# Military spending and poverty -- I only just realized... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 9, 2010, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523 "2010-12-09T11:12:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/41 "2010-12-10T19:21:34Z")
You should read Jeffrey Sachs’ [The End of Poverty](http://www.amazon.com/End-Poverty-Economic-Possibilities-Time/dp/0143036580%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJASE6HSSVXTNREYQ%26tag%3Dfstchrm-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0143036580). Sachs played in instrumental goal in the Millenium Development Goals, and has made quite a difference in the world. He posits that if developed nations give just .07% of their GDP to development, we can see the end of extreme poverty in a couple decades. He’s more than a bit self-important, but he’s got the credentials to say what he is saying, and presents some compelling arguments. You’re absolutely right that there is no need for grinding poverty, though the answer is a lot more complicated than just redistributing money. Anyway, it’s a good book to read (of course with a critical eye) and gives some refutation to the idea that “the poor will always be among us.” There is no reason for malaria to be such a killer. There is no reason for people not to have clean water. These things have solutions, and not even particularly difficult or expensive solutions. ---
**Author:** ![GreenHell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ea666f/32.png) [@GreenHell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenHell)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/42 "2010-12-10T20:37:53Z")
But those solutions, while they may help the desperately poor survive, don’t further enrich the already powerful. Doing good for the sake of doing good is rare among individuals and almost unheard of among nations. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2010, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/43 "2010-12-10T20:43:06Z")
> [@GreenHell](#): > > But those solutions, while they may help the desperately poor survive, don’t further enrich the already powerful. Doing good for the sake of doing good is rare among individuals and almost unheard of among nations. I’m not so sure I agree. Wealthy countries provide lots of humanitarian aid when disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis and the like happen. In a lot of cases the countries receiving the aid are their own worst enemies in helping their own people. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/44 "2010-12-10T22:11:53Z")
A lot of people have already pointed out the problems with eliminating all military spending, so I’m going to work on the other end of the OP’s assumption. Do you really feel that $2.15 a day would lift people out of poverty? Yes, I understand that the “international poverty line” is $1.25 a day. But I think that that figure represents more an expression of extreme poverty rather than an exact amount of money. It’s not like I could go up to somebody who was surviving on the equivalent of a dollar a day, hand them ten bucks, and say “Now you won’t be poor this week.” They’re going to need a lot more than a few dollars to change the circumstances of their life. It’s not an issue of asking if we spend a trillion dollars on the military or on poverty relief. We need to act intelligently on both of these things. We need to identify what is needed, figure out what can be done, calculate the costs, and make decisions about what we can afford. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/45 "2010-12-11T09:12:08Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > You should read Jeffrey Sachs’ [The End of Poverty](http://www.amazon.com/End-Poverty-Economic-Possibilities-Time/dp/0143036580%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJASE6HSSVXTNREYQ%26tag%3Dfstchrm-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0143036580). Thanks, that’s going on the ‘to read’ list. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/46 "2010-12-11T16:31:09Z")
To add to this: we now have industries that are TOTALLY dependent upon military spending-our shipyards only make naval ships, we have electronics firms (like raytheon) that are 100% military, and the firms that make uniforms, coats, jackets for the military cannot compete in the civilian world. Any efforts to cut back spending would throw thousands out of work. So, here we are…with the world’s most expensive military and a failing civilian economy-who won WWII? Frankly, the USA needs to stop being the wold’s policeman, and focus on fixing our messed up country. Take a look at Hiroshima, japan…and compare iot to Detroit, Michigan. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/47 "2010-12-11T19:16:09Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The U.S. presently spends a ballpark of $100 billion per year to pursue its War in Afghanistan. This is about _six times [Afghanistan]'s entire GDP !