I felt like I was doing my Google Street View screen-grab photography, but in person:
Here's a good clue:
২৯ জুলাই, ২০১৭
Where we were...
... yesterday, when I got the "Stay in Love with God" photograph. Here's another:
I felt like I was doing my Google Street View screen-grab photography, but in person:
Here's a good clue:
I felt like I was doing my Google Street View screen-grab photography, but in person:
Here's a good clue:
এতে সদস্যতা:
মন্তব্যগুলি পোস্ট করুন (Atom)
পোস্টগুলি
১৩২টি মন্তব্য:
Sigh
20 questions?
Is it Wisconsin?
Looks like Wisconsin Flat Land. Maybe that's where Foxcon bought themselves a place to build a 4 billion dollar Manufacturing Plant for iPhones that are made to look like cheese and brats that attract the Deplorable user.
Why is there a road sign (yield) but no road?
We're back home now, but that's not Wisconsin.
River town?
" .. but that's not Wisconsin .."
Now we know. It was Hell Missouri all along. This kind of confusion is worse than working as an 04 intel-gathering during the War on Drugs in Panama in the 80's (ask the other guys around here, they know all about that) ...
“If he asks you more than 3 questions, you better get used to the fact that you are the murderer.”
The top photo is really interesting. Crop it a bit and get a good print made and you'd have real art, no question. Odd angles, tricky perspective, any number of possible stories. Put it in a NYC gallery and it would cause more critical confusion than "The Kramer".
Yeah, that first shot is really beautiful and looks more like a painting than a photograph. Ocean Park colors.
Philthedelphia?
Rome, New York has a Liberty St. and Washington St. intersection, but it doesn't look like yours.
Is that triangular sign really telling people on the grass to "Yield"?
Everytown, Trumpsylvania.
Obviously from the last photo you're in a solar system with more than one sun.
Ann Arbor?
Fall Creek fits the clue. It is hardly covered by Google Street View.
The first pic looks like a watercolor painting: You should do this professionally. Imagine you can do the photos and Meade the mounting and organize the portable displays/shelters used at the open aire art and craft shows. You could do car trips around the country as a great excuse for going places on vacation, but you would be working, so not a hypocrite.
"Everytown, Trumpsylvania."
Where liberty yields for Washington..
In 2013, Kevin Zeese JD and Margaret Flowers MD wrote in an Op-Ed:
"There was an easier route and a more politically popular route. All that President Obama had to do was to push for what he used to believe in, Medicare for all."
"By just dropping two words, 'over 65,' the United States would not have needed the 2,200-page ACA."
"To replace Obamacare with the single-payer system, we need to be clear about the shortcomings of the [ACA], especially its fundamental flaw of making a human right, ...into a commodity like a cellphone."
"We need to recognize that ending the corporate domination of health care is part of breaking the domination of [corporations] over the US government and the economy."
So, the simple solution that McConnell and all the "do nothing" Congress missed, was:
dropping two words
They could have thrown out the 2200 page ACA law, and modified Medicare to include everybody. You no longer need to be age 65.
BAM! A single payer health care system
No Web site, no billions in Internet infrastructure. If you are a citizen, you are in.
Great Photo at the top - like catching the biggest fish in the river while fishing on a day like any other.
Liberty and Washington - how many towns have streets where those two cross. Ashland Ohio. But some of those pictures look like Leesburg Virginia which has Liberty Street, only Leesburg never had a factory.
Indiana?
"Liberty and Washington - how many towns have streets where those two cross."
Washington Ave. turns into Swamp Road in Newton, PA. Which is fairly hilarious.
Althouse - July 29, 2017
Etienne.
Yes. Trump played that note (need to double check this - stopped reading his porn away back) in, “The America We Deserve.” Now he’s giving us the “America that We Bend Over and Take.” Done justifying him. Etienne, you and I are possibly on different tracks. I’m Independent. More conservative in many ways. I love your social policy stuff. Would vote for Harriet Tubman - today. Keep the railroads open in Canada. Blowing out to obey Mistress Mine on the shop-hop. Peace.
"Listen Columbo, just for a minute how about we stop pretending that I'm brilliant and you're simple.”?
madAsHell,
I grew up in Rome NY. How did you know that there is a Liberty and Washington St intersection there?
