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

To: Road Walker who wrote (327530)	2/26/2007 9:13:00 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1573927

"The only serious threat to this country is economic, not military." First we had the foot race. Then we had the arms race. After that was the Brain race. Hopefully, in the end, we will have the human race. From John Brunner's Shockwave Rider. Set in the early 21st century, the US is trying to shift gears from having a dominant military to a world where the competition was more economic and driven by intellectual property concerns. Having smart, creative people is paramount, and many countries have set up academies where they can train selected people to maximize their potential. Societal change is increasing at a faster and faster rate. So fast that various types of burnout is common. Even though the book was written in the '70s, it holds up remarkably well. There is an Internet equivalent, complete with the ability to vote at any public access terminal. And there are tapeworms, which can gain access to computer systems with security codes, snoop for data and both make changes to the stored data and make copies which it takes with it...

To: Road Walker who wrote (327530)	2/27/2007 4:43:32 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1573927

We have no military enemies that I know of. We have current low level enemies, that can't defeat us in open battle, but can tie us down. We also have potential enemies. It takes years, or even decades to build up powerful military forces (we just took years in WWII, but that was with throwing far more of our economy behind the effort than we are likely to in the future, and it was with simpler weapons systems, tactics, and doctrine). So we do it because we can? We could afford to raise taxes;should we because we can? We don't do it just because we can, but to the extent that we are doing what needs to be done, we are taking up a burden that others might not be capable of taking up. You can exclude Iraq from that if you want. But dropping out Iraq still leaves a large military expenditure. The police force of the world. What if another economy got bigger, say China. Should they then be the police force of the world, imposing their own values in the process? If China's economy is bigger they are likely to push more of their values on the world. Even to a certain extent if they don't even try. OTOH it might be that in order for China to actually grow to the point that its economy exceeds the US (at the time, with the US growing too, not our current GDP), those attitudes would have to change. Also China's GDP per capita is much lower, and it would take much longer for China to pass the US's level, if it ever does. China has to spend a much larger portion of its GDP on meeting the basic needs of its people, leaving less left over as surplus which could be used for military spending. re: I also understand you want to pull out of Iraq, which would save money, but the amount spent would still be very large compared to everyone else. We can cut further. We could, but I don't think that it would be a good idea. Whether or not Iraq was a good idea, whether or not we should stay in Iraq now, we should retain the capability for such a mission. Even if you think the justification for Iraq was faulty, some future situation could arise that provides much better justification. I could see continuing to have military spending become a smaller and smaller part of our economy, and of our federal budget. I don't think we need future increases of the sort that would make military spending grow faster then overall government spending or our GDP. The only serious threat to this country is economic, not military. By a long margin. And obscene military spending only increases that threat. Military spending is too low of a % of GDP to be a serious threat to our economy. And over time that percentage has been going down. Iraq is a blip up, but its a smaller blip than Vietnam or Korea where. Note: This doesn't amount to an argument for more spending, or even against less spending, I'm just pointing out that the current level is a small part of our economy, both in absolute terms (4 or 5%) and compared to the post WWII historical trend. Even if you don't look at % of GDP and consider inflation adjusted spending, it was at a similar level during portions of the cold war, and was higher in WWII. -- -- truthandpolitics.org heritage.org afa.org "Compared to an estimated $425 billion (measured in constant 2000 dollars) defense budget in 2006, U.S. military spending during the Korean War peaked at $416 billion (also measured in constant 2000 dollars) in fiscal 1953. However, military spending in 1953 represented 14.2 percent of GDP, which was about 3.5 times the share of GDP commanded by 2006 defense spending. During the Vietnam War, military spending peaked in fiscal 1968 at $420 billion (measured in constant 2000 dollars. Defense spending that year was 9.5 percent of GDP and 46 percent of total federal budget outlays. Real defense spending during the Reagan buildup peaked at $399 billion in fiscal 1989, 6.2 percent of GDP in 1986 and 28.1 percent of total budget outlays in 1987. " washtimes.com washtimes.com