bitmap@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (04/06/84)
<.......> re: cutting taxes for corporations. Well, now that you mention it, I do recall that there were changes in the tax depreciation laws, which were supposed to encourage investment in new equipment & factories. Did the corporate tax rate actually go down, though? Does anyone else know? >Reagan does believe in Welfare--but only for the biggest >Corporations. It would be unfair, of course, not to mention the big Chrysler (sp?) bailout of the Carter-Mondale administration, eh, Tim? However, I do agree that there is too much govt. money and attention paid to (and for) the mistakes of the big corporations. Recently, once again, Citibank & others were bailed out by the government, because they had been a bit careless (or too quick to invest)--of course, it wasn't their money that they were investing, it was ours (i.e., the public's), and it was the public who will pay for their mistakes. This way they get to keep their jobs, since, if they lost the investment, they would have most likely been fired. This type of thing has been going on for years, and I wish that it would/could be stopped. If you can turn off the anti-Reagan cant for a bit, Tim, I'd like to hear what you think of this. >what is the justifcation for retaining such govt expenditures as >the tobacco subsidy? Good question. Related ones include: Do we really need farm subsidies? In California last year there was a bit of press play on a man who had grown a bunch of oranges (well, a lot of oranges, I guess), but could not sell them because of some orange-grower protectionist measure (allocations, or perhaps they were "too small" [why not let the consumer decide]). He was trying to give them away to charities, but this was illegal. Tobacco, of course, cuts two ways (both bad): first the subsidies, later the Medicare (or whatever state aid) costs for lung cancer. re: calculating the percentage of money spent by the military >There are basically two different ways to comput that sum-- Neither of your ways, to my knowledge, is nearly as common as the one that most people use & expect--the amount of money spent by the military as a percentage of the federal budget. As roughly twice as much money is spent on social programs as the military (ok, guys, this is a rough estimate--I don't remember off-hand), to say that the military spends an amount equal to 60% of federal income taxes is as meaningless & misleading as saying that we spend an amount equal to 120% (220%?) of federal income tax revenues on social programs. I noticed that your percentage (60%) has already confused at least one person on the net, who is used to the 20-25% figure (of the federal budget). While you're looking numbers up, why don't you include the military budget as (i) a percentage of the federal budget, as usual (ii) a percentage of the G.N.P., and compare the numbers with, say, 1943, 1960, 1968, 1978. Sam Hall, UCB decvax!ucbvax!ucbtopaz!bitmap