Just curious.
I understand that UMich (University of Michigan -Ann Arbor) just added a position for an administrator tasked with "cultural appropriation prevention".
Your problem re medical care is not really about how it is paid for. Most Western countries (and developed Eastern ones) have something like the US systems both before and after Obamacare, a mixture of employer mandates, public insurance and retiree insurance in many forms.
But adopting any of these in whatever combination is not going to do much for you.
Your real problem is that medical services delivery in the US is massively expensive, no matter who pays for it. Most of the unfocused arguments miss that point. Thats why there is so much sturm und drang over paying for it.
More to the point, your real problem is your tendency to take a real problem, that really is insoluble because of the confusion of interests locking it in place, and using this as a hammer to whack each other on the head, out of fundamental hatred of each other.
Wow, is that first one a real photo? It is very artistic, looks like a painting instead of a photo.
The opt-outs of the pre-Obamacare US system, that were not covered by charity such as Medicaid, were very few and in context did not demand much of US medical care resources.
I.e., the vast majority of people in the US who actually used medical services were paying for them or were covered by medical insurance, private or public.
It takes a bit of perspective to narrow the payment problem down to specifics. A limited public program (if thats what was politically desired) of expanded, means-tested Medicaid would have closed the small gap. If this was done there would be no argument today.
But no. Massive, expensive complexity was preferred.
Etienne, I have lived [and least briefly] in areas where I hauled our garbage to the dump in the back of a pickup. One should have that option. Those who toss their trash in fields, ditches or other peoples'--including public parks--dumpsters should be soundly flogged and steeply fined. Of course, I realize that would be hard to monitor.
My sister once had a beef with their garbage collection service and told them she would rather eat the garbage than use their service. So her husband dutifully hauls it to the dump every week or so.
Your real problem is that medical services delivery in the US is massively expensive, no matter who pays for it. Most of the unfocused arguments miss that point. Thats why there is so much sturm und drang over paying for it.
Buwaya, this is really the crux of the issue. When I fell and broke my wrist a few months ago and spent a few hours in the ER, I was given just about every test and scan imaginable. Whether this is largely a CYA policy or a money-making one, it made no sense. Even though I explained that I had tripped over a concrete barrier, they wanted to rule out that I had some kind of medical event. I refused some of the scans. Patients [customers] need to take some responsibility in keeping costs down by refusing needless testing and prescription drugs. The provider will merely write 'Patient refused' in your chart, thus getting him/her off the legal hook.
To put it another way, you dont really have public policy issues to be mad about. You have a massive set of cultural issues that are fundamental.
I propose a venue for catharsis. A large, walled field, within which no laws apply. Every entrant is issued a club. At midnight every survivor is driven out, or carried off, and the bodies removed.
Etienne, I'll tell you an alternate story. All the major cities In Rhode Island have mandatory garbage collection. Mayors and city councils put pressure on their state representatives to keep the fees low. As a result the state landfill in Johnston RI was massively underfunded and absolutely no revenue was being generated to replace the landfill as it reached the end of its lifespan. Furthermore, cheap garbage pickup meant that there was no pressure on city residents to reduce or recycle (it didn't help that recycling at that time was multi-stream). Meanwhile, in a number of rural areas in Rhode Island, garbage collection was fee-for-service. This encouraged residents to reduce the amount of trash they were generating and to use recycling programs that were cheaper than garbage collection (such as taking your recycling to the transfer station yourself for free).
The group that presented this research strongly advocated that landfill costs be accurately passed on to consumers, to encourage reduction and recycling. It was the Sierra Club.
Indiana.
And that is not a boat trailer.
There is a reflection of a bear standing on its hind legs in the reflection in the first photo. It looks like a brown bear.
Is it a western town?
S.Dakota? N Dakota? NW Minnesota?
S.Dakota? N Dakota? NW Minnesota?
The first pic looks like a watercolor painting
It also reveals the photographer wearing retro white-framed shades.
When I fell and broke my wrist a few months ago and spent a few hours in the ER, I was given just about every test and scan imaginable.
