Ah, the old broken window fallacy clearly explained by Frederic Bastiat in the nineteenth century.
[QUOTE=Boston Globe]
A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department’s current budget is “not sustainable,” and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military’s most prized weapons programs.
The briefings were prepared by the Defense Business Board, an internal management oversight body. It contends that the nation’s recent financial crisis makes it imperative that the Pentagon and Congress slash some of the nation’s most costly and troubled weapons to ensure they can finance the military’s most pressing priorities.
[/QUOTE]
An idea from the peanuts gallery: maybe if “the sheriff of the world” (the expression is not mine) spent less in bullets, his deputies would have to spend more themselves. It’s a bit of a vicious circle: you guys spend tons on it and do your best to be the ones leading the charge, so our guys decide they can afford to take some of that budget and move it to education and social services and let’s get lots of guys who don’t mind cleaning oil spills but not so many who are interested in blazing-gun charges, so your guys decide they need to reinforce things because you can’t count on our guys so…
Out of time:
The GI Bill can be described as “a fellowship system which carries the condition that one must be a soldier.” Less soldiers -> less people using the GI Bill. It’s possible to determine how much money this means and putting it back into fellowships which don’t require the recipient to be a soldier. After all, it is perfectly possible to be a good candidate for a PhD while being a lousy one for a commission.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258274,00.html Used to be true.