_ [Afganistan] had 35% unemployment as of 2008. Even a fraction of the U.S. military spending would go a long ways towards improving Afghan well-being and morale. Many Afghan men have joined the Taliban simply as the only visible way out of poverty with no other jobs available. > > Obviously we shouldn’t just drop banknotes across the countryside out of airplanes. But with Washington willing to spend such large sums, it is a real shame that we haven’t befriended Afghans more. As the most trivial example, on projects to build Afghan infrastructure, should we not have emphasized Afghan labor? No, no; it was just too sweet an opportunity to bring foreign firms to slurp from the troughs of easy money. > [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > Wow. That’s a lot of factual error rolled up in [the two underlined] sentences. Wrong. The “War in Afghanistan [annual cost] is about six times [Afghanistan]'s entire GDP” might be an overestimate, with four or even three times a better estimate (though Googling Afghan GDP produces more than one sub-15 billion estimate). But doesn’t that still seem high? (As I say, I could have changed “this country” to “Aghanistan” during the Edit window but thought it unnecessary. I thought only a moron would assume **septimus** to be an imbecile, but I was sure wrong about that! :D) ---
**Author:** ![sevenwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sevenwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sevenwood)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/48 "2010-12-11T19:39:58Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I thought only a moron would assume **septimus** to be an imbecile, but I was sure wrong about that! :D) I am a very bright guy, and I didn’t assume that you had switched countries in the middle of that sentence. And I didn’t assume (or imply) that you were an imbecile there, just that you were dead wrong, so I simply asked you where you got those facts from. Walkabout politely pointed out to me that he/she had assumed that you’d switched countries there and provided some backup statistics. I retracted my question and assumed the episode was over. However, since you’re calling me a moron over this, I’ll point out that under the assumption that you **did** switch countries in the middle of a statistical stream that the three items you brought up may well be true (although the first one wasn’t) but have nothing to do with each other. Let me use your argument in another context: The FBI spend millions of dollars tracking down the Unabomber, and the Unabomber earned less than $15,000 a year and was unemployed most of the time. What a ridiculous waste of money by the FBI! ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/49 "2010-12-11T22:06:57Z")
> [@sevenwood](#): > > … However, since you’re calling me a moron over this, I’ll point out that under the assumption that you **did** switch countries in the middle of a statistical stream that the three items you brought up may well be true (although the first one wasn’t) but have nothing to do with each other. > > Let me use your argument in another context: The FBI spend millions of dollars tracking down the Unabomber, and the Unabomber earned less than $15,000 a year and was unemployed most of the time. What a ridiculous waste of money by the FBI! (1) I (carefully) did _not_ call you a moron. I wrote “I thought only a moron would assume septimus to be an imbecile, but I was sure wrong about that!” (To understand why your post made me think you thought I was an imbecile, doesn’t it seem highly unlikely (if not logically impossible) for a country to spend on a War at six times its GDP rate? :smack:) (2) I should have written “about four times (give or take, different sources provide different figures)” rather than “six times” when describing the ratio between U.S. annual expenditures on the Afghanistan War and the Afghanistan GDP. Sorry, my bad. Either way, the ratio should seem almost astounding. (But I’m glad I erred here so you could have your fun about being in the ballpark of nine feet tall! :D) (3) Since you’re a very bright guy, I’m sure you can see that your Unabomber parody of my post is uncalled for. In my post I did not call for the U.S. to stop its War in Afghanistan. (4) By contrasting U.S. military spending in Afghanistan with the size of the Afghan economy, I was making a clear point, very relevant to this thread. And, no, I was not proposing that the U.S. convert its military funds to Ben Franklin banknotes and scatter them on the Afghan countryside! 😃 It would have been a simple matter to direct the hiring of Afghan firms and Afghan laborers to provide logistical support and infrastructure construction tasks which were instead given to non-Afghan companies with political connections to U.S. (And please note that this path is clearly preferable even if the Aghan effort would have been less efficient than a foreign effort.) Instead the U.S. has followed a course which tends to alienate the Afghan people. This should be fairly well known. I’m curious: what books do you read about this War which do not support my perspective here? (5) Believe it or not, I am also a “very bright guy.” Although my communication skills are obviously lacking, one of my avocations is constructing logic puzzles for publication, in which great care must be taken to assure pronouns’ antecedents are clear, etc. I’ve also taken care in describing the 32 inventions for which I’ve received U.S. patents. As I’ve said, I noticed this ambiguity while still in the 5-minute edit window, and _ **didn’t correct it because I erroneously assumed that Dopers would quickly figure out that it is not the U.S. that has 35% unemployment, and it is not the U.S. whose GDP is only in a $20 billion ballpark.** _ (Out of curiosity, would you have reparsed the sentences and deduced their intended meaning had you known **septimus** is a “very bright guy”?) ---