It was probably a mistake to go to an ER unless it was after hours.
Orthopedists used to see such cases in the office and many do again, especially if they do not take insurance.
We are evolving slowly a cash system. Dropping Medicare and insurance eliminates 75% of over head.
I was a little surprised to find an internist in Tucson who takes Medicare,
Your real problem is that medical services delivery in the US is massively expensive, no matter who pays for it.
This is so key. No concept of market efficiencies or technological advances is in play anywhere in the dialogue I am hearing.
Re: The intersection of Liberty and Washington.
Althouse says it a good clue. One so named intersection I know of was infamous for being blocked by the rubble of the World Trade Center towers for many weeks back in 2001, the other was infamous for hosting the largest slave market in the United States.
Etienne said... essence of a program that benefits society - you can't opt-out!
True. And tautology. I too lived in a small mid-western town with volunteer trash collection. I helped. Rode the truck. Townsfolk putting cases of Bud out on the curb for the driver. Fun. Way back. The problem - tautology - of "you can't opt out" is the places that won't opt in. I know you've got that covered. My Hayek-love does too, imperfectly. If a free society opts in, done. That's where - public servants - don't blather make-up casino diversions for failed substance, like Trump does now. Bernie (too far left for me) had a better hand -- in terms of kind and loving definition. To him, I give that. The debate is not square on the table. Or, it's covered by effluent of left/right polar fixation. Sad. I'm still studying Australia. For now ...
Shock Poll Shows Kid Rock WIth A Huge Lead In The Michigan GOP Senate Primary
I'm guessing Detroit, Rock city
Bernie (too far left for me) had a better hand -- in terms of kind and loving definition.
Kind and loving with resources expropriated from others by force is a difficult concept for Quaestor's mind to grasp, bound as it is by cosmos that contains little in the way of magic.
Re: Kid Rock
I'll wager many voters in Arizona envy Michigan since yesterday.
I grew up in Rome NY. How did you know that there is a Liberty and Washington St intersection there?
Google Maps. I've never been to Rome, NY. Oddly, it was the only Liberty, and Washington intersection in the entire database.
Yeah, that first shot is really beautiful and looks more like a painting than a photograph
When I first saw the top photograph, I thought is was a Joni Mitchell painting.
First photo = Richard Estes painting
So, what brought you to Perrysville?
"With mandatory participation, the system pays for itself with a much smaller fee, than if just a few people paid. I now live in the county, and my mandatory fee is just a few bucks a month.
That to me, is the essence of a program that benefits society - you can't opt-out!"
A much smaller fee? Like a 50% income tax? Forget it. As long as there's a significant middle class in the US there will be no single payer. First World countries with universal healthcare introduced their systems long before it became common to obtain your medical insurance through your employer. The token increase in wages that employers might offer in lieu of offering medical benefits isn't going to begin to cover the increased tax burden on the middle-class.
Hits home or lands home???? Close to home???
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/28/living-in-hell-milwaukee-segregation-donald-trumpx
New jersey?
The left hand door is upside down.
We could have single payer. In essence it would be Medicaid/Medicare for everyone. And it would be extremely expensive.
I may have it wrong, but Canada pays for its health care with GST (federal sales tax) and most other countries pay for it with a VAT tax. They also don't have a much lower Defense budget.
You can be damn sure that any "Single payer" Health care system would end up with the middle class (aka the middle 70%) paying more and getting less.
Liberty Pole.
Mr. Zrimsek has a winner.
"That to me, is the essence of a program that benefits society - you can't opt-out!"
Fuck all that liberty bullshit, right?!
To put the medical cost issue in context - What the USG plus the 50 States already spend together, per capita, in public spending on medical care is greater than what every advanced country, other than Switzerland, spends (PPP basis) in toto, public and private. And Switzerland still spends only 75% of what the US spends per capita.
If it were just a matter of purchasing a "single payer" medical system, the US could, in a theoretical world, buy something identical to France (which isnt exactly single payer, but lets go with it). And cut Medicare, Medicaid and the various State health care taxes by almost 50%. And eliminate employer mandated health insurance entirely.
And all these countries, note, have older, higher need populations than the US.
