7 ms·

Folks, realize that US military spending: - backstops the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, which allows the US to have a large deficit with low risk

• marnett 8y ago
  Sure we can all acknowledge those are all deeply complex and intertwined facts about the U.S. and its military strategy and spending. Foreign policy, both diplomatic and militaristic, are also not democratic - I think some people just want to call out "the worlds exemplar of democracy" spending the largest portion of its budget on undemocratic means. We The People want to see something more meaningful domestically from our tax dollars and public debts - if the elite know better, then drop the facades.
  • aphextron 8y ago
    >We The People want to see something more meaningful domestically from our tax dollars and public debts - if the elite know better, then drop the facades. I think this is what people don't get about US military spending. From the moment you wake up every single day you are directly benefiting from it as an American. The fact that you, as a normal middle class person, are able to step out of your brand new house purchased with a no money down 30 year mortgage, step into a brand new car you don't own that's financed at 2%, drive to a brand new shiny shopping mall, and buy brand new fancy $200 t-shirts at the shopping mall on your no-limit 0% credit card is because of the fiat-reserve currency system setup by the US fed, and defended by the military.
    • marnett 8y ago
      I said that We The People want to see something more meaningful. This would include political policy covering relatively standard democratic ideals: (to keep it extremely simple) health and education. I am aware our public dollars go towards defending the private-enriching capitalistic system you just described. It is ironic you listed all of those things as "benefits" to me - they are exactly what I am saying I do not want. Public expenditures for private gains? I did not vote for that. I want public dollars going to defending something for the majority, not the few.
    • dv_dt 8y ago
      Meanwhile a larger and larger portion of our population declines into third world living conditions.
      • choko 8y ago
        According to the US Census Bureau, poverty in the US has been on the decline since 2010. It's still not below the 2000 levels, but is still declining.
        • dv_dt 8y ago
          It is possible for the total poverty rate to get lower, while the rate and absolute numbers of people in extreme poverty (hence the term third-world) increase. https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/media/_media/pdf/pathways/summer_2014/Pathways_Summer_2014_ShaeferEdin.pdf https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/media/_m... Analysis in this paper also based on Census data. Also, I don't know that I would exactly declare victory on poverty rate based on just recent data. It looks like we've just fought it to a rough standstill from the 70's on, which is disappointing from an advancement of civilization point of view. The 2010 decrease was just getting it back to 1970's level poverty after an increase bubbled up post-2008. https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un... Note the rise in the below 50% poverty level figure in the chart.
          • 8y ago
  • leetcrew 8y ago
    > I think some people just want to call out "the worlds exemplar of democracy" spending the largest portion of its budget on undemocratic means. what do you mean by "largest portion" here?
  • barrow-rider 8y ago
    > spending the largest portion of its budget on undemocratic means That is just simply not true. The largest part of the US budget is ~1.25 trillion USD spent on Social Security and Unemployment, after that it's ~1 trillion on Medicare & Medicade, and ~600 billion on Defense. Make no mistake the US spends wayyyy too much on the military, but it's not #1
• m_fayer 8y ago
  Thinking that this spending is ok based on your reasons amounts to a tacit acceptance of a huge amount of dishonesty, I find it quite cynical. This is a totally ass-backwards way to do stimulus and domestic investing, with the upside that it lets you do stimulus and domestic investing while pretending you're not doing it, but doing something macho and patriotic instead. This is a way to maintain US economic and diplomatic dominance while pretending it's all about Defense/The Homeland/Freedom(tm), all while telling all those soldiers busy getting killed and wounded by (who this time?) and killing bewildered probably innocent (whooo?) that this is all about loving and defending your country. If you can't openly sell empire to your citizens, maybe you shouldn't have an empire.
  • etrautmann 8y ago
    There are multiple points in the parent's post. While I agree that the idea of unnecessary military spending is noxious, the impact of safe global shipping and the unmeasurable deterrent effects for global stability may still be important. It's not clear to me how we measure and assess the value of this vs. hypothetical and more desirable alternatives.
    • m_fayer 8y ago
      If we weren't maintaining safe global shipping and other elements of global stability on the sly and with a self-serving twist, maybe the vacuum would have caused the global community to come together to achieve the same ends, in a more transparent and less lopsided and brutal (one can only hope) way.
      • etrautmann 8y ago
        While I agree that sounds nice, my intuition suggests that the incentives and scale would tend to lead towards conflict. It might be interesting to model the stability of systems like this, though it's a hard problem to model chaotic nonlinear dynamical systems. It's not even clear what the state variables should be, but I'm curious if anyone has tried this.
