# military spending **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 21, 2014, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212 "2014-03-21T05:27:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/81 "2014-03-23T18:50:22Z")
Well, let’s be clear. Congress isn’t funding the military budget because there is an interest from the people they represent–it’s lobbied interest. ---
**Author:** ![Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/82 "2014-03-23T18:58:46Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The major reason that NASA’s (or NSF’s, NIST’s or whatever sciencey agency you want) is not that all the money is being gobbled up by the Department of Defense and there’s nothing left for anyone else. That is fantasy-land thinking. > > The reason that NASA’s budget is about one-fifteenth of the size of DOD’s is that there is a bipartisan and overwhelmingly popular will in this country to spend lots of money on national defense whether we can afford it in our budget or not. DOD is half of all discretionary spending in the United States while we were running deficits of about three times the size of the Pentagon’s non-war budget. And what has been the country’s response? Trim it back by about 8 or 10 percent, and deliberate on whether it is worth it to trim it another few percentage points. > > There is only a scientific fringe in this country which wants to see NASA’s (or NSF, NIST, NOAA, NIH, etc) budget expand by 50 percent or more. If the DoD’s budget were cut by, say, $100 billion, I can guarantee you that there would be very little interest in putting more than say, $20 billion or so into S&T or infrastructure upgrades. So long as this country is facing many-multi-hundred billion dollar deficits, there’s going to be little to no appitite to throw tens or hundreds of billions of dollars more toward the agencies responsible for debacles like the James Webb Space Telescope (which has basically tripled in cost from its first cost estimate around 2000) or the NPOESS satellite disaster (which, in fairness, is just as much a problem for the Air Force as it was the civilian space agencies). > > So if we’re speaking from a reality-based viewpoint, the value of DoD S&T isn’t just that they are generally well focused programs that have a pretty good track record of getting commercial applications out of things that were really designed for military use. It is also that the investment in those programs is generally sustained in good times and bad. > > That cannot be said of agencies like NASA, where the budget has been either frozen (in constant dollars) for most of the last two decades, or declining by about half in terms of its percentage of the Federal budget over that same time. > > If we’re going to accuse people of having “reality-free assertions,” then let’s all have a cup of coffee, wake the hell up, and realize that if there was an appetite to boost NASA’s funding (or whatever agency’s you wish to pick) by 50% or so, that’s a measly $9 billion dollars, it probably would already have been done. That amount of money in Washington, DC is verging on decimal dust. > > The reason it hasn’t been done isn’t because generals and admirals are stealing all the money in cartoon bags labeled with dollar signs: it’s that there’s much greater support for defense related S&T (which can spin off to some commercial uses) than there is for the civil R&D agencies who can’t even decide what their purpose in life is. So you basically agree with the post of mine that you’ve quoted–that the problem is a corrupt and depraved but mutable set of social values, that can totally be changed. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/83 "2014-03-23T19:10:53Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > But apart from “that’s how we’ve done things” and “there is just so much special interest pressure lobbying for this sillyness” there’s no rational reason why governments and countries couldn’t or shouldn’t fund pure research & proofs of concept regardless of military purposes. The Concorde would be an example of such. Not the most successful example, maybe, but it was a step in the right direction IMO. So is the Large Hardon Collider (typo deliberate because I’m juvenile that way and it still makes me giggle). Oh, what university research labs could \*do \*with just 1% of the funding that goes into the most benign of military escapades… When you say “there’s no rational reason why governments and countries couldn’t or shouldn’t fund pure research & proofs of concept regardless of military purposes,” you are, with all due respect, missing the point. In fact, to nations–for whom their primary interest is in military and political advantage, _not, repeat, not_ advancing technology for the future of mankind or providing humanitarian assistance to those in desperate need–it makes perfect sense. Of course, a nation such as the United States, the former Soviet Union, or China will spend extravegantly on research that offers to provide even a marginal advantage over other competitors regardless of any practical return. The untold hundreds of billions of dollars the Soviet Union spent on ballistic missiles and space weapons, including the _Buran_ shuttle which offered the same essentially useless capability to the Soviets that the STS offered to us–bankrupted the nation to the point it could no longer sustain itself; and yet, it was justified in the minds of (mostly) rational men for decades. The absurd budget for stealth technology on the B-2 bomber program–which offered no capability not already achieved by the ICBM and fleet ballistic missile programs save for supposedly undetectable first strike that the United States ostensibly disavowed–resulted in aircraft of breathtaking procurement and operating cost and stunningly little practical capability, the cost of a single article of which could have eradicated a disease or provided wide scale infrastructure improvement. The Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) that I previously mentioned is an exact study of the attempt to apply this kind of rationale to non-militar yprojects; delayed for years over arguments about whose state it would be in, finally placed in Texas to appease the largest power block, and then cancelled five years later after that block fell out of favor