Your entire problem, completely, is that you have regulated and mandated the system into a state of gross inefficiency. The US is in its own way far more socialist, far more regulation-ridden and bureaucratic than the French, imagine that. Its just that it does not show up the same way.
I may have it wrong, but Canada pays for its health care with GST (federal sales tax) and most other countries pay for it with a VAT tax. They also don't have a much lower Defense budget.
no - not as a proportion of GDP. the US system is extremely inefficient.
We're paying for the lion's share of medical/pharma advances. And lawyers and office workers and gunshot victims.
If the US were to deregulate, or rationally regulate, medical care delivery, it could build 10 times more nuclear weapons.
Note: the US spends much more on conventional military forces than on nuclear ones. It needs masses of people for conventional forces, and then their retirement benefits and medical care. Nuclear weapons=few people. Nukes are cheap.
This all is immediately apparent to all who bother to study your government finances.
"That's right. Free-ranging mental cases murdering fellow citizens is over."
Huh?
Most countries pay for medical insurance, at least partly, just as the US does, with insurance premiums deducted from paychecks or from employers through employer coverage mandates.
Britain and Canada are somewhat exceptional.
What US workers are already paying for out of their salary deductions would finance an entire European medical system; or Canada's for that matter.
Or if you for some strange reason wanted to go full "socialist", and have a US version of Britains, with nearly all medical personnel government employees, you could.
Actually you are already paying for two (2) British NHS systems (on a PPP basis), in per capita government medical spending.
You could go double-British with what you are already giving the government.
"So, what brought you to Perrysville?"
Congratulations!
Perrysville was the location of the farm that belonged to Meade's maternal grandparents, where Meade spent a lot of time when he was a boy. There is also a cemetery -- Hicks Cemetery -- where some of his family members are buried. We visited while making a round trip to Indianapolis, where my son Chris recently moved for a new job.
What does Mr. Zrimsek win -- an Althouse coffee mug? A "Make Meade Great Again" coozie?
How did you figure it out?
Also, re the Google Street View, did you just wander the street until you saw rhe mural?
"With mandatory participation, the system pays for itself with a much smaller fee, than if just a few people paid. I now live in the county, and my mandatory fee is just a few bucks a month.
So not a living wage salary, huh?
* * *
@Althouse: Hope it's a great job!
Perrysville? I thought perhaps it was Berkeley Springs, WV, famous for its mineral waters and the ruins of an 18th century spa nicknamed "George Washington's Bathtub," presumably because the great man allegedly took the waters in the back in colonial days. However the Google View intersection of Liberty Street with Washington Street looks nothing like the picture posted by Althouse.
What US workers are already paying for out of their salary deductions would finance an entire European medical system; or Canada's for that matter.
The trouble is that, without a market mechanism like France uses, expenses would spiral up to infinity.
Democrats definitely don't like markets, except of course their billionaire enablers.
The latter, I think, are all about social change, not economics.
Just read that Scaramucci & his wife had a baby last Monday. Clearly a lot more going on in that marriage/divorce besides politics.
I've noticed that some couples get divorced after having children, when the children are out of diapers, but not before they can get to the "golden age of parenting" around 6-10 years.
Here's the thing about health care. People don't like to change the system they have. Americans are used to employer-based health care.
People like what they are used to. Trying to change to the metric system was not politically viable.
Personally, I'd take a health system like Germany's over the USA. But I don't think it's politically possible.
"The latter, I think, are all about social change, not economics."
Actually, big business would love single payer, since it would mean that US corporations would no longer have to pay for their employees - or their retirees - health care. I know the big Auto companies are paying out big bucks for their pensioners health care - its in their financial statements.
And the health care issue doesn't really effect the rich/well to do. If you had a single payer system like the UK, the rich/well-to-do would simply set up their own private care.
The top 5% are going to get great health care no matter what system we have.
As stated, nuclear weapons are incredibly small % of the DoD budget. Its mostly personnel costs, R&D, and hardware (airplanes, ships, etc.).
Many other countries have employer paid care.
There are all kinds of systems out there.
