By Thomas Madison
If there is a bully at school who steals your kid’s $2 lunch money every day, what do you do? Salon magazine suggests sending your kid to school with $5, then $10, then $20, then $50, then $100. Just keep sending more money until the bully has had enough, and voila! Problem solved!
Even though welfare spending is already double defense spending, the geniuses at Salon somehow believe that LBJ’s colossal failure, The War On Poverty, will somehow become a raging success if we just dump more hard-earned American tax money down the rabbit hole.
Forget Medicare for a moment, as well as Medicaid, WIC, Obamacare, and all the other socialist nightmares that now strap the American citizen in lifelong debt. Adding those to the “entitlement” side of the equation makes US defense spending (only 3.8% of GDP in 2013) an even smaller fraction in comparison. The amount we are spending on defense drops every year, as illustrated in the table at this link…. worldwide defense spending by nation/GDP. As can clearly be seen from this data, US defense spending is very much in line with many other developed nations, and falling every year. Also, consider that many friendly nations have a small defense budget because they depend on the United States for the bulk of their defense.
One thing is certain, not that I expect the blockheads at Salon to understand this – you only get one chance to test your Utopian nonsense. If we drastically cut our defense spending, we make ourselves vulnerable to any nation or high profile terrorist non-state, like ISIS, to walk in and eat our lunch, to further abuse the above metaphor. I know that the prospect of any such nation or steaming pile of scumbags wanting to injure the United States is beyond the kumbaya comprehension of Salon readers, but you had better consider the potential consequences of your romantic fantasy very carefully. If you are wrong the consequences do not favor continued American liberty and sovereignty. If you are unable to connect those dots, let me assure you it is a horrible picture!
Image credit: Weekly Standard
Salon article….
The U.S. military is a national security threat
America’s armed forces are a massive drain on resources that could otherwise strengthen the country
The American military budget is massive.
As the era of American hegemony winds down, it’s more important than ever for America to be able to demonstrate soft power. That means first, an American model that works, for other countries to emulate. But further, it means a highly educated population, long-term investment in infrastructure, adequate healthcare, an society based, above all else, on opportunity. However, it’s likely that the military budget precludes these important services.
The most important cost of our bloated military budget is investment in other important government functions. As the chart below from CBO shows, defense spending has historically consumed more than half of the entire U.S. government discretionary budget (spending on veterans eats up mandatory spending as well). In 2014, discretionary defense spending was double Medicaid spending, and about equal to Medicare spending.
