[onoway]

A headline in the Wichita Eagle someone sent me

From the Eagle...



"Traffic was heavy on Kellogg for yesterday morning's commute, despite 47% of the population lying in bed waiting for a government handout."

[mike777]

onoway, on 2012-September-21, 19:38, said:

A headline in the Wichita Eagle someone sent me

From the Eagle...



"Traffic was heavy on Kellogg for yesterday morning's commute, despite 47% of the population lying in bed waiting for a government handout."

that is a sad comment on america
1) true
2) too damn lazy to find and report truth.

[blackshoe]

dwar0123, on 2012-September-21, 16:22, said:

United States spends 711 Billion on defense
China spends 143 Billion on defense

711 * .75 > 143

Source
http://en.wikipedia....ry_expenditures

So what? This proves precisely nothing, and certainly does not answer my question.

[blackshoe]

@Cthulhu: All I can say to your little scenario is that our respective understandings of Objectivist philosophy do not match. As for your request for an example, it's based on a false premise: that an example has to exist in order for your statement to be demonstrably false. As I've already demonstrated how it is false, your premise is false, your conclusion is false, and the fact that I know of no such actual example (as I'm sure you were expecting) is irrelevant. Or do you deny that privately constructed and privately owned roads could provide the trucking company with the necessary infrastructure?

[BunnyGo]

blackshoe, on 2012-September-22, 10:50, said:

So what? This proves precisely nothing, and certainly does not answer my question.

Your question was whether we could continue to have the most powerful armed forces in the world while cutting military spending by 25%. Considering we already have a head start on research and spend as much year to year as countries 2 to 15 combined, yes, we could cut spending and cut the military and still have one more powerful than everyone else.

The hard part--as you're insinuating--is whether we could do this and continue to have bases in Germany/Korea/Japan/Taiwan, let alone the wars we're currently fighting without more input from our allies: no, we couldn't. That said, I'd like to see the rest of NATO chip in a few bucks towards their own defense. Let China control the stability of the world for a while, let Europe kick in a few bucks--hell, let them pay us to do it for them.

[mike777]

Actually as I point out if we cut 170 billion or so and start to pay off the 16 trillion we owe we can ship the money back to China. China can use the money we pay back to take over those bases and protect the world's shipping lanes.

Granted it will take many years of 170 billion payments to pay back china but every year they can count on it to build up their navy and airforce, etc.

[y66]

Romney's Secret Plan for reviving the economy via Matt O'Brien. Visuals courtesy of Krugman:

Quote

If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you’re talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.

[luke warm]

BunnyGo, on 2012-September-22, 11:12, said:

--hell, let them pay us to do it for them.

now there's a thought

[barmar]

BunnyGo, on 2012-September-22, 11:12, said:

Your question was whether we could continue to have the most powerful armed forces in the world while cutting military spending by 25%.

I think he was actually questioning the premise that "we could easily cut military spending by 25%". Maybe we could cut the spending and still have the most powerful military, but it wouldn't be anything close to "easy".

[billw55]

I wasn't expecting so much debate on that one

I only meant to point out the (entirely obvious) fact that our military is vastly larger than any other, and still would be if it was substantially smaller. Actually I thought that a quarter was a pretty big underbid, I considered a third and even half, which would still undeniably leave our military as the largest.

That does not automatically mean that we should do such a thing. Personally, I do think that we should cut defense spending and allocate those funds to infrastructure. But that is a separate debate.

And yes, if we reduced the size of the military, we would maintain fewer foreign bases, fewer naval vessels, fewer planes, and fewer troops deployed. That seems obvious too, and not necessarily bad, in my opinion. Currently, the USA floats 11 aircraft carriers. Britain has a few, and as far as I know no other nation operates more than one. If we cut back to nine or eight or even six, would it be such a tragedy?

And no, I did not mean "easily" in the literal sense, rather, in the sense of "well within realistic possibility."

[barmar]

Of course we know what you meant (well, I did, and I hope blackshoe and others did). These rhetorical games point out that such statements are not very helpful. It's all well and good to say that we could do fine with less military, but how do we get there from here? Like it or not, we've become the world's police force. If we were to draw down, is there anyone waiting in the wings to take up the slack?

