> My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. What do you base this idea on? Wiki

> My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. What do you base this idea on? Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we... puts per-capita and per-GDP welfare spending high into the list of developed countries, > We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, More than is already dumped in by the vast welfare programs? Isn't government welfare expenditure greater than the entire defense budget? > so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie. > When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market. How so? What kind of thing could an audit say that would cause the population to act in a way the ruling class or the DoD would consider undesirable? And what kind of action are you imagining?