"the US can cut from defence"

>>>I would think so, since we spend more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined.

I think your figures are alittle wrong, but I'll go with it and answer that we also have the most area and people to protect and have a very high standard of living for the military personel.

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"If I didn't live in Ohio I would love to live in Texas, it's the only place where drinking beer and kickin' ass is still accepted." -Roman

We also spend quite a bit on military arms that quite frankly we do not need in todays modern for of warfare.

The US is behind the rest of the developed world in healthcar and Education.
I would also like to see our borders enforced by the military

I'll go with you on the education, but I still think that our health care is second to none as far as quality.

Education is the reason I don't want for our health care to be socialized. Education has been socialized for years, leading to very little competion for the public school system. And, now our schools suck. All of them teach to a test and only compete for not being the worst, rather than being the best. But, what does it matter, the teachers get paid none-the-less. We can't fix this problem and keep our overly socialized schools.

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"If I didn't live in Ohio I would love to live in Texas, it's the only place where drinking beer and kickin' ass is still accepted." -Roman

How true education in this country is poor to fair depending on the school district. I would like to see great schools. but sadly science and Math are still sub-par

Why should they get better? Their jobs aren't at risk thanks to socialism.

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"If I didn't live in Ohio I would love to live in Texas, it's the only place where drinking beer and kickin' ass is still accepted." -Roman

I think one reason that our math and science scores seem so low is because we test everybody. I am pretty sure that the nations we are being compared to are just testing kids in their upper level schools. For example, an Italian student told me that they have schools for college bound students and schools for the non-college bound who are just learning a trade. While there is nothing wrong with that, in fact I like the idea, not all of those kids are being tested. I am not saying we would score higher than everyone else or anyone else if we did this also, but it does effect the scores. I think our best compete with other countries best, but we do consider everybody when testing.

You theory may hold water.
My little brother who is going to High School in Jordan has already completed advanced Caculus.......I go to University here and never even had to even take Begining Calculus..........in Jordan to graduate High School you have to take an extreemly difficult test called the "Tawjeehee" and from what I hear it is very hard to pass...........My dad passed with a 59% mark and he went on to study here in the states ( he did not qualify for college in Jordan) and he was a A military engineer and latewr an Aerospace Engineer here in the states and did a lot of work on the "International Space Station" until his retirement last year

PS the International Space station is International in name only, my Father through an American company was the Senior Project Engineer for both the Japanese and Europeans

Doesn't really make any difference to me. I don't have insurance and don't want it. But then I don't go to the doctor much either. I think I've paid out as much to the Dr. in the past three and a half years as most people do for insurance in a month. So, I just put the cash in savings, draw interest on it and if the time comes that I do have some real medical issues, it will be there. If not, the kids will have that much more when I'm gone. I prefer that rather than giving it all to some insurance joker who's gonna argue with me about every other charge on a bill and then leave my money to his kids.

Well, that's an interesting take on the situation... but what I said earlier holds true for doctors and defense contractors as well - their odds are a lot higher of getting a fatal disease at some point than they are of being killed by a foreign enemy.

I imagine the profit possibility for the defense contractor is probably a much higher incentive than any fear of invasion, though, don't you?

Here's some Country information from the CIA World Factbook:

China
Total Area: 9,596,960 sq. km
Population: 1,313,973,713
Military Expenditures: $81.48 billion

United States
Total Area: 9,631,420 sq. km
Population: 298,444,215
Military Expenditures: $518.1 billion

China has about the same area as the US, has over 4 times the population, but only spends 1/6 as much as the US on the military.