3 ms·
> If we hadn’t wasted the trillions of dollars on the last 16 years of war War is actually one of the cheaper parts of the budget.
by microcolonel 9y ago
> If we hadn’t wasted the trillions of dollars on the last 16 years of war
War is actually one of the cheaper parts of the budget.
- pessimizer 9y agoAnd the least productive.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoIt’s extremely productive if you include the resources we are able to patriate into the private sector after the wars.
- cperciva 9y agoThat depends on (a) if you're looking at only the supplemental war funding, or if you include a share of the DoD baseline budget as well; and (b) if you're looking at gross expenditures (in which case social security is the highest expense) or net expenditures (in which case social security is currently "self-funding" through its earmarked payroll tax).
- jfoutz 9y agoThe expensive parts, have specific taxes to pay for specific programs. War on the other hand, it's just kinda, let's spend a bunch of money and worry about it later. That makes a lot of sense when you're averting genocide or actively under attack. it makes less sense when you're already funding a powerful influential state department that can impose sanctions with strong international support. You can afford a whole lot of diplomacy for a few billion dollars, but that won't really buy you a lot of war. Also, not so many people die. Which i think is a bonus.