and nearly half of the original budget had been sunk into construction and research costs, resulting in not only reducing the American stature in high energy physics but eliminating the opportunity to bring tens of billions of research dollars in the US economy and leaving an entire generation of particle physicists scrambling for any kind of jobs. (Note that this probably fed into the Wall Street boom and the overuse of analytical models as physicists without portfolio streamed into financial accounting offices under the assumption that the statistical predictive models of basic particle mechanics could also apply to economic events.) Other examples of proposed projects on the scale of military programs but have failed to gain traction are on-orbit asteroid monitoring and protection (feasible with only modest advances in available technology at a cost of ~US$20B to ~US$50B, which could avert a single event with a fiscal impact of ten or a hundred times that cost); a space-based in-situ resource utilization infrastructure, the development of wide-scale alternative transportation fuel sources; upgrading the electrical transmission infrastructure to a system robust enough to survive the Carrington-scale coronal mass ejection event which is statistically likely to occur sometime in the next three decades and may leave the continental United States with insufficient capacity for years afterward; agricultural and irrigation system reforms which will halt depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer upon which the American “Breadbasket”; not to mention the treatment and cure of numerous diseases and conditions which a concerted research effort could offer. But none of these are pressing security problems for the nation or immediate social/political issues for the populace at large, so it is impossible to get enough traction to have them heard and adopted by the voting public. And so we continue to build a “missile shield” which is more porous than mosquito netting, an advanced bomber program designed to deal with threats from the last century, and space warfare programs so we can spread so much debris in orbit that it will be of use to no one. Unfortunately, this is where the money flows to, and from this is where the fundamental high cost threshold breakthroughs largely come. Regardless of whether you consider this to be right or fair (I don’t) it is the actual reality that we live in, not the “reality” concocted in the minds of people who only want to talk in hypothetical terms of what could be done with some kind of perfect foreknowledge and omniscient wisdom that is not a common characteristic of humanity as a whole. > [@Chronos](#): > > And likewise, we have no need to be able to project force outside of our own sphere of influence, either. Now, it happens that we can do so anyway, but that’s a bug, not a feature: It does nothing for us but incentivizing us to get involved in unnecessary and harmful wars. Re-direct military spending to something more useful, and you decrease the chances for another Iraq or Afghanistan: That’s a win-win. Absolutely. Not only is it better for everyone else, i.e. we don’t have to invade your country to ensure the flow of sapphire-encrusted applied phlebotinum to ensure that our machination factories keep up to full speed, but we also don’t have to send our own young men and women to die to “uphold freedom and liberty” or whatever the excuse is today to justify hanging up the “Mission Accomplished!” banner. Once we are self-sufficient–whether that is by innovating our way out of need for external resources or finding those resources elsewhere within our borders or in space–we can pick and choose what conflicts we feel a genuine ethical need to engage in for humanitarian reasons instead of economic need or political advantage. It is foolish to think that human conflict will end anytime soon even with essentially unlimited access to resources, but without the excuse or motivation to go to war over oil, uranium, water, or whatever, it becomes a lot more difficult for politicians to rationalize the need to go to war or even maintain an enormous standing army which makes it so easy to engage in conflict without thinking through the consequences. > [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > Well, let’s be clear. Congress isn’t funding the military budget because there is an interest from the people they represent–it’s lobbied interest. And lets be clear; while those lobbyists have inarguably undue influence on politicians, they’re selling that influence on their ability to bring in votes and sway critical electoral blocks. Ultimately, regardless of campaign finance fiddling, “The People” are responsible for how tax revenue is spend and what the nation as a whole does with its fiscal, political, and military power. And many of those same people are invested heavily–both financially and emotionally–in the “military industrial complex” and the supposed prestige it offers America regardless of the consequences. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/84 "2014-03-23T19:18:15Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > So you basically agree with the post of mine that you’ve quoted–that the problem is a corrupt and depraved but mutable set of social values, that can totally be changed. No, I struggle to find anything you’ve written that I agree with. ---
**Author:** ![Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/85 "2014-03-23T19:42:06Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > No, I struggle to find anything you’ve written that I agree with. That’s odd, because your entire post not only does not contradict anything I’ve said, but in fact supports it. ---
**Author:** ![Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/86 "2014-03-23T19:43:46Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > But none of these are pressing security problems for the nation or immediate social/political issues for the populace at large, so it is impossible to get enough traction to have them heard and adopted by the voting public. This is true only in the context of a depraved but mutable set of social values. Which is the same mistake you keep repeating over and over again–your ludicrous assumption that these social values are somehow fixed. