Stating that the current defense budget is in essence violating the Third Amendment is pretty funny. Lol funny. Thanks for that
We can have a healthy debate on just how big DoD should be (and as a Military Officer I think it’s about right when OCO is taken out). But I think you are missing the point, as many do, when you say that it’s taking funding away from social programs. DoD’s budget isn’t the problem. The growing and ever escalating cost of social programs is the problem. You can cut DoD by 5% if you really want to. There will be a short term cost for that but over the long haul you can do that.
But Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are programs that no one has the balls to tackle, and that will be what breaks the bank. Tell me how you’re getting that under control.
You’re welcome. The 3rd Amendment doesn’t get enough press. But seriously, it is getting to the point that the military budget is horning in on people’s household budgets. I realize the soldiers aren’t sleeping there, yet they are present by displacing household budget items.
What’s OCO?
And this thread is about the defense budget, and yes it is the problem. Allright, it isn’t the whole problem. Ask me this question in another one. But I will reveal that it all begins with a chain of John Galt Memorial Preschools…
Our budget deficit is 10% of GDP. Our military spending is 4.7% of GDP. reducing military expenditures to 300 billion would reduce out deficit to 6 or 7 % of GDP.
Do we really need 11 aircraft carrier battle groups. Each one of these groups can successfully wage a war on a medium size country if we didn’t care about civilian casualties.
Sure, we would have to replace those carrier groups with a lot of submarines and better technology but spending money for missiles that we drop on tents in Afghanistan does far less (it does something but far less) for our economy than improving infrastructure, paying for universal healthcare or subsidizing childcare.
We out economied them. Our economy grew one or two percent faster per year than Russia and after taking into account our huge head start at the end of WWII and the compounded effect of that one or two percent over 40+ years, we were simply able to outspend them with absolutely no end in sight.
Its not that a communist centrally planned economy can’t work, its that it doesn’t work quite as well as a capitalist free market economy and over decades the difference really starts to show.
This just shows that it’s not as easy as it looks. Sure we have eleven carriers. But these ships (like all war ships) are not always ready for sea. Right now five carriers are underway and or deployed. That means that six are not.
Generally speaking ~40% of the fleet is underway with ~30% just back and not available and ~30% working up for deployment or in a shipyard. So there is no time - never - when 100% of your fleet in available.
This says nothing of issues such as training or reconstitution.
So we fight back against their interests over here. Most of our current crop of enemies, we could hurt a lot worse with new vehicle fuel economy standards than we could with soldiers and bombs. And not only would it not cost us anything, it’d actually save us money.
