Cut military spending

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JoeShlabotnik

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The big majority of our national budget is spent on military spending.
I would vote for any candidate who advocated a cut of that budget in half.
What to do with that money?
Give those who make under $250,000 a year a permanent cut in income taxes. Zero taxes.
Split the rest of the money between infrastructure spending, education, and any number of other things.
 
Military spending is a wee part of the federal budget. All that happens when you cut it is that engineers and techies and managers get put out of a job, and lawyers probably get more work dealing with the contract cancellations. Seen it a million times.

The US uses “military spending” as an excuse to fund tons of research that wouldn’t get funded otherwise and that brings a lot of peacetime benefits. If we didn’t have the excuse of “Military Spending”, nobody would spend any money on research in USA (Except for Pharma) because we don’t have the same attitude towards investing in research that Europe and Japan have.

“Cut Military Spending” usually comes from people who have no experience with what military spending actually does in this day and age and with how the US engineering industry and defense plants work. They think it’s all about missiles and hundred-thousand-dollar toilet seats.
 
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Convert3 said:
You might want to check your facts. Defense spending is well under a majority of the spending.
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Exactamundo. The biggest part of spending is entitlements.

I used to have many conversations about this with the guy who currently runs the budget for the House. He was in private practice at that time (Dems in office) and working in the office next to mine.
 
We seem to have a pretty good grip on how to kill with planes, mechanized armaments and drones. We have enough nuclear weapons to kill everything on the planet.
 
A lot of military spending is about preventing people from being killed, not killing them.
My husband had a 30+ year career as a defense engineer and spent maybe 1/15 of that working on missiles and about 60 percent of it working on stuff that found and cleared minefields, including in areas where wars were long over but mines remained. Military spending paid for all that and probably kept some people, including children, from getting blown apart.

I had 13 years with a defense contractor before I changed careers and I never worked on anything that killed anybody. Most of my time was spent on general technologies with peacetime uses such as communications. Towards the end of my time I worked on postal sorters and electric cars for a few years.
 
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Remaining a strong country with the best military in the world has resulted in far fewer deaths in military conflict than there used to be.
 
But think of what a lot of that money might be used for? Finding a cure for any number of diseases.
It appears to me that the more hardware bought for the military, the more they feel like they need to use it somewhere in the world.
 
By having a strong military, we are actually able to deliver food and medicine, as well as other goods and services around the world. There still are many countries where the rule of law is not followed, allowing cartels, pirates, and many other bad people steal needed supplies being sent to aid the hungry and sick. If we didn’t have a strong military they would expand their sphere of influence and steal much more. We are able to protect shipping lanes and air and land routes around the world. Not everyone plays the nice guy.
 
I appreciate the need to help our brothers and sisters around the globe.
On the other hand, why are we stuck in the battle between the Shias and the Sunnis in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, et al?
Much of this has been more about oil than it has been about protecting innocent people.
 
Common perception. However, the United States is the #1 producer of oil, and, since 2011, it is a net exporter of oil also. If it about oil, it’s about Europe and Asia.
 
I personally don’t like us staying in Afghanistan any longer. However, the straight of Hormuz is critical for shipping, including oil. Oil is a critical commodity in our world. The USA is self sufficient now, but many of our friends aren’t. Economic health requires fossil fuels. The world is working on reducing the need, but most likely will never get rid of the need.
Did you know that starving Germany of oil was a major contributor to defeat of the Nazis in WWII?
 
If there were less military spending, social programs would not be that big an issue. For one thing, most of us have paid into social security. No one pays out of each paycheck for more military stuff.
 
Sure you do. It’s called taxes.
But here’s the thing you obviously don’t understand. The stronger our defense the less likely there will be war. Wars are far more expensive than maintaining a strong defense. Rebuilding a country after a war is even more expensive, and that doesn’t count irreplaceable lives lost.
We only spend 3.2% of our GDP on military spending.
We spend 6.7% of GDP on pensions.
We spend 8.29% of GDP on healthcare.
We spend 2.2% of GDP on welfare programs.
These are government spending numbers, not personal.
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What percentage of the national budget is it? That would be more important to know than its actual amount. Oops. I see it was already answered. Foot into mouth once again.
 
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