Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (31619)	2/2/1999 1:26:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Neocon? What peace dividend? Defense has gone down a little, but considering that the Soviet threat no longer exists, the dividend has been minimal. Given that Soviet military strength was always vastly overestimated, the symbolic value of the Reagan buildup has to be measured against what a more rational and measured buildup might have accomplished. What did we need the B-1 bomber for anyway? It's not clear that it works right, even now. Or the MX missile? The Soviets never had an effective counter to our SLBM force. The throw weight of their dreaded land-based missiles probably didn't make up for the unreliability of liquid fueled rockets, compared to our solid fueled Minuteman arsenal, either. There were budget cuts in the Reagan era. There was also popular resistance to the cuts. The Reaganauts backed off from Social Security real quick, but they were happy to accept Moynihan's gift of a big increase in a regressive tax that masked the deficit. I'll leave aside the idea of defense spending as "investment", that idea makes much more sense for domestic infrastructure than it does for expenditure that takes resources out of the private economy and invests them in things that are basically nonproductive, in the conventional economic sense at least.