**Author:** ![sevenwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sevenwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sevenwood)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/50 "2010-12-11T23:38:09Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > ((3) Since you’re a very bright guy, I’m sure you can see that your Unabomber parody of my post is uncalled for. In my post I did not call for the U.S. to stop its War in Afghanistan. Good point. The last sentence of that comparison was uncalled for, and for that I apologize. The rest of it was, in my opinion, an apt analogy. > [@septimus](#): > > (4) By contrasting U.S. military spending in Afghanistan with the size of the Afghan economy, I was making a clear point, very relevant to this thread. And, no, I was not proposing that the U.S. convert its military funds to Ben Franklin banknotes and scatter them on the Afghan countryside! 😃 It would have been a simple matter to direct the hiring of Afghan firms and Afghan laborers to provide logistical support and infrastructure construction tasks which were instead given to non-Afghan companies with political connections to U.S. (And please note that this path is clearly preferable even if the Aghan effort would have been less efficient than a foreign effort.) Instead the U.S. has followed a course which tends to alienate the Afghan people. Sorry about that. Somehow I missed that clear point in the original post. 😃 > [@septimus](#): > > I’m curious: what books do you read about this War which do not support my perspective here? Given that I’m still not clear about what your perspective is, that’s difficult to answer :). But a good assumption would be “none”. > [@septimus](#): > > Although my communication skills are obviously lacking, one of my avocations is constructing logic puzzles for publication, in which great care must be taken to assure pronouns’ antecedents are clear, etc. I’ve also taken care in describing the 32 inventions for which I’ve received U.S. patents. Oh, man, if you’d only mentioned all of that in your **first** post! > [@septimus](#): > > (Out of curiosity, would you have reparsed the sentences and deduced their intended meaning had you known **septimus** is a “very bright guy”?) No, I’m afraid I’d have still read it as it was written. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/51 "2010-12-12T15:13:45Z")
The USA now increasingly resembles the old USSR, just before its collapse-tremendous spending on the military, while the civilian sector/industry faces collapse. We cannot go on this way…but the lobbyists for the defense business are very happy to see hundreds of billions wasted on missiles, tanks, ships, submarines, that we don’t need. What we need is a comprehnesive planning board-to transition us from the war economy we have been on (since 1960). Turn Raytheon into a appliance manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin into a airliner company, and Boeing into a high-speed train mfg. President Eisenhower was right-the “military-industrial complex” has just about destroyed this country-would that we had heeded his advice, 50 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Sal\_Ammoniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2010, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/52 "2010-12-14T04:45:40Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Governments in the US, at the various levels, spend enormously more on things like poverty programs and education than they do on the military or police. Cite? This discussion should take note of the fact that some countries do in fact spend nothing or almost nothing on the military, and get away with it. Nobody is waltzing through Costa Rica’s front door and making off with their china. Japan spends very little on defense, and nobody much bugs them. The irony is that a fixation on defense only seems to invite trouble. ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2010, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523/53 "2010-12-14T05:57:03Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > (1) I (carefully) did _not_ call you a moron. I wrote “I thought only a moron would assume septimus to be an imbecile, but I was sure wrong about that!” (To understand why your post made me think you thought I was an imbecile, doesn’t it seem highly unlikely (if not logically impossible) for a country to spend on a War at six times its GDP rate? :smack:) Your inability to grasp the proper usage of parentheses makes me think you’re… bah, never mind. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending-and-poverty-i-only-just-realized/563523.md?page=2)