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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (48025)	2/5/2008 3:17:05 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541326

Other large, rich countries spend on the average less than 2% of their GDP on their military. We spend more than 4%. I think we should not be the policeman that keeps order in the world, unless we get paid for it. And we are not. We benefit from an open globalized world as much as the other rich countries, but we bear most of the policeman's burden. The way I see it, we subsidize oil to the tune of $300 billion a year (the extra 2% of GDP we are spending). That's about $80 per imported barrel. A $2 to $3 a gallon of gasoline tax should pay for it, if we insist on providing the world with this free service.

To: TimF who wrote (48025)	2/5/2008 3:39:51 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541326

Greenspan isn't wrong, but he's right only in an indirect sense. Its not about Iraqi oil, more about Kuwaiti oil, and to an extent Saudi oil. Well in a very indirect sense, if Iraq didn't have oil it would never have been a threat. If Iraq had managed to be just as much of a threat as it was and it had no oil, than I do think we would have intervened anyway. I'm curious about your thoughts on subsidizing research or speeding up the adoption of alternative sources of energy. While I am not a fan of government intervention in markets, since 9/11 my view has become that this would be a national security expenditure. If you look around the world at the countries that are most hostile to the US, it pretty much reads as a list of oil exporting countries. I can guarantee you that if Iran was making all of its money selling PS3's instead of oil, we would stop purchasing PS3's. We clearly cant do that with oil, but the sooner we can make it less relevant in the world, the better. It wont be quick or easy, but if we can decrease the amount we are subsidizing those nations that are hostile to us, it should provide a long-term benefit to US interests around the world. I just wish we had started such a program in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We might even have started to see the effects today. Slacker

To: TimF who wrote (48025)	2/5/2008 3:59:20 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541326

Is police protection of a commercial district a subsidy to the businesses in that district? No its general keeping of order. Keeping trade open isn't a subsidy. Tim, I have to reject your notion of using our military to keep order and keep trade open with regard to oil. OPEC and other oil producing nations will sell to us because they are in the business of selling their oil. We are a customer and these countries receive most of their revenues by selling their oil to their customers. As long as we can pay for oil, there will be a producer willing to sell it to us. But let's say one or several of the big producers decide not to sell to us. Are you suggesting we would then use military force to take the oil? Are you suggesting that we should maintain a military in order to be prepared to take by force what a country refuses to sell to us? If so, your scenario could be extended to all natural resources, couldn't it? Why stop at oil? And what is the logical end to such thinking? All resources are finite. Presumably, toward the end, those countries with resources will begin to husband them for use by their own populations. Do you see the United States, a so-called Christian nation, overpowering such countries with military force to grab the last bits for ourselves? I much prefer a scenario of US government funding to achieve self-sufficiency as quickly as possible.