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> If we spent... $200 billion less on defense, which we easily could afford to do, the Federal Government could kick that money down to the states for other pur

> If we spent... $200 billion less on defense, which we easily could afford to do, the Federal Government could kick that money down to the states for other purpose I read comments like this all the time, and while I don't disagree, I'm not sure anyone realizes just how many jobs will be cut if "we spend xxxbn less on defense." All of that money goes somewhere, the vast majority of it goes into either parts (created by labor) or labor itself. I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil, but that money also supports (if I had to swag it) hundreds of thousands of US jobs.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Defense spending is the ultimate welfare program, draped in a flag.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
I'm sure that spending $200 billion on teacher salaries will recycle that money back into the community much faster & more efficiently than it will spending it on missiles.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  The measures talked about are not intended to reduce teacher salaries, that is basically impossible. Paying teachers more is not going to make the schools open on Friday.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    What? Having more money WILL allow you to keep the school open on Friday?
- rayiner 9y ago
  That sounds truthy but I doubt it. Teachers and administrators are all college educated. The military in contrast creates tons of non-college degree jobs. And a lot of the spending on defense contractors goes to skilled blue collar factory jobs. (Defense contractors, contrary to popular belief, have pretty small profit margins, and skilled labor is a huge fraction of their costs.)
lurker456 9y ago
But spending that $200 billion on primary education doesn't make it disappear in a black hole either. One could even argue that money spent on DOD budgets trickles down less to the inhabitants of the state that raised the money in taxes in the first place compared to money spent on education.
cortesoft 9y ago
If the purpose of defense spending is just to provide jobs, then hire those people to do something else. When we say we want to spend less on defense, we want to spend that same money on something else (education in this case); where do you think that money is going to go? It is going to create jobs as well, and much more efficiently than defense spending does. When you pay someone to teach, you get both a job (the teacher) and an improved resource that can produce more later (the student). When you pay someone to make a weapon, you get the job, but the weapon isn't going to help produce more later (in fact, it will waste resources it blows up)
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
> I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil, but that money also supports (if I had to swag it) hundreds of thousands of US jobs. If we spent that same money in a different industry it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs there too. At the extreme we could also spend this money paying people to dig holes and full them and still support just as many jobs. As a country we have to stop thinking of govt spending as a flat cost and instead get back to thinking of it as an investment. What does this money gain the country and when? Are we efficiently allocating our capital to maximise our return. When consider at the margin, will additional investment/production in area X get us better return than an additional dollar in Y? In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt. And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  In fact, education could provide more jobs since it's expenses are mostly modestly provide workers whereas a large portion of defense spending goes to materials, highly paid specialists and contractor profits. Of course, we would also need to cull the large mass of education pseudo-specialists who would want to suck up those Federal dollars. But if we could somehow move spending from defense to education, we might also be able to remove the parasitic consultant-layer on top of this field.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt. And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options. Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more-money-fix-americas-schools http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more....
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    > Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes That may be true of education budget in general, but what about these Oklahoma schools that are only open 4 days a week? Would boosting these school budgets be worthwhile?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
MarkMc 9y ago
True, but it's about more than jobs. Imagine the US government was spending $50 billion building 'bridges to nowhere'. Would you support this scheme because it employs thousands of US workers? Currently the US spends $598 billion per year on the military. To me, the US would be better off spending $548 billion on its military and and extra $50 billion on education. There would be fewer soldiers and more teachers, so in the short term it might not have an effect on total number of jobs. But the 'return on investment' of that extra education spending would be far more valuable than the loss of military power that the US would be giving up. Cutting the defence budget to boost education might actually mean a stronger military in the longer term if it leads to higher GDP and more engineers to build military robots and drones.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > Currently the US spends $598 billion per year on the military. To me, the US would be better off spending $548 billion on its military and and extra $50 billion on education We already spend over $600 billion per year on education. What concrete goal would reallocating $50 billion from the military to education achieve? It's also a false dichotomy. If the goal is to really help people, let's cut 10% from both and cut a check for $200/month to every school-aged child.
danmaz74 9y ago
See it this way: you lose $jobs in the defense industry sector, but create $jobs in the education sector. Which investment will bring a better ROI?
- irishcoffee 9y ago
  Venn diagram: $x_jobs lost, $y_jobs gained, $z_jobs overlap. $z_jobs is much much smaller than you may think. What does the machinist at boeing do when their job is cut? Teach torch-welding at the local highschool?
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    But why are $x_jobs-$z_jobs more deserving of having a state-subsidized job than $y_jobs-$z_jobs?
dang 9y ago
> I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil Please don't make up generalizations about the community as a rhetorical device in arguments. HN is divided on most issues—people just tend to notice the comments they disagree with or dislike. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14434569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14434569 and marked it off-topic.
- irishcoffee 9y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/300px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Pa...

