Mafeking

A Buy & Hold Forever Dividend Stock Portfolio

Why not buy a few of the dividend ETFs instead - there is no evidence that your ability to pick dividend payers is any better than the approach used by SDY and DVY

The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex

From an insular American view of course the article is correct. But thinking more broadly the US is the world policeman that through military might keeps a modicum of stability in the world.

Any fool can point out that war is bad and that spending money on military might is a waste of money. And of course there is the pubertal reactions of dumb American government and so on. And blaming the previous generation. (The problem is that most Americans have grown in a time of peace and cannot conceive that things could be otherwise. Travel a bit you man to less stable parts of the world and consider than most of the world would be like that without Pax Americana. Before that there was pax Britannia)

What is the alternative - and before you answer consider how difficult it would be to do business and earn a decent living in a world without stability.

The pie chart is also misleading in that China has a much lower cost structure than the US and that is applicable to the military as much as manufacturing. China has a larger army - head count wise - than the US