[PassedOut]

barmar, on 2012-September-24, 08:35, said:

Like it or not, we've become the world's police force. If we were to draw down, is there anyone waiting in the wings to take up the slack?

We've "become" what we should not be. Let's announce an end to that.

[onoway]

barmar, on 2012-September-24, 08:35, said:

.....
Like it or not, we've become the world's police force. If we were to draw down, is there anyone waiting in the wings to take up the slack?

Perhaps a question that should be asked is whether or not the world actually wants or needs the US or anyone else to be the world's police force. Wasn't that supposed to be the bailiwick of the UN? It's clearly not working very well in terms of Syria but as only one example it would have kept the US out of Iraq and saved both countries many many lives and trillions of dollars.

[mike777]

But it does seem the world wants us in places such as Korea, and guarding the shipping lanes of the world.

I mean no poster here has said they dont.

If you want the USA out of Korea, Japan, Asia, Europe and Africa ok...just say so.

I mean at least one poster suggested cutting back to 6 carriers. Now that will save alot of money. Of course that means only 3 are actually out of port at any one time.
Where would you like them to go?

At the very least it will keep us out of another new war with Iran, good luck UN.

As other pointed out 26,000 dead in Syria and counting, good luck.
Out of Libya, good luck there.

We can pull out of the the old Yugoslavia, good luck there. Remember the concentration camps in the 1990's in Europe. Out of the Sinia and Egypt. Out of Africa.


btw the USA is out of Iraq....I notice the war is still going on there without us.

[PassedOut]

mike777, on 2012-September-24, 09:17, said:

But it does seem the world wants us in places such as Korea, and guarding the shipping lanes of the world.

Not enough to offer to pay the US to do it.

[barmar]

PassedOut, on 2012-September-24, 09:26, said:

Not enough to offer to pay the US to do it.

Right. We do it because it's the right thing to do. One of the great things about being human is our capacity for altruism.

[dwar0123]

barmar, on 2012-September-24, 15:16, said:

Right. We do it because it's the right thing to do. One of the great things about being human is our capacity for altruism.

I don't buy it.

Not the idea of altruism, that I buy, we do it often on an individual and community level. We even do it on a national level when responding to things such as the Haitian earthquake.

But being the worlds police force? That we don't do for altruistic reasons, not even close. We might try to err on the side of morally good, but we do it for very selfish reasons. We do it for control and influence.

Calling our world dominating military an altruistic police force makes me sad, that is some deep self denial among our better educated citizens.

[barmar]

I'm not going to claim that we're perfect humanitarians, and we often use our military for selfish reasons. But during the Libyan rebellion, we could have assisted the incumbent government or the insurgents. Either way, when the smoke cleared the victors would owe us big time. We went with the insurgents because their goals meshed with our ideals about democracy.

Unfortunately, the world needs a police force. The UN hasn't solved that problem, it doesn't even come close. Are we supposed to just step aside and say, "Hey, world, we've done our part for the past 60 years, it's someone else's turn now"? For whatever historical and political reasons, we have the most effective military in the world -- who's supposed to take our place if we do that?

Do I think that it's a good thing that we're sending our people off to die in conflicts that don't directly affect us? No. I also don't think it's a good thing that ordinary policemen die in the line of duty. But some things are a necessary evil.

This is not a black-and-white issue, it's about as complicated as things get.

[dwar0123]

barmar, on 2012-September-24, 17:54, said:

Either way, when the smoke cleared the victors would owe us big time. We went with the insurgents because their goals meshed with our ideals about democracy.

Either I am being to literal with the definition of altruistic, or you are being to liberal

Even that sentiment doesn't fit with my understanding of the word.

Edit:
Let me elaborate.

Intervening, regardless of which side, such that they owe us big time, not altruistic.

Choosing the side based on a similiar political outlook, also not altruistic.

[barmar]

There's no such thing as true altruism -- as we've learned from evolutionary biology (the "selfish gene" stuff), the altruist almost always gets some benefit as a result. But that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that they're doing good in the process.

I give money to the Alzheimer's Association. Some of the reasons why I consider this an appropriate charity to contribute to are that I'd hate to see my mother afflicted with it, and even more I hope that I won't suffer from it. Do these personal reasons take away from the good I'm doing for society by helping to find a cure for this disease?