Hi Steve. I thought you didn't buy that argument based on one of your previous posts <g>
I think that the piece you quoted is way, way overblown, though I agree that military spending is a waste and contributes negatively to a robust economy. But, we are spending way less on military than we used to spend during most of the post WWII era as a % of GDP. Less than 5% of GDP to be exact. And most of that spending is for personnel, not for hardware. Salaries, pensions, and health care take the lion's share of military spending.
Are we spending too much on the military? We sure are. I fully support Ron Paul's idea of what we should be doing with our military and how we should be behaving abroad. That should cut our spending down to a civilized 2% or so of GDP, and we could still blow up the entire world a few times over, if we want.
What worries me far more than the military is our health care spending. We already spend 5+% more of our GDP on health care than the other developed countries, and have nothing to show for it. That's a waste that already exceeds our entire military budget. And when we reach their age distribution (they are much older than us) we will be spending 10% more, if we keep doing what we are doing now. That's a waste of 10% of our GDP, which is twice as much as our entire military budget.
If we manage to trim our military spending to a civilized post-cold war level of 2% of GDP, reform our health care via universal single payer, saving another 5%, and reform our tort system, saving another 3% of GDP, we will be the most competitive country on earth by far. |
