Is spending $750 billion per year on military necessary?

uuh let me check the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and recent invasions + drone murders to see who is the warmonger.

F no.

Our military hasn't won a war in 30 years. Plus they fly the gay flag , and invade nations so we can set up puppet governments for McDonald's to open franchises overseas.

Economies are dynamic so it does not always mean $1 on military means one less dollar for financial aid, but it is close. We cannot have nice things in U.S. due to U.S. military budget. It is budget plus btw. Add C.I.A. on the books budget, C.I.A. off the books budget, costs spread around in hidden in other federal government department budgets, State Department, N.S.A., etc.

We should have high speed hydrail getting us from Minneapolis to Chicago and/or Minneapolis to Kansas City, MO in less than 4 hours. We should have Positive Train Control brakes on all Amtrak rail roads.

We should have tuition free education from age three to age 23 plus tuition free education for medical personnel beyond age 23. Ask: When was the last time China bombed another nation?

Dominance of global trade, being the global reserve currency, having enormous bargining power in global politics... all these things are caused or strongly supported by having the world's largest military.

There's certainly room for cost savings but I think it's easy for people to overlook the economic benefits of a strong military.

With China positioning itself as an economic and military superpower, I fail to see an alternative if we want to remain the economic hegemon...

Harambe wrote:

Dominance of global trade, being the global reserve currency, having enormous bargining power in global politics... all these things are caused or strongly supported by having the world's largest military.

There's certainly room for cost savings but I think it's easy for people to overlook the economic benefits of a strong military.

With China positioning itself as an economic and military superpower, I fail to see an alternative if we want to remain the economic hegemon...

Who told you that?

A list of other nations who previously had the strongest military in the world (no evidence for your analysis):

1) Soviet Union

2) Great Britain

3) Spain

4) Roman Empire

Your type of thinking is why all empires collapse.

applied economics wrote:

Harambe wrote:

Dominance of global trade, being the global reserve currency, having enormous bargining power in global politics... all these things are caused or strongly supported by having the world's largest military.

There's certainly room for cost savings but I think it's easy for people to overlook the economic benefits of a strong military.

With China positioning itself as an economic and military superpower, I fail to see an alternative if we want to remain the economic hegemon...

Who told you that?

A list of other nations who previously had the strongest military in the world (no evidence for your analysis):

1) Soviet Union

2) Great Britain

3) Spain

4) Roman Empire

Your type of thinking is why all empires collapse.

Yeah and they all enjoyed excellent economic conditions (especially considering geographic limitations of GB, for example)!

This is good evidence that a strong military = good quality of life (relatively...).

Just because nations with a strong military have gone to zero doesn't mean the strong military wasn't necessary for their economic dominance, yeah?

I'd love to hear a proposal for a economically successful country that doesn't have a strong military OR rely on close alliances with a strong nation. "Have a lot of oil" might be one of the only ways around this, but that's clearly not gonna last long. Oh, and "let rich people hide their money" but that only works on a small scale.

applied economics wrote:

Economies are dynamic so it does not always mean $1 on military means one less dollar for financial aid, but it is close. We cannot have nice things in U.S. due to U.S. military budget. It is budget plus btw. Add C.I.A. on the books budget, C.I.A. off the books budget, costs spread around in hidden in other federal government department budgets, State Department, N.S.A., etc.

We should have high speed hydrail getting us from Minneapolis to Chicago and/or Minneapolis to Kansas City, MO in less than 4 hours. We should have Positive Train Control brakes on all Amtrak rail roads.

We should have tuition free education from age three to age 23 plus tuition free education for medical personnel beyond age 23. Ask: When was the last time China bombed another nation?

+1. Military spending and investment over the last 50 years is why we can't have many or all of these things simultaneously:

National High Speed Rail

Universal Healthcare (no health insurance needed!)

Excellent infrastructure

Better Social Security payments

Public housing investment (there's not enough houses, what if we made more? Decreased financial barriers to home ownership)

Free trades and college education (you need it for most jobs worth doing and worth being done)

Option B, for the boomer conservatives who hate when people benefit from tax dollars, is this:

Way lower taxes.

Rich people hide their money just fine within the US. We have alliances with strong militaries. We have a lot of oil (and potentially a lot of renewable resources instead).