And about 70% of US medical care is paid for by government systems, not private insurers. You already have 70% socialism by that standard. This is already nearly as socialistic as most European systems, and more so than some. If you count the employer mandate as the Euros probably would, as implied taxation, you are at least 90% socialist already, welcome to darkest Eurosocialism.
You were always there, is the thing.
It was never about substance, just rhetoric.
The real American difference is that the American flavor is a very expensive socialism.
It doesnt matter who pays it, or how the money is collected.
What matters is how much it costs to deliver.
Scott Adams had a great periscope where he asserts that 1/3 of Americans don't have a sense of humor.
My experience as finance numbers guy (retired) is that 1/3 of American can't understand finance or numbers. They get millions and billion mixed up and can't seem to process the concept of "immateriality".
Its why politicians, always use anecdotes instead of numbers, when talking about government fraud, waste and abuse.
To make up an example. If you tell them we're wasting x Billions of dollars on welfare fraud, it makes no impression. But if you talk about some Welfare queen having six Cadillacs, then they get all riled up.
Its one reason the US Government's finances are so fucked up.
"The real American difference is that the American flavor is a very expensive socialism."
I agree. One problem is that the lobbyists write the bills. All the people who benefit from the current High-cost, low-quality, health care system don't want to change it. They want to expand it, but they don't want to make it more efficient.
The British system is not simply single payer, it is single-provider, a government near-monopoly, and a not too common system in developed countries.
wwww, I heard years ago that the most frequent specific times that men cheat are around the time of marriage and the birth of a child. But she's a fool if she decided to divorce while her body and hormones are Abby normal.
BTW, the Japanese spend 1/2 the amount we do on healthcare.
"In 2008, Japan spent about 8.5% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), or US$2,873 per capita, on health, ranking 20th among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries."
Despite that, the japanese have a greater life expectancy than Americans.
Maybe we can learn something from the "Japs".
current High-cost, low-quality, health care system
Low quality compared to whose? Or just for the amount of money spent?
The biggest problem is demographic: increasingly too many old people and not enough young.
Our best hope is young, rich refugees from Europe, because our political system won't function.
Health care, in developed countries, does not seem to have a bearing on longetivity stats.
The Japanese live long because they are Japanese.
I bet if you stick the same people with a US healthcare system and they will live just as long, if much more expensively.
Nearly all developed countries have worse demographics (older population) than the US, and they still manage to spend half as much on medical care.
"Actually, big business would love single payer, since it would mean that US corporations would no longer have to pay for their employees - or their retirees - health care."
Do you think they would like 50% tax rates ? I think that is a myth.
I suspect we will end up with single payer but it will be part of the collapse of the American experiment.
I was more optimistic when Trump won but the swamp seems to be ungovernable.
"they still manage to spend half as much on medical care."
That may change with the importation of a primitive welfare class (Muslims).
We have been paying for a violent, unhealthy underclass. Plus immigrants with tuberculosis , etc.
What is the proportion of Muslim immigrants to Europe paying taxes ? 20% ? 10%?
A big driver of longetivity stats is infant mortality.
Black infant mortality rate is @2.5x the US white rate.
Hispanic (mostly Mexican and Central American) infant mortality rate is actually lower than the white rate.
Why?
Not because of differences in access to medical care or income levels or anything else of that sort.
Its not the system, its the people, the culture.
Etienne,
If you want to call nuclear weapons expensive in a non-budgetary sense, you can, but that is moving the topic away from where we started, on budgets and economics.
Cutting nukes is not going to solve underfunding of Medicare.
Re movies, sons took me to "Dunkirk" this pm at the Alamo on Mission (wife wont see war m ovies).
Very, very good, highly recommended.
Touching, a guy-style tear jerker AND suspenseful.
And its as authentic-seeming as can be expected.
The only off-bit are the rather modern looks of some of the naval vessels.
Btw, not only are the French in the thing, and not all that well treated, there are a few properly deep-black sorts among them (I assume they are supposed to be Senegalese).
If you exclude murder and accidents, Americans actually live longer than the Japanese, and in fact, longest on the planet. We just have a much more violent and risk taking population. This longer life span absent the influence of trauma, points to a superior healthcare system.
