[quote]dhickey wrote:
[quote]Vegita wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
…Military expenditure is, even with all this massive entitlement programs, is still one of the biggest, if not the biggest, drain on the federal budget…[/quote]
Dead wrong.[/quote]
I hate to say you’re right Push, but in this case you pretty much are. “Dead wrong” might not be the best way to put, but “inaccurate” might be a better fit. The budget for 2010 allocates 19.6% of it toward Social Security. Although the military portion is barely less (18.7%), right behind that is another social program (16.1% for Medicare).
I’m not sure what kind of return we really get for SS or Medicare. Some will argue that we get a return, others argue that we don’t. But, are we getting a return on our military expenditures? What sort of return are we really getting spending a billion a week in Iraq (much less now, but that was roughly what we spent between 2003 and 2008). What sort of return can we expect on the war in Afghanistan? If you ask me, I don’t think we get much of a return on any of that shit, SS, medicare or military spending.[/quote]
Let me just throw this in here. Military spending put money directly into a LOT of US citizens hands. All the soldiers get paychecks and pensions and benefits etc… A lot or maybe ALL weapons contractors are US companies, they money stays here for people to spend. You can’t just drastically cut military spending overnight without very bad things happening at home. You will create even more jobless numbers, not to mention a lot of those without jobs are going to be soldiers. Another sector that will lose jobs is independant military contractors, the blackwaters of the world. It’s never good to have a lot of people trained to kill in a desparate situation with nothing to occupy thier time.
Reducing the military needs to be done slowly. And I’m not even sure if I would reduce it. I would probably freeze it and just let the country grow up around it. If we do it right, in 20 years the military could be 10% of the federal budget and no one lost a job, I’m sure the american people would agree that having the most expensive home security system in the world is a good thing if you can afford it. And we can, we just need to get some other spending in line, like Multi million dollar bridges to nowhere and hamers for $500 apeice.
V[/quote]
There is no reason military spending could not be cut. There is no reason to believe there is not increased efficiency that could be realized. I question what net benefit we truly receive from insane number of foreign deployments and bases. None of these can be cut?
I find it quite comical that those on the left believe gov’t canâ??t be trusted to run effective foreign campaigns, but the very same politicians can effectively run large domestic programs efficiently. I find it just as comical that some on the right acknowledge gov’ts ineptness in running successful domestic programs, but seem to think these same politicians can implement foreign policy that provides a net benefit.
Shouldn’t we all be acknowledging politicians rarely have our interests in mind, at least not as a priority over their own interests? Shouldn’t we also acknowledge that this applies to domestic and foreign policy? Shouldn’t we assume the same inefficeincy, short sightedness, and dumb-fuckery in domestic and foreign policy? It’s the same crew running both shows. The military is no different than any other bureaucracy in that they are self serving and will always seek to grow and ask for more money.
[/quote]
Oh I agree, I would cut bases overseas and am not totally against some type of overall drawdown. I think we could bring back the guys from overseas and have them police the southern border. Illegal immigration would end overnight. We have enough men to do it, it’s just that they are off policing other countries instead of protecting our own borders. I was just making the point that there are a lot of other things that our government spends money on that it has no business doing. With the military, at least they have a constitutional right to spend on the military. The level of spending can be debated there, in other areas, they just don’t have the right to spend our money period.
V