# US military dominance **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 8, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-dominance/471863 "2008-11-08T23:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 32
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-dominance/471863/32 "2008-11-11T15:21:15Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Not the same thing. First, besides what **gonzomax** pointed out, Medicare/Medicaid contributes to the economy in more than just money spent. Healthier people work better and harder than sick ones, and government medical care is less expensive. And Social Security is necessary to keep people from falling into scrounging-in-garbage-for-food levels of poverty. Our outsized military is mostly waste - no one is going to invade an ICBM armed country - and a terrible contributor to the economy even in the sense of “at least the money is spent here” way. Every one of those arguments applies for military spending. How many people has the GI bill put through college? How many people do companies like Honeywell, Raytheon, and Boeing employ? Do you think we buy our ICBMs, our jets, our air craft carriers, our soldiers, et al from China or something? Besides, our military is the economic grease in the world. International shipping of goods and petroleum would be a completely different story without our navy. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-dominance/471863)._