> But then all those resulting weapons and tanks are being sent to Ukraine. They're not staying in the USA. I'm not sure why the end product of economic activi

> But then all those resulting weapons and tanks are being sent to Ukraine. They're not staying in the USA. I'm not sure why the end product of economic activity has to physically stay in the country to be beneficial. In the case of Ukraine, the US government spending money to build say anti-tank missiles and stockpiling them locally is arguably much less beneficial to the US than spending money to build anti-tank missiles and giving them to Ukrainians to use to blow up Russian tanks. Nobody is mounting a tank invasion of the US, but spending money to wreck one of the two major US adversaries is a pretty good return on investment in my book. You're right that spending money on war in general is a great example of the broken window fallacy, but that has nothing to do with where the tanks you're building end up. It would be the same economic problem if it was a war being fought in the US or with the US as a direct participant. Everybody would have been better off economically if the Russians had stayed in their own country, but they didn't.