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Sorry this is taking your comment on a tangent, but it is not exactly peace time for the USA, nor has it been since the 1960's or arguably since WW2 if you take

Sorry this is taking your comment on a tangent, but it is not exactly peace time for the USA, nor has it been since the 1960's or arguably since WW2 if you take the cold war into account. The USA has been involved in one or another war for literally decades now...or does minor wars not count?

cm2187 10y ago
I don't think we can compare the Gulf wars with the all out World Wars. And none of the European countries or Japan were making any war effort, and accumulated as much if not more debt over the same period.
- Theodores 10y ago
  Didn't the US drop more bombs on Laos in a secret war than all the bombs dropped in WW2? I do not have the figures but in these 'little wars' there has been a lot of silver spent on munitions. The whole process is just a lot more efficient so we are not at total war on the domestic front, just paying our taxes so the military can buy vastly more effective killing machines. Things may have gone away from the unguided bombs of times gone past, war zones may be in different places, but otherwise, there is a lot to compare today's wars with WW1/WW2 when it comes to $$$ spend and devastation caused.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    During ww2, the US were constructing one aircraft carrier a week. I don't think anything of these conflicts matched that ever since.
TheCoelacanth 10y ago
Post WW2 has been one of the most peaceful periods ever in human history. It might not be peace in the absolute sense, but it's about the closest humans have ever achieved.
- kabouseng 10y ago
  I doubt the people or Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kuwait, Somalia, SAR or Serbia would agree with you, to name just a few... If I may ask, how do you get to your statement? Is there some metric one can look at to determine it?
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Because those regions were so much more peaceful when the Mongols or the Ottomans or the crusaders were rampaging through them /s I'm not saying that there isn't localized violence, just that global level is down. Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature is one source to support this idea.
    - kabouseng 10y ago
      No I was genuinely wondering what is the basis for that statement (I have heard it before), or if it was just sentiment. I'll add Stephen Pinker's book to my reading list. Yes it's an old debate whether the US should have gotten involved in all these conflicts, but back to your original point: That the US national debt has increased dramatically in peace time. My point is that it is not peace time, and that a substantial part of that debt stems from the US's military industrial complex. It is after all not nothing that (famous tv saying) "the US spends more on defense than the next 26 countries combined" or something like that.

cm2187 10y ago

I don't think we can compare the Gulf wars with the all out World Wars. And none of the European countries or Japan were making any war effort, and accumulated as much if not more debt over the same period.

Theodores 10y ago
Didn't the US drop more bombs on Laos in a secret war than all the bombs dropped in WW2? I do not have the figures but in these 'little wars' there has been a lot of silver spent on munitions. The whole process is just a lot more efficient so we are not at total war on the domestic front, just paying our taxes so the military can buy vastly more effective killing machines. Things may have gone away from the unguided bombs of times gone past, war zones may be in different places, but otherwise, there is a lot to compare today's wars with WW1/WW2 when it comes to $$$ spend and devastation caused.
- cm2187 10y ago
  During ww2, the US were constructing one aircraft carrier a week. I don't think anything of these conflicts matched that ever since.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago

Post WW2 has been one of the most peaceful periods ever in human history. It might not be peace in the absolute sense, but it's about the closest humans have ever achieved.

kabouseng 10y ago
I doubt the people or Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kuwait, Somalia, SAR or Serbia would agree with you, to name just a few... If I may ask, how do you get to your statement? Is there some metric one can look at to determine it?
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Because those regions were so much more peaceful when the Mongols or the Ottomans or the crusaders were rampaging through them /s I'm not saying that there isn't localized violence, just that global level is down. Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature is one source to support this idea.
  - kabouseng 10y ago
    No I was genuinely wondering what is the basis for that statement (I have heard it before), or if it was just sentiment. I'll add Stephen Pinker's book to my reading list. Yes it's an old debate whether the US should have gotten involved in all these conflicts, but back to your original point: That the US national debt has increased dramatically in peace time. My point is that it is not peace time, and that a substantial part of that debt stems from the US's military industrial complex. It is after all not nothing that (famous tv saying) "the US spends more on defense than the next 26 countries combined" or something like that.