My friend works for L3 Harris and has been working on useless government contracts for years. The bloat is real.
The assholes at ID.ME are pushing their way into the government ID system and I hate them because they just want to market bullshit restaurants coupons to me and my vet friends.
I hate predatory government contracts that happen because shit bag politicians allow it.
There is absolutely no argument that can be made in good faith to continue the bloated military budget. We grossly overspend. Of course the US should strive to have a strong military and national defense, but so much of the budget is used to line the pockets of political “donors”
It’s called the “Military Industrial Legislative” Iron Triangle. It works like this: Military retirees go into cushy industrial lobbying positions then lobby to the congressperson to build weapons and “create jobs”, this is an easy win for the congressperson and helps with reelection. The congressperson then passes laws that give huge military contracts to the industry.
I think it’s the abrams tank where each of the 50 states makes at least one part for the tank and then it is assembled somewhere else. It’s not just a complex any more, it’s much worse than that.
I honestly don’t think that most people understand how incredibly bloated the US military budget is. Even if you accept the premise that we have to have the biggest military in the world, so much money is spent on overseas military bases that don’t meaningfully contribute to our national defense. We have >750 military bases around the world so that we can intimidate other countries into doing what we want, which is both wasteful and evil. Learn more at Al Jazeera
sooooo yes you’re not wrong, but i’d argue (as not an american mind you) that also it’s a little more complicated than just national defence
overseas military bases aren’t just for intimidating other countries into doing what the US wants: they also contribute significantly to global stability… having THE world super power kinda everywhere means it’s probably much less likely that some random country is going to start shit… sure, the US gets to pick and choose to benefit itself, but it certainly contributes
and that’s not just good for the world: AS the worlds leading superpower, the US benefits enormously from global stability: from cheap trade, financing, more global budget being spent on STEM/R&D (which because of trade and financing the US almost always capitalises on somehow!)
I would argue that having only one nation in charge of policing the world’s stability is incredibly unstable. Its like having a table with only one leg. If that leg suddenly fails the whole thing topples over. The whole world would benefit more from a more distributed system than relying entirely on one nation.
Of course that also means they’d have to start getting their own hands dirty, and risking the lives of their own citizens for world stability, which doesn’t seem particularly likely at this point.
More to the point, other countries would have to start spending money on their militaries. Most NATO countries don’t even meet the purported spending goals, and that’s just for the single goal of deterring Russia. Many countries benefit a lot from America’s military spending, both by being able to utilize the peace and by being able to save their own money.
Whether or not this is a good or fair state of affairs is a different question, but there are a lot of reasons why things are this way.
Why do you think “globalists” is a scare word these days? The idea of centralizing any decision making globally would impact profits in the US.
Of course you don’t want a one-world authoritarian government, but I think the world could benefit greatly from a more organized way of distributing food for one thing.
What other countries? The only global power that is a near peer of the US with respect to military power is China.
There are geopolitical reasons that the US is in the position it is, and while a distributed system might be nice, unless the underlying geopolitical realities change, the US is stuck at the top
Ukraine is in a wierd position. A decade ago it had corrupt Russian puppets running rampant through the government. It was explicitly not under the US umbrella of protection.
Now, having nearby bases makes the logistics of providing aid to Ukraine much more feasible. Without them, the invasion of Ukraine might be complete, not just begun
We have >750 military bases around the world so that we can intimidate other countries into doing what we want, which is both wasteful and evil.
The US military is the most efficient global logistical operation ever. Open up flghtradar sometime and just look at how many military planes are moving tons of equipment and resources every hour of every day. You don’t achieve a global logistics network without those bases. To claim it’s just for intimidation and wasted is laughably naive.
The existence of those bases means we can negotiate with soft power where instead we might need to make a show of force. Intimidation, aka diplomacy, is superior to actual fights.
We wouldn’t need to intimidate people if we weren’t all up in the business of other random countries, constantly inciting coups, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation
International shipping: just one of the freedoms protected by the modern us armed forces
I honestly thought it was already over $1T annually.
However, I still remained pretty worried about shipbuilding capacity, at least until the situation over Taiwan can be resolved. If there ever is a large conflict that causes loss in any significant amount in ships it will be very, very difficult to replace. The current shipyards have orders beyond what they can produce, but even more significantly there is a severe shortage in labor that can even build ships.
Also the comparisons he makes I strongly feel are quite poor. There is a large difference in the budgets of various countries in defense spending. Its really hard to argue that the US and France should spend in similar amounts due to size, population, and commitments. And the cost for manufacturing and paying salaries in the US is quite different than what China can do. So the US will always have to spend the more, though we do still in other measures such as a per capita basis its not as extreme as its made out to be.
Remember on September 10th, 2001 when Donald Rumsfeld publicly announced the Pentagon couldn’t account for $2.3 trillion in transaction?
Or again in 2015 (2016?) when that number grew to $6.5 trillion with just the army alone? Yeah, no one does.