Our Military can easily defend the US (and its EcOnOMiC IntEreSTs) with a FRACTION of it's budget. It is oversized, overstretched in useless arenas, redundant in purposes and spending, and wasteful in general.

If you don't recognize that we spend way too much you're being purposely ignorant.

Rich people hide their money just fine within the US. We have alliances with strong militaries. We have a lot of oil (and potentially a lot of renewable resources instead).

Our Military can easily defend the US (and its EcOnOMiC IntEreSTs) with a FRACTION of it's budget. It is oversized, overstretched in useless arenas, redundant in purposes and spending, and wasteful in general.

If you don't recognize that we spend way too much you're being purposely ignorant.

Master of Lolly wrote:

In order not to start speaking chinese: $1.1 trillion debt to China.

$7586 per taxpayer.

$2500ish per US citizen. And yes that is a reasonable ammount. 3-4% of GDP is reasonable. Is it spent properly is another discussion.

Dirty secret the government spending issue is not defense. We could eliminate all defense spending and still be running a massive annual deficit. It is the entitlements that are killing us.

dying on the outside wrote:

Rich people hide their money just fine within the US. We have alliances with strong militaries. We have a lot of oil (and potentially a lot of renewable resources instead).

Our Military can easily defend the US (and its EcOnOMiC IntEreSTs) with a FRACTION of it's budget. It is oversized, overstretched in useless arenas, redundant in purposes and spending, and wasteful in general.

If you don't recognize that we spend way too much you're being purposely ignorant.

We don't have alliances with strong militaries -- are you kidding? Russia and China are #2 and 3 in the world.

If you are proposing that we re-balance military spending across our biggest allies, sure, that's worth discussing.

Defending US Economic interests generally means defending the economic interests of the developed world outside China and Russia. That is going to be expensive. A weaker US would be geopolitically dominated by China and Russia, no doubt.

If your argument is "screw everyone else, pull up the drawbridges, shrink the military, and make do with what we have at home," then you're just a protectionist psychopath.

Did Roman Empire fall over from it's own weight? Yes or No? Did it help Soviet Union to have troops all over the world and numerous tank battalions in Europe? Yes or No? Did Spain get over extended? Yes or No? Did G.B. get over extended? Yes or No?

Maintaining a global economic empire is both Good and Hard.

That is not an argument against trying. Free flowing global trade and the dominance of liberal values is a good thing for quality of life -- worth defending.

When China invades Taiwan in 2025, you and other liberals may finally realize how important it is to have the world's strongest military ALWAYS.

The US military exists solely for the purpose of enforcing discipline on US client states. The idea that the US military's size has strategic impacts on Russia, China, etc. is silly. The Russian military is inferior to the US, but Russia was able to annex Crimea with a flick of the wrist and no response from the US. The US has no intention of armed conflict with any major world power that can actually put up a fight. The US only uses its military against weak countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think you read too many Tom Clancy novels, buddy. We dropped trillions of dollars we are never getting back into the deserts of the middle east. China and Russia flex their military muscles over REGIONAL interests (Taiwan, Ukraine) but are not expansive military mights. Any ground game against the US is just economic expansion (see: Chinese businesses in Africa).

dying on the outside wrote:

I think you read too many Tom Clancy novels, buddy. We dropped trillions of dollars we are never getting back into the deserts of the middle east. China and Russia flex their military muscles over REGIONAL interests (Taiwan, Ukraine) but are not expansive military mights. Any ground game against the US is just economic expansion (see: Chinese businesses in Africa).

Yeah they are not expansive military mights, for now, because the US's strength prevents anything more than 'economic expansion.'

I am VERY sympathetic to the logic: "US military foreign policy has been so disastrously terrible for the last 40+ years that we need to re-think from the ground up." However, I don't think that necessarily precludes having an overwhelmingly strong military.

The question here is what would happen to the US if military budget was reduced to f.e. $250 Billion? $100 Billion?

Would China / Japan / Middle East come for the US? Would baseless printing of the dollar be punished?

Master of Lolly wrote:

The question here is what would happen to the US if military budget was reduced to f.e. $250 Billion? $100 Billion?

Would China / Japan / Middle East come for the US? Would baseless printing of the dollar be punished?

Probably, other countries would pay for military protection, and thus, they would exert control over the US.