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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (49325)	5/3/2004 1:15:36 AM
From: Taikun	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

In reading Niall Ferguson's Cash Nexus, one thing that struck me was the amount of public spending required to finance war. He also argues a Democracy is a necessary requirement of a military power in that it legitimizes the fundraising -ie taxation - process necessary to finance the protection of the the middle class. The US, with a 2002 GDP of $10.45trl and Bush passing a budget of $2.4 trl earlier this year, spends about half $1.9trl in public spending on the military (about 49% for 2005 in the pie chart). warresisters.org At once point he writes the Dutch and Austrians were spending 90% and 93% of public spending, respectively, in the seventeenth century while at war. What Ferguson wrote that stuck me the most was that no matter which power, war always lead to an unpredictable and sudden, often dramatic, rise in military spending. Remember Powell's comment to Bush pre-Iraq (the Pottery Barn policy): "If you break it, it's yours". He may turn out to have broken the most expensive thing in the store.