaps that's the greatest tragedy of all.
The link above got hosed. Here's the real one.
Whoops! After some research, it looks like, to be perfectly accurate, defense spending in real dollars is just about at it's high.
Here's the image. I don't know if it's accurate.
As a percentage of the GDP, which is the measure you would use if you were discussing tax cuts, it's way, way down.
Here's that chart.
None of this changes the fact that the McMansion argument is based on lies. I guess it wouldn't do to claim that entitlement spending had eliminated the moon bases.
KT - Wow! I'm impressed with the research you did.
I actually hadn't given the details as close scrutiny you had. I had mainly keyed in on the comment that the country had gone insane. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that its snarky. We can't blame everything on Reagan - just as he can take credit for everything that happened. But from the 80's on the public completely interest in science and space exploration. Priorities changed. They cared more about fantasy than reality. Remember the greed is good eighties. On top of that NASA fell apart because they lost their brain trust and swapped in inept management.
The nineties took us even further down the road with cyberpunk and virtual reality. Why should we care about real exploration, when we can immerse ourselves in a virtual world. When we were kids they thought TV was the brain killer, little did they know the power of computers and the net.
So in a sense America did go insane.
Thanks for being so nice in your reply. I can always count on you for that. I run off, shouting and waving my arms, and there's Kelly, calmly reasoning and offering a kind word. I don't know why you've put up with me all these years.
:-)
What hit me in that video was the total incongruity with facts.
Fact: Following the tax cuts (which even Clinton with a Democrat congress didn't repeal) the economy has grown substantially.
Fact: The government has been taking a larger and larger piece of this growing economy.
Fact: The government now has a larger slice of a larger pie.
Fact: Military spending as a function of the economy has shrunk almost every year for the past 20 or so.
Fact: Military spending gets a smaller piece of the bigger pie.
Hypothesis 1: The government doesn't get enough money and that's why we don't have a moon base.
Hypothesis 2: Military spending is taking money away from moon bases.
Huh? He's either an idiot or a liar. I lean towards the latter. Note that the Democratic presidential candidates are all singing from this very same hymnal.
As for NASA, I have to admit I don't understand the mechanisms at work here. I attended one conference at JPL and came away unimpressed. It looked like they were just dorking around, spending money on their own pet projects with no real direction. It was a communications conference and I could think of low cost, commercial solutions to all of the problems they were solving.
It may be that NASA's research community has become entrenched and is now simply pursuing research in areas that they want to research, sort of like the way tenured university math professors do. It also indicates, as you have said, a glaring weakness in NASA's management as they haven't forced their people to work on the right problems.
Lastly, my father was intimately involved in the space shuttle program, or rather, trying to kill it before it got started. NASA lied to Congress about its cost and thus killed the Air Force's satellite rocket programs and took their money. The shuttle has turned out to be far more expensive than they claimed and it could be that the shuttle has simply eaten them alive.
I hope you're sitting down for this one.
Dig this.
In the last 30 years, the worst presidents for NASA have been Carter and Clinton. The best two were Reagan and Bush I. I haven't found any data for W, but my bet is that he's spending just as wildly with NASA as he does everywhere else.
Having said that, I want to reassure you and help you put your brain back in your skull with one easy-to-repeat phrase that should help restore your balance.
"I blame George W Bush."
:-)
Oh yeah and I almost forgot.
"I also blame Reagan and the decade of greed!"
:-)
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