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The military budget is a jobs program that also keeps a (near bare minimum) level of industrial capacity afloat. Its why no politician left or right is really

The military budget is a jobs program that also keeps a (near bare minimum) level of industrial capacity afloat. Its why no politician left or right is really interested in cutting it. If you browse open contracts, you'll see they that they overwhelmingly buy rather banal things and spend comparatively little on the "killing people" parts.

malfist 4mo ago
What do you think NASA is? NASA is so expensive because it's a jobs program. There's no other reason for Boeing to have factories in so many states for building satellites.
- pc86 4mo ago
  OK so maybe they're both jobs programs, but .mil is bigger and employs more people (almost certainly at a lower per capita cost).
  - Retric 4mo ago
    > OK so maybe they're both jobs programs, but .mil is bigger and employs more people Which is a direct function of its budget not a function of what it does. > (almost certainly at a lower per capita cost). DoD is extremely expensive per job due to the longe term benefits, layers of bureaucracy, and sub contractors.
    - pc86 4mo ago
      I think it's more a function of who it employs. If you're able to get a job at NASA you're able to get a job a lot of other places. This is not necessarily true for large segments of the DOD.
- WarmWash 4mo ago
  You're not wrong, and no one is turning down NASA contracts, but the scale isn't comparable. NASA buys mostly highly specialized parts that can be pretty narrow in scope and utility. OTOH the DoD will buy 150,000 aluminum water canteens, which is probably the only thing keeping the one decent job in Wagatah, Maine from closing. Which happens to be of only a handful of shops in the country with the tooling for this. Wagatah, of course, is not known for it's aerospace engineering. But thankfully water is pretty important for soldiers, and the new design is x% more efficient, so Wagatah gets another 5 years of work, the DoD gets to keep a domestic source of water canteens, and if NASA needs 5 space grade aluminum storage boxes, a company in Wagatah can make them.
tclancy 4mo ago
Great. Can we change it to just be the non killing part for a few years until the bad project ideas fully die off?
- alberto467 4mo ago
  No it would obviously lose its purpose then.
  - adrianN 4mo ago
    You could have a jobs program that builds infrastructure instead.
    - peaseagee 4mo ago
      That's where we got a whole lot of dams in the American West!
      - marcosdumay 4mo ago
        Last that I checked, you guys could use some more trains.
        sarchertech 4mo ago
        We have way more rail than the rest of the world. More than China, Russia, and the EU. We have almost 20% of the world’s total rail. But we prioritize freight instead of passenger service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...
- Schiendelman 4mo ago
  If anything, we've been letting the killing parts languish dangerously for decades - to the point where we may not be able to defend our allies in a serious conflict.
manoDev 4mo ago
The military budget is how the US enforces Bretton Woods. The jobs part is just a nice side-effect of any govt. spending.
- laughing_man 4mo ago
  Bretton Woods was formally terminated in 1973.
  - manoDev 4mo ago
    Only in theory. The US still forces emergent countries to trade in USD under the menace of tariffs, staging coups, and military intervention.
    - laughing_man 4mo ago
      We're getting into tinfoil hat territory here.
rcarr 4mo ago
Here's a Ken Livingstone quote from the foreword of "Drama Games: For Those Who Like To Say No": > In the early 1980s, when the GLC (Greater London Council) was trying to save and create jobs to mitigate the impact of Thatcher's recession, we discovered that the most labour-intensive form of public spending was the arts, and so during the five years from 1981 to 1986 we increased spending on arts and recreation from £l6 million to £160 million. Virtually every actor, painter, poet, sculptor and, in particular, community artist was in work, and it made London a much more exciting city to live in. As well as taking orchestras from the Royal Festival Hall to play in the canteen at Ford's Assembly Plant in Dagenham, we particularly tried to reach disaffected youth. It's against that background that I was able to understand Chris Johnston's book. (Oh, and by the way, if you want to know which is the least labour-intensive form of public spending, it is the military.) Maybe if we stopped pushing insane amounts of money into fossil fuels and the military industrial complex, and instead redirected it into the arts and sciences then, just maybe, we might actually end up with a happier, more employed, more fulfilled, and more equal planet.
- brainwad 4mo ago
  This only works if you can force every state to do it, lest naive states be defenseless against those that don't disarm. But any such compulsion would be self-terminating, and thus unstable. Why not just do it all? Fund the military and the arts and the sciences.
  - verve_rat 4mo ago
    Do you think the US needs all of its current military capacity to just deter outside aggression?