      • 8y ago
• sbmthakur 8y ago
  Basically, this goes well with "America First" attitude. I don't have a problem with it but things doesn't work out when all big countries keep themselves first.
• tekkk 8y ago
  So you're saying we, the rest of the world, are funding your inefficient military budgets and troops sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other? Had US policymakers little more sense in their heads I'm sure they could achieve the same result (dictators around the world not willing to invade their neighbours) and get actually working infrastructure. But nope, let's waste the money on teaching people how to kill and neglect the actually productive projects for the sake of global "peace". And how's that been working so far? Sure it's hard to assess how much military spending is the "right" amount and how much US prevents unrest on global scale. But let's not kid ourselves, we'd all be better off if we didn't have to spend money on keeping armies. They produce next to nothing on economic growth or scientific progress. We'd be having colonies on Mars if US had spent a part of that money on NASA.
  • achou 8y ago
    Yes, exactly. You, the rest of the world, are indeed subsidizing this system to some extent, and in exchange, far fewer of your own young people are sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other. I won't defend US incompetence wrt infrastructure. But I will observe that "spending more" hardly seems to be the problem, as we seem to do plenty of that already. It's that (lack of) stuff we get in return that's the problem. As far as global "peace", it is certainly true there is still conflict, but from the bigger picture perspective it's been a relatively peaceful half century. Again I'll point to this chart: https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace. Consider that the y-axis is log scale, and contemplate the WWI and WWII bubbles at the top.
    • tekkk 8y ago
      Hmm that's a good point. There's a power balance that would otherwise be filled with for example European countries spending more on their militaries. So in that sense we are paying you for keeping the playing field safe for others. Interesting thought. Still doesn't change the fact that military spending is more or less money wasted. So is it better for you waste that money than us, I don't know. Probably. But say what if US had reduced military spending after the collapse of Soviet Union by let's say half, would the world be much worse than it's today? From statistical perspective while it seems that there's causation between US military superiority and the lack of conflicts compared to prior decades, it might be as well that the world has just become less warlike. Sure it would suck if WW3 happened though. Anyway, it's not a reason not to fix your infrastructure :).
• lbrito 8y ago
  >makes opportunistic authoritarian governments around the world think thrice before invading their neighbors This can only have been an ironic or tongue-in-cheek comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
• peisistratos 8y ago
  > US military spending...provides funding for basic research Someone has to really have drank the kool-aid to even comprehend that statement, never mind believe it. What does military spending have to do with basic research? If what you mean is that the US has a convoluted, wasteful system where workers work, get taxed, the money is sent to the Pentagon, and physicists at universities have to write out fantasy-laden grant proposals to DARPA about how their non-military basic research work has military purposes, then yes, "US military spending provides funding for basic research". This really got going in the 1970s, I recall one story of a physicist grant proposal for a basic research study into the theory of relativity being presented as research that would benefit small trajectory changes in rocket launches. You seem to have a high estimation of the idea of the rest of the world on the leash of imperial America (with the phrase imperial America being apropos for your picture). I suppose American academics doing basic research should also be subjected to domination by the Pentagon, in your view. Japan has a much less wasteful funding of research with MITI. You don't have scientists wasting time writing bogus grant proposals for basic research being reviewed by people sitting at desks in the Department of Defense.
  • achou 8y ago
    Actually, I agree with you that this is kind of how it works. My point is simply this: the headline number for "military spend" includes a great deal of funding for research: https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historic... No, I don't believe this is a great system. On the other hand, consider that if research spending weren't under this guise, would popular support for research allow for the funding to exist at current levels, much less increased ones? Given understanding of the average American of basic science, that would be a stretch (to put it mildly). Perhaps having researchers write a few extra paragraphs in grant proposals isn't so bad after all.
  • cannonedhamster 8y ago
    Japan has a large portion of their military spending covered by the United States. It's not a fair comparison. You would need to compare another global superpower such as USSR, Great Britain before the empire waned, Spain, etc. Most of the world's advances have been funded by military resources or wealthy private individuals. I wish it wasn't true because I personally think we'd be better served on cancer research than almost any research into better bombs, soldier exoskeletons, jet packs, etc.
• deleted 8y ago
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• mythrwy 8y ago
  And most importantly relative to the article we can debate bang for our buck or what else could be done with some of that money. One can bring up evil dictators or reserve currency or whatever, but there is lots of waste, irresponsible spending, pork barrel, district welfare and all sorts of other issues. To say nothing of the contractor complex. The objectives you speak of aren't being efficiently nor sustainably achieved. They are arguably and very tenuously occasionally being brute forced out in an extremely wasteful fashion. And this isn't a statement on the righteousness of American power projection which is another argument all together.