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- Defense Investors in Today's Volatile Markets
- Attractive Values - Fast Money Recap (10/7/08)
- Seven Companies That Raised Their Dividends, Despite Market Turmoil
- Dividend Stocks In the News
- 13 Defense and Aerospace Stocks to Consider
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- Panic on Wall Street - Fast Money Recap (9/17/08)
- Defense Spending and the Presidential Election
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The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Excellent article!Those on this post that defend the spending need to read another book written by a Marine corps Major General and 2 Medal of Honor winner
Smedley Darlington Butler and his book "War is a Racket"
I thought like many on this site do at one time, that read the newspapers and believed what they were told and felt that they were well informed. This is a short book and worth reading here it is for free: www.horstwisdom.com/wi...
This is very relevant to an investment forum because we Americans are all being robbed by our government!
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The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
The men and women serving in the American armed forces comprise the the most righteous military in the world. They deserve the best tools to do their job.The world needs a righteous police force. We should have been in Rwanda, and we should be in Sudan right now.
We were right to fight communism, and we're right to fight islamofacism now.
The military spending as a percent of GDP has fallen from about 5.5% in 1992 to 3.1% in 2007. (Per Wikipedia Total Military 2007 Funding is $439.3 Billion, US 2007 GDP is 13.8 Trillion)
In the Iraq and Afganistan conflicts more has been accomplished with fewer American lives lost than in any previous conflict.
Smart weapons, sophisticated communication, command & control systems save lives, all with less money.
I think we're doing pretty well, keep up the good work!
Reply
Facts
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Excellent article. ReplyThe Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
rhs101I have a few other articles on seeking alpha that will give you my view on the deficit and spending. Take a look at them and see if you agree. Reply
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Vik II - Comparing the Reichstag fire to 9/11 is absurd and offensive. Hitler himself set the fire in order to drum up support, are you saying that our gov't created 9/11 in order to increase defense spending?? As far as you saying that terrorism is an "invisible enemy", I'd like to know what planet your living on! Pick up a newspaper, theres global acts of terrorism taking place everyday, you'de have to be in denial to not see it. ReplyThe Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
If any of you believe the numbers shown for how much China is spending on their defense you are total idiots. The truth is they are spending much more. One day, unfortunately, we will find out the truth about the depth and breadth of the Chinese Military Complex that has been developing for some years now. Of course, the liberal pukes on this site (will their namby-pamby logic) will say that the US is the one that has "forced" the Chinese to do this. Of course, in their eyes, the US is guilty creating all of the aggression around the world. Unbelievable. ReplyThe Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Jim,User242985 - Did you read the article or are you just spouting rhetoric.
I changed my pseudonym after you read my post.
You didn't mention social programs? You lead the article off with this quote form Eisenhower:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children."
I presume you agree with it. Then to close you have this:
"If as a country we continue to allow our politicians and their military industrial complex corporate sponsors to spend $700+ billion per year on weapons, to the detriment of higher education, alternative energy projects, and national infrastructure needs, we will be paying an extremely high price.
We are in a classic guns or butter scenario. The Bush Administration has decided to choose guns while borrowing from our grandchildren and the Chinese to pay for the butter. This can work for awhile, but as deficits accumulate, the dollar plummets, and inflation rears its ugly head, our great country will decline as other empires who overstepped their bounds declined."
Guns OR butter????
OR --- that is exactly the problem I am talking about. You are saying either we spend on guns or butter without a thought to not spending it at all.
Unless I missed it you did not mention anyting about the national debt or the deficit. Reply
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Machiavelli999,SocSec,Medicare,Medica... are not discretionary government expenditures: they are already paid for by dedicated tax.
On the contrary, military spending is discretionary and along with other discretionary spending sucks about 500bn per annum in taxes which were collected for the sole purpose of paying future pension benefits.
You are finding it normal that the gov't taxes you with SocSec tax and then spends half of it waging pointless wars?
How will you (and everyone else) react to a new payroll tax of 3% called Misc War Miscarriages? Reply
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
This article speaks to an issue that is just one of many troubling this country today. The problem is that one can discuss statistics and charts etc., but until people take to the streets, the government will not listen. In a stroke of genius, the government did away with the draft. Thus it ensured that the general public will never be concerned enough with US' military engagements--not enough to go out and make their voices heard.The most dangerous thing about a society dominated by the "war merchants" is that inevitably there is a desire to create new markets for their goods. Thus the expansion of NATO to include countries that have no business being part of NATO and the twin towers were as the Reichstag fire was to the Nazi's-- the perfect platform upon which to hoist the wardrum. Terrorism was like a godsend for the war merchants. An invisible enemy, impossible to defeat and a victory never to be achieved.
Combine that with a little dose of fearmongering and there is your perfect recipe. One of Hitler's henchmen once said-"To control a people, give them something to fear and anyone who does not tow the line accuse of being unpatriotic."
