Is spending $750 billion per year on military necessary?

In WW2, one can argue the fight really was about oil. Especially for Japan. Germany would have industrial capacity.

Taiwan is the center and only real production of microchips. Certain semiconductor etc. all this modern stuff we use comes to a halt real quick. It's also 4% of world wealth. We will have to fight for it.

We could also say Kuwait was about securing high grade jet fuel. Only 2 spots in world make it.

We may say Afghanistan was about our inability to extract the rare earth metals and eventually not being worth it.

FernandoV3 wrote:

It's a jobs program.

You are referring to Weaponized Economics. In the end, it always in retrospect proves to be a failed jobs program as you call it. Opportunity Cost: Nations do not fail and then break up into competing tribes due to spending on government sponsored health care for all, high speed rail, elevated trains & subways in large cities, day care assistance and tuition free education for those ages 3 to 23 plus tuition free education for health care providers. Weaponized Economics in the end always proves to be a failure. A quick failure because M.I.C., even when there is no immediate need for large air force, large army & large navy, M.I.C. in nations with large military ALWAYS resist efforts to down size large military. Then one day, the whole thing falls apart. Show me letters to the editor from mid-1989 &/or college papers or graduate school papers you wrote in mid-1989 predicting the fall of East Germany and Soviet Union in 1989.

That settles it. If the Romans had just built more high speed rail and subways we'd all be speaking Latin.

I worked for a letter agency you might call affiliated with this nation's miltary, and had meetings with people I will not identify.

The volume of cash, that we'd all but burn, because otherwise we'd lose it and that would cause the end of the world, was staggering.

I am guessing you are 50 plus years old. Show us letters to the editor &/or college or grad school papers you wrote in 1989 predicting fall of East Germany and Soviet Union. Weaponized Economics with large M.I.C. is always seen as good to individuals who advocate as you advocate until it all falls apart.

applied economics wrote:

I am guessing you are 50 plus years old. Show us letters to the editor &/or college or grad school papers you wrote in 1989 predicting fall of East Germany and Soviet Union. Weaponized Economics with large M.I.C. is always seen as good to individuals who advocate as you advocate until it all falls apart.

Stop confirming lay-people's suspicious that economics is solely built upon correlation -> causation conflation!

applied economics wrote:

I am guessing you are 50 plus years old. Show us letters to the editor &/or college or grad school papers you wrote in 1989 predicting fall of East Germany and Soviet Union. Weaponized Economics with large M.I.C. is always seen as good to individuals who advocate as you advocate until it all falls apart.

Anybody who uses the past to predict the future is dumb.

Anyone who doesn't is moronic.

Harambe wrote:

Modern semiconductors fabrication is ridiculously complicated and TSMC has a near monopoly on the latest and greatest tech -- uses UV lasers or something. Intel is committing like $30 billionto try and catch up.

In other words the equivalent of two weeks of the current military budget.

I want Drew Hunter's form wrote:

I worked for a letter agency you might call affiliated with this nation's miltary, and had meetings with people I will not identify.

The volume of cash, that we'd all but burn, because otherwise we'd lose it and that would cause the end of the world, was staggering.

I worked for a company that occasionally received defense contracts. They were referred to as Weapons of Mass Expense. It was amazing how the company would do a 180 degree turn on all sorts of issues, e.g. Civil programme, "What do you mean you need new computers? Windows 98 is a perfectly good operating system." Military programme, "New state of the art lap tops for everyone."

The "use it or loose it" money culture is very real. We would get pressure to spend money faster as the end of the fiscal year approached. Having money left over was a huge no-no. Money couldn't be carried over and any programme that underspent risked getting its budget reduced and the difference given to a rival programme that had successfully run out of money four weeks before the end of the financial year.

It was also repulsive the way that all the cockroaches would come out of the woodwork once they knew you had defense money. Potential sub-contractor, "We know absolutely nothing about this subject but if you give us $5 million we will hire a few people who have read about it on Wikipedia. Then we can submit a proposal."

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?

You wrote a lot of good stuff, but kind of lost credibility when you said you want to take a train to Kansas City. That place sucks.

Anyway, don't criticize america by making china sound peaceful. They just finished murdering the ughurs, beating and murdering Hong Kong protesters, sending their military to help fishermen rape the pacific ocean by the galapagos, got into a border skirmish with india, and are continuing their saber rattling in the south China sea. All those things have happened this year, even if some started in prior years.

Raddison wrote:

Harambe wrote:

Modern semiconductors fabrication is ridiculously complicated and TSMC has a near monopoly on the latest and greatest tech -- uses UV lasers or something. Intel is committing like $30 billionto try and catch up.

In other words the equivalent of two weeks of the current military budget.

It's not the money that's the issue.

Yes. Next.

Harambe wrote:

Raddison wrote:

In other words the equivalent of two weeks of the current military budget.

It's not the money that's the issue.

So what is the issue? Please don't say it is time. In the late 1930s the British Aerospace companies were still designing biplanes for the military. In November 1944 the last of the biplanes was introduced into service by the Royal Air Force, the Supermarine Sea Otter. However, four months earlier the Gloster Meteor, the first British and Allied jet fighter, entered service.

