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It's politically unpopular to vote against defense spending or to decrease defense spending, also military service is fetishized to a high degree. It's generall
by stevenwoo 8y ago
It's politically unpopular to vote against defense spending or to decrease defense spending, also military service is fetishized to a high degree. It's generally a winning political strategy to put forward nationalism as patriotism. There is so much defense spending it's like welfare spread out to all the states in the form of defense manufacturing, and we have military bases in economically otherwise not very useful areas. This entrenched political base has proved to be impossible to reform due to the outsized political influence of those rural, thinly populated areas in the Congress and presidential elections.
- throwawayjava 8y ago> There is so much defense spending it's like welfare spread out to all the states in the form of defense manufacturing, and we have military bases in economically otherwise not very useful areas. This is the huge elephant in the room. The USA needs a large jobs program and a massive amount of education funding, especially for rural youth who do not either study a trade or go to college immediately after high school. Providing these things directly with no strings -- or even as compensation for civilian service -- is wildly unpopular. The military is an absolutely massive back-door social program.