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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (266487)	12/29/2005 6:29:58 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573921

re: GDP It determines the affordability of the military spending considered in isolation. No it doesn't. On just one level the increase of military spending increases GDP dollar for dollar. GDP has no relationship with the affordability of military spending; maybe tax receipts, but even that is fuzzy. re: I wasn't at the time I made the statement but it is still true even when DoD civilian employees and deployed contractors and are considered. Much smaller than when? Are you sure about the civilian employees? Or are you making assumptions? re: In other words I am saying that other than the possibility of greatly reducing or ending our involvement in Iraq I don't see the reasonable possibility for large scale defense cuts. If you did make large cuts in addition to ending the "variable expense" of Iraq, I think you would greatly reduce our ability to wage a campaign like Iraq which is why I asked - Ending Iraq would certainly cut our military cost tremendously, but OK--- I agree with Ted (and others) that we don't need a military that is 4-5 times more expensive than the second largest in the rest of the world. We are a very difficult country to attack, with friendly border countries and oceans. Is our "defense spending" defensive or offensive? As you imply, it is offensive, meant to attack other countries on a unilateral basis. The argument that we are dancing around is if we need to sacrifice a huge portion of our prosperity to impose our will on other countries. What is your libertarian perspective? (BTW, you never answered the question about the military "entitlements" being included in your "defense" figures).