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/87 "2014-03-23T19:47:09Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > That’s odd, because your entire post not only does not contradict anything I’ve said, but in fact supports it. Your characterization of defense spending as being “depraved” is not supported by anything I said, and my entire post was implicitly about the facile “mutable values” assertion. I can’t help you if you didn’t follow the entire damned point of my post. ---
**Author:** ![Phrozen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/22d042/32.png) [@Phrozen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phrozen)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/88 "2014-03-23T20:05:48Z")
Stranger on a Train, I’ve been a lurker here for years, but I wanted to chime in. Your posts in this thread have been as insightful, interesting and informational as always, and you have my thanks. Steely Dan, on the other hand, has offered nothing of value to this thread, aside from heckling Stranger into further discussion. ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/89 "2014-03-23T20:53:01Z")
> [@](#): > > “The People” are responsible for how tax revenue is spend and what the nation as a whole does with its fiscal, political, and military power. I don’t think so. In a democracy, yes, but not in a Republic. We are responsible for deciding who gets elected, to the extent that tweedle-dum or tweedle-de gets the vote. It’s not like we are really that aware or elect people that represent our needs or interests. I don’t know enough about lobbying to determine the extent to which lobbyists actually get blocks of votes or simply provide promises of campaign financing. Honestly, I haven’t seen any efforts by lobbyists to get votes for increasing or preserving the military budget. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/90 "2014-03-23T21:21:03Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > I don’t think so. In a democracy, yes, but not in a Republic. We are responsible for deciding who gets elected, to the extent that tweedle-dum or tweedle-de gets the vote. It’s not like we are really that aware or elect people that represent our needs or interests. The United States is both a democracy and a republic. Those concepts are not mutually exclusive. ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/91 "2014-03-23T21:36:58Z")
I don’t want to get away from the point of the thread here but by _democracy_ I’m thinking of government decision by referendum, rather than Jerry Brown, say, deciding whether gay marriage is legal, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/92 "2014-03-23T23:22:28Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > Actually, all SOAT did was repeat the same old tired broken-window thinking, assuming that the way things did pan out was necessarily the only way things could have panned out. Could you define “broken-window pseudo-thinking” for me please? ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/93 "2014-03-23T23:51:57Z")
Haven’t we covered this already? ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/94 "2014-03-24T06:28:57Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > Haven’t we covered this already? Well, he never answered my question. **Kobal2** did, but I’m curious to see what **Steely Dan Fan** means when he uses it, rather than make assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![deregulated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@deregulated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deregulated)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/95 "2014-04-02T03:40:57Z")
The military budget. Let me bring up a few shining examples. The Bradley fighting vehicle. The hundreds of missle silos that were obsolete before they were completed. The billions spent on ammunition, bombs, and ordnance in general that went to a few corporations, the same corporations that pay our elected officials to keep wars going and to start new ones. The black budget. The fact that the Pentagon has not been audited for 15 years. The hundreds of military bases in resort areas. The Pentagons practice of militarizing our police forces with military equipment. I could go on. And on. For days. But last the Hellfire missles we are using to slaughter women and children and babies in order to kill a wanted man. I believe there are enough veterans and armed citizens in this country, we dont need a standing army. ---
**Author:** ![deregulated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@deregulated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deregulated)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/96 "2014-04-02T03:53:15Z")
I want to add one more thing. In the 1960s my father was a military officer stationed at White Sands Missle Range. (WSMR) Many times he would come home from work in a foul mood. I asked him one day why. He said all the civilian employees, the engineers, scientists, etc. did nothing but play cards all day while he had to work. Once in a while they would fire a missle but for the most part these people spent their careers playing cards and now are retired collecting retirement money for same. Playing cards. We could have a viable military for one tenth of what we spend now. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/97 "2014-04-02T08:26:19Z")
> [@deregulated](#): > > The hundreds of military bases in resort areas. Which bases are these? I need to update my dream sheet. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/98 "2014-04-02T16:01:55Z")
If there’s one good argument to cutting the defense budget to a fraction of what it is now, it has got to be an anecdote about civilians playing too much poker on a military base fifty years ago. Touche! ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/99 "2014-04-03T01:43:50Z")
> [@deregulated](#): > > I believe there are enough veterans and armed citizens in this country, we dont need a standing army. Unfortunately, wars don’t tend to give advanced notice. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212/100 "2014-04-03T03:25:02Z")
If Randy Quaid can save us from an alien armada, I bet our veterans and gun owners can handle an invasion my a well-equipped professional army. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/military-spending/684212.md?page=4)