malfist 4mo ago

What do you think NASA is? NASA is so expensive because it's a jobs program. There's no other reason for Boeing to have factories in so many states for building satellites.

pc86 4mo ago
OK so maybe they're both jobs programs, but .mil is bigger and employs more people (almost certainly at a lower per capita cost).
- Retric 4mo ago
  > OK so maybe they're both jobs programs, but .mil is bigger and employs more people Which is a direct function of its budget not a function of what it does. > (almost certainly at a lower per capita cost). DoD is extremely expensive per job due to the longe term benefits, layers of bureaucracy, and sub contractors.
  - pc86 4mo ago
    I think it's more a function of who it employs. If you're able to get a job at NASA you're able to get a job a lot of other places. This is not necessarily true for large segments of the DOD.
WarmWash 4mo ago
You're not wrong, and no one is turning down NASA contracts, but the scale isn't comparable. NASA buys mostly highly specialized parts that can be pretty narrow in scope and utility. OTOH the DoD will buy 150,000 aluminum water canteens, which is probably the only thing keeping the one decent job in Wagatah, Maine from closing. Which happens to be of only a handful of shops in the country with the tooling for this. Wagatah, of course, is not known for it's aerospace engineering. But thankfully water is pretty important for soldiers, and the new design is x% more efficient, so Wagatah gets another 5 years of work, the DoD gets to keep a domestic source of water canteens, and if NASA needs 5 space grade aluminum storage boxes, a company in Wagatah can make them.

tclancy 4mo ago

Great. Can we change it to just be the non killing part for a few years until the bad project ideas fully die off?

alberto467 4mo ago
No it would obviously lose its purpose then.
- adrianN 4mo ago
  You could have a jobs program that builds infrastructure instead.
  - peaseagee 4mo ago
    That's where we got a whole lot of dams in the American West!
    - marcosdumay 4mo ago
      Last that I checked, you guys could use some more trains.
      - sarchertech 4mo ago
        We have way more rail than the rest of the world. More than China, Russia, and the EU. We have almost 20% of the world’s total rail. But we prioritize freight instead of passenger service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...
Schiendelman 4mo ago
If anything, we've been letting the killing parts languish dangerously for decades - to the point where we may not be able to defend our allies in a serious conflict.

manoDev 4mo ago

The military budget is how the US enforces Bretton Woods. The jobs part is just a nice side-effect of any govt. spending.

laughing_man 4mo ago
Bretton Woods was formally terminated in 1973.
- manoDev 4mo ago
  Only in theory. The US still forces emergent countries to trade in USD under the menace of tariffs, staging coups, and military intervention.
  - laughing_man 4mo ago
    We're getting into tinfoil hat territory here.

rcarr 4mo ago

Here's a Ken Livingstone quote from the foreword of "Drama Games: For Those Who Like To Say No": > In the early 1980s, when the GLC (Greater London Council) was trying to save and create jobs to mitigate the impact of Thatcher's recession, we discovered that the most labour-intensive form of public spending was the arts, and so during the five years from 1981 to 1986 we increased spending on arts and recreation from £l6 million to £160 million. Virtually every actor, painter, poet, sculptor and, in particular, community artist was in work, and it made London a much more exciting city to live in. As well as taking orchestras from the Royal Festival Hall to play in the canteen at Ford's Assembly Plant in Dagenham, we particularly tried to reach disaffected youth. It's against that background that I was able to understand Chris Johnston's book. (Oh, and by the way, if you want to know which is the least labour-intensive form of public spending, it is the military.) Maybe if we stopped pushing insane amounts of money into fossil fuels and the military industrial complex, and instead redirected it into the arts and sciences then, just maybe, we might actually end up with a happier, more employed, more fulfilled, and more equal planet.

brainwad 4mo ago
This only works if you can force every state to do it, lest naive states be defenseless against those that don't disarm. But any such compulsion would be self-terminating, and thus unstable. Why not just do it all? Fund the military and the arts and the sciences.
- verve_rat 4mo ago
  Do you think the US needs all of its current military capacity to just deter outside aggression?