All of us tend to rage at "them" and re-fence around ourselves and our friends.

My students tend to come from families suffering from generational poverty.  These families struggle with mental health issues and the related social and medical problems that spring from them.

Sometimes (often) people wonder why we're spending so much money on special education for the lowest 12-15% of our students.  

My answer is that the US is a great nation, and a great nation educates all of its people.  We can afford it.  We can afford it with one hand tied behind our backs.  We can afford it with our national pocket change.  It's just a matter of priorities.  

We blow more money on one super-plane...a plane we don't need and don't intend to use (who are we expecting to dogfight with our new super-fighters?)...than we do on special education for the entire nation.  Maybe if we parked our squadrons of new super-planes we could afford both social services and education.

Speaking as a life-long conservative, I would suggest that maybe it's time we stopped paying to defend the world.  Europe certainly does not need us protecting them anymore.  South Korea can defend themselves.  Why don't we let them pay for it?

How about we spend some of that money here in the US?

FormCritic wrote:How about we spend some of that money here in the US?

That takes too much politics.

FormCritic wrote:
That must be it.

It is far (and I mean far) cheaper (at least in the Northwest) to purchase store brands at Safeway stores than it is to grocery shop at Costco.  Safeway also beats out Walmart on many items and has a larger grocery selection.

In the Northwest, if Costco has any reputation at all it is as a store that serves the higher-end customer base.

I think Costco caters to its locale. There are several within 20 miles of us and most cater to the middle class, but you can run over to the high-end cities nearby and they carry stufff like pianos, furs, etc.  We usually hit Costco once a month with a set list of items. Otherwise, it is too easy to drop twice as much as we want to.

FormCritic wrote:It is far (and I mean far) cheaper (at least in the Northwest) to purchase store brands at Safeway stores than it is to grocery shop at Costco.  Safeway also beats out Walmart on many items and has a larger grocery selection.

The only things I buy at Costco are toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, chicken breasts (16 to a package) and canned chicken/tuna.  Occasionally I buy disposable razors and Keurig K-cups for my coffee maker as well, but they only carry two flavors so I still have to buy others online or at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Most other stuff we have compared prices with Wal-Mart on, it is actually more expensive to buy at Costco.  A local news station did a report a couple of years ago where they compared fifty random items from Costco to the same items at Wal-Mart (adjusting for size differences) and Wal-Mart beat Costco's price on all but three or four items.  Pretty much all canned vegetables, specialty meats, pet food, and condiments end up being more expensive at Costco.  You can save quite a bit of money at Costco on certain electronics and appliances but the selection is pretty thin.  Even books and DVD's are more expensive at Costco...at least when Wal-Mart or Target have them on sale that is.

Couple that with the yearly membership fee and you dont always get the better deal by shopping at Costco.

Just about the only time we go into a typical grocery store anymore is for specialty items that Wal-Mart doesnt carry like Almond milk (actually they just started carrying it but not the brand we buy), HP Sauce, Bird's custard, cheese with names I cant pronounce, Dusseldorf mustard, and decent egg rolls.  Wal-Mart only carries one brand of egg rolls and they suck.     They also carry pretty lousy seafood.  But we have a fishmonger pretty close by so we usually just buy everything there anyway.

FormCritic wrote:We blow more money on one super-plane...a plane we don't need and don't intend to use (who are we expecting to dogfight with our new super-fighters?)...than we do on special education for the entire nation.  Maybe if we parked our squadrons of new super-planes we could afford both social services and education.

Most of the interceptor/multi-role fighters built since the 70's are designed to get to targets quickly or destroy their enemies from over a hundred miles away so they dont have to dogfight.  And most of these "super planes" that we are building are to replace older planes such as the F-14 which we in turn are selling to other countries.  Australia bought 24 F/A-18E Hornets from the U.S. over the last few years at a cost of 4.8 billion dollars.  A single plane costs in the neighborhood of 50 million to produce (including R&D).  Where does all that money go?  Back into the military budget?  Or somewhere else?

FormCritic wrote:I would suggest that maybe it's time we stopped paying to defend the world. Europe certainly does not need us protecting them anymore. South Korea can defend themselves. Why don't we let them pay for it?

Just some quick searching on the internet came up with some surprising numbers.  The U.K. has something in the neighborhood of 500 combat aircraft.  The U.S. Air Force has about 1200 F-16's.  France has 374 combat aircraft.  The U.S. Navy has over 500 F-18's.  The U.S. has twice as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world combined.  And you can do the math on the number of tanks, troop carriers, support aircraft, etc.  With all of the money issues the EU is currently dealing with I'm not sure they could defend themselves adequately without our help if push came to shove with a nation such as China.  And do you really think that South Korea, without our troops already stationed there, could mount a sustainable defense against North Korea?  In manpower alone, N. Korea has almost double the strength that S. Korea does.  Can they feed their troops though?      A lot of so-called military experts say that a prolonged conflict between just the two (no U.S., Russia, or China involvement) would most likely be won by the South but only if the North werent able to use their limited nuclear abilities.

We could always dissolve NATO, withdraw from the United Nations, and become an isolationist country again right?

Kingofpain89 wrote:And you can do the math on the number of tanks, troop carriers, support aircraft, etc.  

Actually, the Navy and Air Force recieve disproportionate numbers of new equipment as opposed to the Army. There are approximately 1/3 fewer Army divisions that there were prior to the first Iraq war. Our ability to put boots on the ground is not nearly what it was 25 years ago. The emphasis switched over to a military built on air power. For better or worse, that is our doctrine.

rhynne wrote:
I'm a bit hazy on my American history (sorry being a Canadian, I only  touched on it while taking Canadian history).

When was the USA previously an isolationist country?

Best regards,
Ronald

Never. We were a neutral country. Isolationism means you have no dealings with another country at all. Neutrality means you treat all others equally, and do not play favorites. We also at one time were able to produce nearly anything we needed within our own borders (with some exceptions). For the most part, we still can, but corporate interests override the Constitution.

SimperingToad wrote:Never. We were a neutral country.

So I guess my high school history teacher, all of my college history and political science professors, and textbooks were wrong when they used the term "isolationist" to define the U.S. international policies between the first and second World Wars, specifically during the Great Depression.

SimperingToad wrote:Never. We were a neutral country. Isolationism means you have no dealings with another country at all. Neutrality means you treat all others equally, and do not play favorites.

 

Ok, thats a different America to the one I know about...