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Defense spending is the ultimate welfare program, draped in a flag.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

I'm sure that spending $200 billion on teacher salaries will recycle that money back into the community much faster & more efficiently than it will spending it on missiles.

microcolonel 9y ago
The measures talked about are not intended to reduce teacher salaries, that is basically impossible. Paying teachers more is not going to make the schools open on Friday.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  What? Having more money WILL allow you to keep the school open on Friday?
rayiner 9y ago
That sounds truthy but I doubt it. Teachers and administrators are all college educated. The military in contrast creates tons of non-college degree jobs. And a lot of the spending on defense contractors goes to skilled blue collar factory jobs. (Defense contractors, contrary to popular belief, have pretty small profit margins, and skilled labor is a huge fraction of their costs.)

lurker456 9y ago

But spending that $200 billion on primary education doesn't make it disappear in a black hole either. One could even argue that money spent on DOD budgets trickles down less to the inhabitants of the state that raised the money in taxes in the first place compared to money spent on education.

cortesoft 9y ago

If the purpose of defense spending is just to provide jobs, then hire those people to do something else. When we say we want to spend less on defense, we want to spend that same money on something else (education in this case); where do you think that money is going to go? It is going to create jobs as well, and much more efficiently than defense spending does. When you pay someone to teach, you get both a job (the teacher) and an improved resource that can produce more later (the student). When you pay someone to make a weapon, you get the job, but the weapon isn't going to help produce more later (in fact, it will waste resources it blows up)

BoiledCabbage 9y ago

> I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil, but that money also supports (if I had to swag it) hundreds of thousands of US jobs. If we spent that same money in a different industry it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs there too. At the extreme we could also spend this money paying people to dig holes and full them and still support just as many jobs. As a country we have to stop thinking of govt spending as a flat cost and instead get back to thinking of it as an investment. What does this money gain the country and when? Are we efficiently allocating our capital to maximise our return. When consider at the margin, will additional investment/production in area X get us better return than an additional dollar in Y? In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt. And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options.

joe_the_user 9y ago
In fact, education could provide more jobs since it's expenses are mostly modestly provide workers whereas a large portion of defense spending goes to materials, highly paid specialists and contractor profits. Of course, we would also need to cull the large mass of education pseudo-specialists who would want to suck up those Federal dollars. But if we could somehow move spending from defense to education, we might also be able to remove the parasitic consultant-layer on top of this field.
rayiner 9y ago
> In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt. And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options. Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more-money-fix-americas-schools http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more....
- MarkMc 9y ago
  > Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes That may be true of education budget in general, but what about these Oklahoma schools that are only open 4 days a week? Would boosting these school budgets be worthwhile?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

MarkMc 9y ago

True, but it's about more than jobs. Imagine the US government was spending $50 billion building 'bridges to nowhere'. Would you support this scheme because it employs thousands of US workers? Currently the US spends $598 billion per year on the military. To me, the US would be better off spending $548 billion on its military and and extra $50 billion on education. There would be fewer soldiers and more teachers, so in the short term it might not have an effect on total number of jobs. But the 'return on investment' of that extra education spending would be far more valuable than the loss of military power that the US would be giving up. Cutting the defence budget to boost education might actually mean a stronger military in the longer term if it leads to higher GDP and more engineers to build military robots and drones.

rayiner 9y ago
> Currently the US spends $598 billion per year on the military. To me, the US would be better off spending $548 billion on its military and and extra $50 billion on education We already spend over $600 billion per year on education. What concrete goal would reallocating $50 billion from the military to education achieve? It's also a false dichotomy. If the goal is to really help people, let's cut 10% from both and cut a check for $200/month to every school-aged child.

danmaz74 9y ago

See it this way: you lose $jobs in the defense industry sector, but create $jobs in the education sector. Which investment will bring a better ROI?

irishcoffee 9y ago
Venn diagram: $x_jobs lost, $y_jobs gained, $z_jobs overlap. $z_jobs is much much smaller than you may think. What does the machinist at boeing do when their job is cut? Teach torch-welding at the local highschool?
- danmaz74 9y ago
  But why are $x_jobs-$z_jobs more deserving of having a state-subsidized job than $y_jobs-$z_jobs?

dang 9y ago

> I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil Please don't make up generalizations about the community as a rhetorical device in arguments. HN is divided on most issues—people just tend to notice the comments they disagree with or dislike. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14434569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14434569 and marked it off-topic.

irishcoffee 9y ago
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/300px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Pa...