The USA went from building their first jet aircraft to breaking the sound barrier in just three years. Three years after that the F-86 Canadair Sabre became the first production aircraft to break the sound barrier.

It took just eight years for the USA to go from their first manned flight to first man on the moon.

It is not going to take the USA 20 years to catch up on chip manufacturing technology.

Anyway, according to the TSMC web site the USA does not need to do anything to catch up:

The annual capacity of the manufacturing facilities managed by TSMC and its subsidiaries . . . and two 8-inch wafer fabs at wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech in the United States

In May 2020, TSMC announced its intention to build and operate an advanced semiconductor fab in the United States, in order to better support customers and partners there as well as to attract global talents. This facility, to be built in Arizona, will utilize TSMC’s 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication and will have a capacity of 20,000 semiconductor wafers per month. Construction is planned to start in 2021 with production targeted for 2024.

So really it is just Intel that needs to catch up - not the USA.

You sorrily underestimate what even 3 years of global chip shortage would do the global economy.

There are countless industries with complicated global supply chains sensitive to violence or other political aggression. Having to repatriate all manufacturing to the USA is one alternative to a global military force, but that is probably more costly than 750 billion a year. TSMC is just one example of a crucially important industry ostensibly supported by the US military.

I agree there is room to cut the military budget. My argument is more that the US military serves a valuable purpose beyond the college sophomore 'imperialism is bad' arguments that many in this thread like to make.

history knower wrote:

You sorrily underestimate what even 3 years of global chip shortage would do the global economy.

Harambe's original post was about how the US does not have the technology to make these chips and it will take them 10 to 20 years and $30 billion to catch up. My point is they already have the technology, maybe not 100% of the knowledge to apply the technology, but a good 95%. The catch up will be very quick.

So should the USA:

A) Hope that nothing comes of the current PRC sabre rattling?

B) Hope that the current pro independence DPP government in Taiwan collapses and the 'One China' Kuomintang get back into power?

C) Actually invest some money to increase chip manufacturing in the USA?

I doubt they will do C as they won't be able to compete with Taiwan on price. I would expect the military have first dibs on the current US manufactured chips. I think they are expecting A will happen, and it will all just be a repeat of 1954, 1958 and 1996.

Also I imagine that behind the scenes they are telling Tsai Ing-wen to tone it down a bit and telling Xi Jinping the "one country, two systems" idea is a non starter after what happened in Hong Kong. Basically everything will settle down once we all return to the "One-China policy" which every president from Nixon onwards has supported; the PRC support and the Kuomintang support. Under this "consensus", both governments "agree" that there is only one sovereign state encompassing both mainland China and Taiwan, but disagree about which of the two governments is the legitimate government of this state.

Harambe wrote:

There are countless industries with complicated global supply chains sensitive to violence or other political aggression. Having to repatriate all manufacturing to the USA is one alternative to a global military force, but that is probably more costly than 750 billion a year. TSMC is just one example of a crucially important industry ostensibly supported by the US military.

I agree there is room to cut the military budget. My argument is more that the US military serves a valuable purpose beyond the college sophomore 'imperialism is bad' arguments that many in this thread like to make.

This is the crux of the issue. The company I retired from invested heavily in China for component manufacturing. It started as just "hardware store" type parts but soon progressed to more complex parts and eventually critical parts. All because it was so much cheaper. Then about 10 years ago they realised they were loosing the knowledge to make these parts at home and so started a strategic withdrawal of complex and critical parts from China. China still makes the majority of the parts but there is the capability to quickly ramp up production at home should everything go to pieces.

In a previous post just above this I mentioned that I would guess the current US policy is to have enough in house capacity to meet defense and other critical needs but for consumer needs they are happy to go with the lower price source and rely on their not being any invasion. Hopefully they have plans in place to ramp up production should everything go to pieces in Taiwan.

One final comment: To me the bigger issue is not "Who makes the chips?" but "Who makes the machines that make the chips?" If these machines are all made in Taiwan then the West has seriously put itself behind the 8-ball.

Master of Lolly wrote:

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

$7586 per taxpayer.

I believe in defense spending wholeheartedly. I don't like taxes but I will pay them if it means we have a strong military.

Without a strong military guarding our country, we won't have the freedoms we do have and the life we have to live without worrying about invasion. I'm a big supporter of the military industrial complex, because it provides employment for several of my friends.

Reagan got it in the '80s. Trump kinda got it. Biden is getting rid of it. :(

mike weston from burn notice wrote:

Is that spending necessary?

I guess it depends. Ask Poland how they liked being overrun and enslaved first by the Nazis and then second by the Communists? What value do they put on being able to stop that?

A lot of libs in Columbus crap all over America (not all, some moderate liberals are ok, to be completely honest), but take the way of life we have for granted. Especially those who live near OSU and campus. I love Columbus but there are parts I wish were more red.

Same with Kent State. I went there. One of the biggest mistakes of my life. I was the ROTC reporter there and they actually liked me because I loved the military, which was rare, as most "reporters" at KSU fall for the liberal lies there.