"...they adjusted life-expectancy stats to get a rough handle on what life expectancy would have been like had the rates of these deaths [murder and accidents] been the same in all 29 countries. Their result: The U.S. would have ranked first, at 76.9 years of life expectancy — an increase of 1.6 years. Meanwhile, Japan fell from 78.7 years to 76 years, indicating it had been benefiting inordinately from low rates of accidental deaths and homicides."
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-expectancy-223/
So if Americans actually did have the longest life expectancy and it's due to our superior healthcare, then what has been occupying our politics for years now, not to mention ruining my access, and doubling my insurance cost as well as that of my employees. Great job there, Dems, and nice cover up, "journalists".
"Most countries pay for medical insurance, at least partly, just as the US does, with insurance premiums deducted from paychecks or from employers through employer coverage mandates.
Britain and Canada are somewhat exceptional."
Employers also pay for health care in Canada through both a tax as percentage of total payroll and through a variety of health benefits packages given to employees as part of their remuneration package. Several things are not covered through the provincial public plans like prescription medication, dental services, most optometrist services for adults and other things as well. People either have employer provided benefits for these things, purchase private insurance or pay for it out of pocket, in the vast majority of cases. It's largely physician and hospital services that are siingle payer in Canada, and the money is public while the services are private.
Blogger Etienne said... "If the USA would mothball 50% of its nuclear weapons, it could still destroy the world 10 times over, but we would free-up trillions in tax burden."
It’s certainly within many conservative agendas too. The maths for tax reduction benefits of asymmetric warfare after nuclear reduction are way beyond any pay grade I could imagine. General Mattis is said to carry Aurelius’s “Meditations,” written as intimately private notes, not for-show Tweets, in keeping with his character, and though we don’t know Mattis’s feelings about Aurelius’s advice to remove unnecessary and trivial clutter (possible nuclear clutter), it’s possible that Mattis’s associations at Hoover may have moved him in this direction. His personal library, I think, over several thousand volumes, is larger than Justice Souter’s. Maybe somewhere in there is your hope. A glimmer.
I'd rather reduce the number of government employees and their outlandish benefits before scrapping the nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons just clearly do much less damage, and they don't have that nasty habit of self-proliferation.
The budget for nuclear weapons maintenance is less than ten billion per year. How would that amount -- even 100% of it -- save Medicare? In case you don't know, Etienne, the Medicare budget is half a trillion per year.
"Most of the nuclear weapons budget is classified. Even the President doesn't know what it costs. The accounting is convoluted to hide it from accountants.
Lulz
This longer life span absent the influence of trauma, points to a superior healthcare system.
I used to think this. But then I read about the maternal mortality of the # of women dying per 100,000 births. A ridiculous # of women are dying after birth in the USA from pregnancy induced blood pressure and hemorrhage. Most of these deaths are preventable. It's the worst in the developed world, and the numbers have spiked since 1990. It used to be much better and on par with Canada and Italy.
Something has drastically gone wrong with hospital procedure for births in the USA.
How did you figure it out?
I have a GPS program that's able to search for street intersections. The list it gave me of the various Liberty & Washingtons was longish, but I took a tip from Left Bank and started with the ones in Indiana. No Google Street View available for the intersection, but the overhead view was a good match, and there were only a handful of buildings in town that could possibly have been the one with the flag mural (and the doors).
wwww, I heard years ago that the most frequent specific times that men cheat are around the time of marriage and the birth of a child. But she's a fool if she decided to divorce while her body and hormones are Abby normal.
Yeah, filing for divorce in the 2nd or 3rd trimester is generally not something I'd see as wise. Too many people decide to divorce in haste.
I've seen too many friends get divorced when the kiddos are about 4 & 7. They seem to get through the hard years, and when it's just about to get easier, somebody blows up the marriage.
Splurging on a babysitter is worth it in the long run.
"wwww, I heard years ago that the most frequent specific times that men cheat are around the time of marriage and the birth of a child. But she's a fool if she decided to divorce while her body and hormones are Abby normal."
I recall reading some years ago that the single biggest risk factor for male cheating was a pregnant wife.
The "Meditations" are hardly secret.