In final analysis, I would argue this: to support the military i.e. our troops means supporting the military industrial complex. If the support from our troops is pulled the following will be achieved: Politicians will be less fearful to cut expenditures, the military will be a less attractive option--our boys' and girls' desire to "serve" the country will become less pronounced, a draft will be reinstituted to ensure proper staffing and wars will once again be open to public scrutiny. Reply
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Is it just me or is Ron Paul the only person in Washington with a brain.. ReplyThe Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Jim:[The chart of expenditures starts in 1998. I believe it was 9/11/2001. The numbers speak for themselves.]
No – you tortured them to say that. U.S. military spending didn’t start in 1998 or 2001. See Pype’s comment above.
[Guess whose side the U.S. was on during the Iraq/Iran war. We supported Sadaam with weapons and money because we hated Iran, so I guess we are responsible for the 1 million deaths.]
Actually it goes back further – when Jimmy Carter brought Khomeni back to Iran. It was similar to the Germans back in WWI shipping Lenin back to Russia. Your argument is like the gun control problem where people blame the guns and not the gunner. In England they’ve outlawed handguns and now they have a “knife problem“.
[Russia just invaded a sovereign country this week. Should we launch the ICBMs towards Moscow?]
No, would you? And neither would I invade Pakistan as Obama advocated. You can always tell a weak argument when someone tries to put words in your mouth.
[The French supported our war of independence. They didn't start it. There was no conflict in Iraq when we invaded.]
There was no conflict in Iraq before we invaded if you ignore the suppressions of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs. However, putting that aside for the moment, the point of our efforts was to remove a serial aggressor who was a threat to his neighbors and world peace, collaborated with al Qaeda, had used WMD and was estimated by the CIA and all the leaders of his neighboring countries at the time to have WMD capability. We just finished removing 550 tons of yellow cake from Iraq and Saddam’s no 2 ranking Air Force General has said he shipped several truck and plane loads of WMD to Syria in the days leading up to the invasion.
I’m glad we liberated Iraq. I’m thankful that GWB had the cahonas to do the right thing. Had the “Father of the Internet” won the 2000 election, we’d still be negotiating with the Taliban for extradition of Osama and have incurred a couple more 9/11’s. As it is, Osama is rotting in some cave in Pakistan, Saddam has been removed, Iraq is toddling toward democracy, we’ve had no more 9/11’s, and Qadafi coughed up his WMD.
And I’m still glad the French didn’t use your logic back in the 1770’s. Instead of surging to Yorktown, they could have packed up and left.
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The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
Jim: thank you very much for a thoughtful article. What you wrote is similar to lectures I give in this area when we are discussing Army and DoD Force Management at the US Army Command & General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth. I will probably have our Force Managment lesson author send you some form letter describing how we would use the article as a reading. The concepts of opportunity cost, and threat based force structure seem foreign to many people. The current DoD policy of "capabilities based" force structure is too easily co-opted into an open checkbook for unlimited technological solutions for mythical potential enemies, especially when linked with a tacit agreement to fund DoD at a fixed % of GDP as argued by our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You can heat the hogs of war drooling over that.Force structure must meet the tests of suitable, feasible, acceptable. The current policy goals beg the question of feasibility.
I was pleased to see you quoting one of my heroes David Walker, one of the few adult commentators on the subject of our fiscal posture. His insights into the approaching trainwreck of unconstrained appetite in every dimension of federal spending are compelling.
I commend to you the book "Military Reform" by Winslow Wheeler and Lawrence Korb, James Fallows' National Defense, and Robert Coram's "Boyd", the biography of COL John Boyd. I am quite sure you have already seen the documentary "Why We Fight" which I think does a responsible job of laying out the 2d and 3d order effects of policy choices made without a clear grasp of long term strategy. It also references Ike in the opening moments.
One can concede that there are threats in the world without agreeing with the method, scope, and cost of the current response, and the 2d mortgage we have signed for future generations for our current foreign policy.
cheers,
Ken
Ken Long
Asst Professor
Department of Logistics & Resource Operations
US Army Command & General Staff College
US Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027 Reply
or
The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
"Speak softly and carry a big stick." Theodore Roosevelt had it right...we already have the biggest stick in the world, but now we just need to work on speaking a bit more softly.While the US expenditures on DoD might be massive, nothing is more important than having a strong defense to protect citizens, domestically and abroad, as well as to defend certain ideals around the world. Without paving way for further argument from those on this board who seemingly post only for the sake of argument, I feel that "American must remain good to remain great." While I will never support the US allowing its military to become less of a global force, I do think that more humanitarian work could be done. The US does a lot right now, but more can always be done.
Additionally, more technological advances have come from DARPA and even NASA than we could even fathom...not just missiles, tanks, etc...but surgical techniques, transportation, and synthetic materials. Without healthy funding, many of these advances would not exist.
Cheers
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The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
IMPEACH BUSH & CHENEY ReplyThe Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex [view article]
User242985 - Did you read the article or are you just spouting rhetoric.I asked why our troops are in Germany and Japan. They need to be brought home.
I mentioned absolutely nothing about spending the money on social programs. We need to balance our budget and cut spending across the board.
I guess your warped interpretation of the article says more about you than me. Reply