To answer your question, it is necessary. Some people just take it for granted.
Is spending $750 billion per year on military necessary?
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It's socialism for defense contractors.
No, it's not necessary. It's evil -
David Hume 2.0 wrote:
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!
1) No need to start a debate about economics as an academic area of study.
2) No need to start a debate about economics as it relates to careers in federal or state government, at least not on this thread. No need to start a debate about economics as a career in commercial or investment banking, at least not on this thread.
3) Posters, either on the payroll of M.I.C. or were on the payroll of M.I.C. are digging in. Acting as if the whole thing cannot implode. I asked the most prolific poster on this thread about his position of now former Soviet Union summer and early fall, 1989 BEFORE the collapse of then Soviet Union. More of a recent history question than economics, would not you agree? No response. Acting as if U.S. M.I.C. is not too big now that U.S. is #1. The former #1 M.I.C. (Soviet Union) failed, not too long ago, 1989 or 1990. A reasonable question to ask. -
FernandoV3 wrote:
It's a jobs program.
'Murica. The country obsessed with small government unless it's the military. Perhaps the military should be totally privatised cos you know it's communism otherwise. -
No! The US military is a big bloated outdated machine. A military is still needed but not the one that currently exists. Don't buy into all the right wing propaganda they keep spewing out. It's all fear mongering brought to you by the military-industry complex.
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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.
Are you comparing empires, where you could use slaves captured from invasions, to do all the labor, to today? -
applied economics wrote:
1) No need to start a debate about economics as an academic area of study.
2) No need to start a debate about economics as it relates to careers in federal or state government, at least not on this thread. No need to start a debate about economics as a career in commercial or investment banking, at least not on this thread.
3) Posters, either on the payroll of M.I.C. or were on the payroll of M.I.C. are digging in. Acting as if the whole thing cannot implode. I asked the most prolific poster on this thread about his position of now former Soviet Union summer and early fall, 1989 BEFORE the collapse of then Soviet Union. More of a recent history question than economics, would not you agree? No response. Acting as if U.S. M.I.C. is not too big now that U.S. is #1. The former #1 M.I.C. (Soviet Union) failed, not too long ago, 1989 or 1990. A reasonable question to ask.
Bruh if you studied ec and aren’t either 1) pushing out prior-affirming studies for your Washington DC fat cat funders or 2) plundering the retirement funds of hardworking Americans on Wall Street what are your options….?
Get paid less than software engineers at a tech company?
The US is significantly more prosperous and more reliant on global trade than the USSR. Comparisons are superficial at best. -
Jolly Rodger wrote:
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.
Why should a conservative have any problem with China reclaiming its territory?
In case you didn't notice, the Democrats became the warmongering party more than 10 years ago. They're the ones who would want to stop the Chinese from taking over China. Just like they tried to stop the Afghans from taking over Afghanistan, the Vietnamese from taking over Vietnam, the Syrians from defending their country against the Turks and Saudis. -
People like make stick to booom boooom haha coool bro whooooosh plane go zoom bomb go boom hahaha
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So where should the military be cut?
Pay and benefits? Pension?
Saying it's just too big doesn't provide a solution.
Alan -
Runningart2004 wrote:
So where should the military be cut?
Pay and benefits? Pension?
I think there are a few areas that could be cut without affecting the fighting capability of the military:
1) Bureaucratic Overhead: In 2019 the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supported 1.3 million troops on active duty. This includes 192,000 workers just to handle the department’s “real property management.” I don't know the present numbers but I assume that haven't changed much. It has almost got to the point where each soldier has his own personal bureaucrat looking after him. I can't find it now but I once saw a statistic that the Defense Department had more Purchasing Agents than it did Marines.
2) Eliminate Empire Culture: I feel the Defense Department has a corruptive Empire Culture, the bigger my budget and the more staff I have, the more important I am. A 5% increase in the Procurement department will immediately trigger cries from the Contracts and Accounting Departments that they too need more staff. Similarly, all three departments will join ranks to resist any budget cuts to one department due to the potential knock on effects to the other two.
3) Stop the Corporate Welfare Programmes: The Alternative Engine for the F-35 is a classic example. For 13 years Pratt & Whitney sponsored Congressmen fought with General Electric sponsored Congressmen over whether the F-35 needed an alternative engine. Basically $2.5 billion was funnelled into GE to provide an engine that neither Lockheed or the Pentagon wanted. It finally died in 2012. Interestingly the Pentagon have stated that the Block 4 modifications will need increased power and thermal management capability from the F-35's propulsion system. This, coupled with some recent problems with the heat-protective coating on the P&W turbine rotor blades becoming worn out faster than was expected, has resulted in lobbying to re-start the Alternative Engine Programme. As somebody at the time said, "What's next? The Alternative Undercarriage? The Alternative Cockpit? The Alternative Avionics Suite?
4) Eliminate the "All Defense spending is good defense spending" culture: Unfortunately a segment of the US public has been manipulated to believe that the laying off of one accountant or one janitor or the consolidating of beret manufacturing to just one plant will result in the Chinese and Russians immediately invading and subduing the country in less than 48 hours. Cuts to the Defense budget is so taboo that I imagine most members of Congress would rather make eid al fitr a national holiday than cut the Defense Budget. There is a lot of unnecessary overhead and a lot of corporate welfare that could be eliminated. For every Alternative Engine programme, mentioned above, there are dozens of smaller ones all flying below the radar. Many of these are almost comical and would be immediately thrown out if they were proposed to a private corporation.
I know this reply is a bit of a rant but I've seen this stuff from the inside and it is depressing. -
^good post, thanks. Lots of places to save costs it seems. There’s a middle ground between “the US will fail as a state if it supports a powerful military” and “cutting one cent is an invitation for China to invade Taiwan”
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dying on the outside wrote:
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.
Yeah I don't get why this can't be a bi-partisan thing. Why do conservatives (& enough liberals) who do the bidding of the rich & the military industrial complex just spit out talking points railing against public good instead of calling this stuff out. We could have more/better public goods or lower taxes if we prioritized the people living in this country instead of its military. Instead of caring so much about someone kneeling to call-out police brutality, maybe pay attention to the bigger picture. -
That’s not even a full trillion dollar coin
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Raddison wrote:
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."
Programme? HAHAHAHA
Moronic troll. -
How would you reshape it?
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Harambe wrote:
^good post, thanks. Lots of places to save costs it seems. There’s a middle ground between “the US will fail as a state if it supports a powerful military” and “cutting one cent is an invitation for China to invade Taiwan”
Savings from eliminating waste is good. Doing what many on the left want is not. They really don't want a strong military.