This was highly recommended in our high school, in the old days, as it was thought useful in the preparation of Christian Gentlemen. I have had my copy since I was a cadet. It was this book I made the mistake of gifting a then-girlfriend, in my naive youth - pro tip, never give a woman a book, and never, ever give her the "Meditations".
It certainly isnt something that would bulk out a library either.
Anyway, the numbers both of you, Etienne and Feste, assume about these things, are not correct. These are published and I am sure such clever gentlemen can research them and display your results. This is the correct way to deal with such questions.
The typical number given for spending on actual nuclear warheads is somewhere between $20-70B anually. Operating and maintenance costs for nuclear delivery systems and their corresponding organizations is more difficult to separate out, but a look at the current org charts and force structure does not indicate a large proportion of personnel in nuclear-only units. There are no actual nuclear bombers left for instance, all of them are dual-purpose.
As are nearly all naval vessels that are nuclear-capable.
The USN has, as dedicated nuclear warfare vessels, only 14 SSBN's, a tiny proportion of 400+ major vessels in service. I grant you these are likely quite expensive vessels to operate in general, but they have smallish crews (@150 men) even if they have two crews each. The USN has hundreds of vessels with larger crews, and more actively used. Each aircraft carrier sails with over 5000 aboard.
And so forth.
Blogger Etienne said... Most of the nuclear weapons budget is classified.
That's what I took you to mean. Not production only. The exponential rolling ball of all costs that are classified. I’d like to see you succeed in this cost-benefit argument. The four - Nunn, Perry, Kissinger, Shultz - seem to make their arguments on the sheer mathematics of asymmetry of war tactics, that is, that nukes don’t deter terrorists. I’m not up on it, but I don’t remember their argument as cost-economics for redirection of funds for social welfare. I’m not sure the accounting is hidden just because it’s classified. I think you’re calling for new analyses, some sort of factor analysis, that may not yet be extracted from the classified data. Or am I missing something?
Buwaya
True. Good points. What I meant is that Aurelius’s “Meditations” were not written to be published. Not public Tweets. They are published. But, that’s not why he wrote them. His purpose in them, expressly, was quite intimate, private, self-reflective, seeking parsimony. Mattis treasures them and practices a visible corresponding privacy - the war monk, never married, bookish, thoughtful, extremely high standards for Marines under his command to read volumes and tomes at his prescription, to understand the cultures of their fields of operations, and soliciting good will, as far as possible, without excessive weaponization and blustering threats. Point is: Aurelius was not, to my understanding, extravagant, but lean and spare, in war expenditures. That’s to Etienne’s spirit in his posts. This riff on Mattis, not Trump, is in the hope that Trump still has a learning curve. One can hope.
“Operating and maintenance costs for nuclear delivery systems and their corresponding organizations is more difficult to separate out”
Yes. That’s what I’m reading in Etienne’s posts. I’m not up on this. Nor competent at the matrix maths. Buwaya, give this a test drive. Checkerboard this out in role-reversal. Just for the sake. Take Etienne’s side. Grant all generous inferences, not unreasonable ones, but wide-generous. What do you think the numbers – “difficult to separate out” - would look like? High end? You don’t need to be correct. Take a shot.
Going quiet to read the interactions.
Burying nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers will go on even with no nuclear weapons.
These are propulsion systems on vessels tasked for conventional warfare (for the most part).
And you have to deal with them anyway, as they are in service with extremely long service lives.
Btw, only one nuclear aircraft carrier has been decommissioned AFAIK, the USS Nimitz. You probably will have to wait a decade for the next one.
"No, No, 10 billion a year is way off. Hanford alone spends that on cement to bury submarines and aircraft carriers."
Not only is that a non sequitur, it's a lot of cement. Ten billion -- maybe a little less -- is the expenditure. If you have anything to refute that then I'd like to see a link.
Worthwhile exchange. Etienne, if you and others could somehow do the factors, then bootstrap the maths twofold, into dramatic nuclear reduction (or better), and into redirection to social funds - amazing. Will check back. Out ...
Ok,
As it happens the CBO does apparently publish a regular (every 4-5 years it seems) study on this (they are quite good at past accounting and cost forecasts, not at all on revenues).
Search for "Congressional Budget Office Projected Costs of US Nuclear Forces"
This is just a summary but it does explicitly break out delivery systems O&M.
