It’s worth also looking at what other countries spend on defense. Now that the U.S. is cutting off NATO, France plans to raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Applying that same figure to the U.S. would bring us down to $700 billion in 2024. So you’d pay $1,250 if the U.S. military budget was similar to what France thinks is a good number.
Germany is currently at 2.3% and plans to hit 3.5% by 2029. That’s the same percent as the U.S.
Modern Monetary Theory on line 2 for you!
There is no possible sense in which "economics is just as fundamental as physics": the latter concerns the behavior of the physical world with or without humans in it; the former describes the dynamics of a human created system featuring humans interacting with each other and the physical world.
1 - They are also useless by themselves, any rule that actually tells you something will have exceptions.
There are all kinds of dark budgets and stuff spun off into "civilian" programs that actually aren't
The published cost of Iran War is like $30 Billion when it is obviously over $100 Billion by experts and that doesn't including replacing all the missiles
TWENTY-ONE TRILLION DOLLARS since 9/11 spent on defense 2001-2021
* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...
imagine how much food clothing shelter for the US and WORLD that would buy
we'd have humans on Mars already with that budget not even knowing now how to stop space-blindness and bone-loss
President LBJ proposed his Great Society agenda, which he defined as “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.” It was a war on poverty, touching food, shelter, and education. At that same time, the country also increased its defense spending due to the heightened tension in the Cold War and escalation in the Vietnam War. The country could really do both.
No, the US absolutely can afford to have a gigantic military and massive welfare. That's what being the richest country on earth means
But for some reason we spent the past 50 years insisting that we are better off just letting a few individuals direct that wealth instead of making some choices collectively and democratically.
People might come to their senses when the second gilded age once again leaves a third of us unemployed and parents dying in ditches.
Show your work.
>There are all kinds of dark budgets and stuff spun off into "civilian" programs that actually aren't
How much, though, as a percentage of the federal budget? Also, DoD does a lot of stuff that doesn't involved national defense, like breast cancer research or canal and levee maintenance.
>The published cost of Iran War is like $30 Billion when it is obviously over $100 Billion by experts and that doesn't including replacing all the missiles
Those missiles will be replaced in future defense budgets.
Or, put another way, you spend hundreds of dollars a month on not having to learn russian and live as putin's peasant.
Seems like a good deal to me.