Let's face it. This is ridiculous:
*The world's top 5 largest military budgets in 2009.
While the US continues to stack up a record debt and lags behind much of the civilized world in education and healthcare, it seems more and more evident that our nation has to become better at spending money more efficiently. For instance: it's very difficult for me to understand why the US needs a Navy that is larger than the combined forces of the next 13 largest navies in the world when 11 of those 13 countries are our allies. Why not downsize the Navy to a size that is only as big as the next 5 combined navies in the world? I'm not suggesting that the US should not be the #1 military spender in the world, but I am suggesting that, barring the invasion of extraterrestrials, we have little to loose and much to gain by decreasing our margin of superiority and utilizing those assets in other areas of the national budget.
Americans are going to have to eventually decide whether they want 700 foreign military bases across the world or higher quality healthcare. Do we want to pursue foreign policies of occupying other nations or do we want to balance the budget? Like any other business or organization, the US government has a limited amount of resources. Every F-35 aircraft and every nuclear submarine represents an enormous amount of money that could have been spent towards education, environmental conservation, healthcare reform, mass transit, or deficit reduction. The opportunity cost of excessive military spending is a thorn in the side of this nation which deserves immediate political action.
I agree completely with your statements about down sizing our military. I personally am a strong believer in having a very powerful military, but in my opinion, the United States does not need to be the world police. We do not need to spend massive amounts of money to make sure that other countries do not misbehave or do something against our interests. The purpose of a military is to defend your country against attack, not to protect the other side of the world against themselves. Our government spends way to much money on our military. Pulling our military out from the foreign countries where our military presence is not necessary would have a strong benefit on our national debt. It does not cost nearly as much money to have a large standing army as it does to have a large army in combat. Take China for example. China has the world’s largest standing army, but they spend around $500 billion less then us annually on their army. By cutting military spending, we could spend 100’s of billions of dollars on our infrastructure ,which in turn would generate more GDP that could go towards lessening our debt. It is a good solution to our problem, and like you, I wonder why nothing is being done about it.
ReplyDelete I don't agree with down sizing our Nation’s military. I am a strong believer in always being ready for anything ( i.e, North Korea). I think the main reason a lot of countries do not try to pick fights with the U.S. is due to our Military presence.
ReplyDelete One thing I feel should never be compared is health care and the military, because our military doesn't effect our health care. As of now a majority of our Nation’s health care is control by the private sector, and the military is controlled by our government.
Downsizing our military will not help schools (States issues), mass transit ( States, and National issues). The only thing that downsizing the military may help is National deficit. It may reduce it, but the government will find a reason to spend the money. To be honest, I would just get rid of the Department of Education, and other wasteful spending departments before we touch our military budget.
I understand that both military and VA expenses are a little more than half the US budget but don't you love that fact that you can get up every morning and do what you want and say what you want. Those are the little things that I think people forget about everyday when they wake up. I will pay whatever I need to pay to keep that—because I enjoy my freedom.