Between one thing and another the CBO for 2017 comes up with $17.2B for the DOD and $9.7 for the DOE (thats your $10B).
The CBO caveat is that the military costs do not include pro-rated overhead for the services or the DOD, and does not include total O&M for systems with conventional roles as well. IIRC we may be talking up to 20% for overhead.
So say $30B annually. That suits the CBO general estimate of 6% of the defense budget,
You have to remember that US spending on nuclear systems collapsed post-cold war. You had over 60 SSBNs once, and 500+ SAC bombers in service, and ongoing programs, and extensive tactical weapons systems. Maybe in the 1980s you may have been looking at 20% of the defense budget, but its much less now.
The other important point is that your nuclear delivery systems are, mainly, a pile of old junk, and that includes all the strategic systems. The only new stuff is dual-purpose.
Everything you still have is legacy stuff. Your newest SSBN is twenty years old this year, your oldest is 33. Your ICBMs, still in service, were made in the 1970s. These are, many of them, and certainly their silos, the very same ones argued over by Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972. Maybe some of todays USAF missile officers are occupying the silos their grandfathers looked after.
You may get programs, expensive ones, to update all this old junk at some point.
"but the overhead view was a good match, and there were only a handful of buildings in town that could possibly have been the one with the flag mural (and the doors)."
I thought it was NJ, but should have realized that no place in NJ would have an American Flag.
Etienne obviously can't understand numbers or the concept of materiality.
But, if you wish to convince a cow that 2 +2 =4, go ahead.
A ridiculous # of women are dying after birth in the USA from pregnancy induced blood pressure and hemorrhage.
An increasing percentage of births are to immigrant and underclass women, less likely to seek pre-natal care. Then there are the fashionable natural home birth/midwife mothers.
Some years ago, some group claimed we had an awful infant mortality rate compared to the developed world. Turned out we would try to save babies (with mixed success) and list them as life births that much of the world would list as still-born.
Is Hillary president yet?
What happened
Etienne said...
That to me, is the essence of a program that benefits society - you can't opt-out!
"[T]he good of the community takes priority over that of the individual."
bagoh20: If you exclude murder and accidents, Americans actually live longer than the Japanese, and in fact, longest on the planet. We just have a much more violent and risk taking population. This longer life span absent the influence of trauma, points to a superior healthcare system.
"...they adjusted life-expectancy stats to get a rough handle on what life expectancy would have been like had the rates of these deaths [murder and accidents] been the same in all 29 countries. Their result: The U.S. would have ranked first, at 76.9 years of life expectancy — an increase of 1.6 years. Meanwhile, Japan fell from 78.7 years to 76 years, indicating it had been benefiting inordinately from low rates of accidental deaths and homicides."
That last sentence is a very odd way of putting things. Makes it sounds as if the Japanese, those wily Orientals, are being not quite sporting in having a high-trust, low violence society.
The prevention side of "superior health care system" contributes more to lifespan than any "cure" part. That is, good sewers, potable water, infectious disease control, good diet, physical activity, and myriad factors making up high "social capital". Not "superior health care system" as in "I have access to the Mayo Clinic if I get sick", or "I have access to the great expertise of highly experienced gun-shot-wound trauma docs if life among my vibrant, "risk-taking" neighbors gets a little too vibrant".
buwaya said...
Its not the system, its the people, the culture.
When people say "culture" they almost always mean "genes":
CONCLUSIONS: "Ethnicity and birthplace affect prenatal care and birth outcomes but are probably not as significant as racial differences."
wwww: Something has drastically gone wrong with hospital procedure for births in the USA.
Maternal mortality rates increasing in some developed country or other? It's a mystery, it is.
That to me, is the essence of a program that benefits society - you can't opt-out!
It's like a boot, stamping on a human face forever.
Michael k ... This what u mean ....
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949
Etienne wrote: The budget first goes to DoD and Israel...
And Israel? WTF?
It the non-sequitur budget. I kind of like it. If we can get single payer by cutting aid to Israel, we could probably get free college for all by cutting farm subsidies.
... out awhile.
Does this have any connection to James Jones? Althouse.
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