Is the Pope Catholic?
This question is for your answers without my response to influence your opinion.
That’s not the question....the question should be is what we’re spending on National Defense buying the right stuff?
Paraphrased: Millions for defense and not one thin dime for tribute or virtue. I forgot the author.....maybe Jefferson?
Yes.
But to transition away from it would kill the US economy. And many of those jobs keep the deep red states, deep red.
Yes, the Fed Gov spent $6 trillion last year with only $3 trillion in revenue. Everything needs to be cut.
The good news is a lot could be cut without threatening our security.
Planes that cost $1 billion and carriers that cost $10 billion are bad investments. In a real war we will will never use them. Assets like that cannot be deployed to any theatre they have a risk of being lost.
Not too much, just too much on stupid stuff.
We buy systems the military doesn't want or need because their congress critters want the jobs in their district.
The contracting methods are inefficient and costly.
The requirements are poorly defined.
Books have been written on the subject.
Considering most wars we fought were not even needed? Yes...
Yes, because an astonishing amount of it is for woke crap like trannies and homos and girls in combat units, for domestic political suppression and domestic spying, and for retarded green projects like jet fuel from algae. We also paid money to send a large group of soldiers to Red China for some Army Olympics.
They clearly have too much money.
It doesn’t matter when they’re spending it on over priced fluff and wokeness.
“Do you think we spend too much on national defense?”
I was in the defense/industrial complex for 33 years. The answer is yes and no. Give me line item and contract item veto and I’d supply you with the same amount of material and technology for significantly less. Plot the purchasing on any major project and you’d have a map of the entire United States. To get funding the booty is spread into as many congressional districts as possible. For example, on how important location of jobs is, a company called Spray Cool located their plant right next to the home of the Congressman who headed the budget committee. We ended up using their ridiculous technology even though we’d proven it didn’t work. It was part of the contracts we got. So, we had to go ahead and design replacements for their part of the project, which severely affected schedule and cost. We were still buying their failed products even thought we’d proven they didn’t work. Then, every contract has gay and lesbian outreach programs, diversity programs and all kinds of special socialist propaganda training. Companies love these adders as profit is a percentage of costs.
As bleeding edge technology is very expensive companies will reach for the sky because even if it fails it may be useful on other unrelated projects and, as noted, the higher the expense the better off the company.
There are hundreds of little changes that could be made to save money. For example, we’re told to use only components that have been in production for x years. Usually, this means by the time you are building the actual hardware, say, three years after you proposed it and tested the beta units, the components are not available. The company knows this going in, but says nothing as redesigns are just funding gravy.
I could go on, but it’s pointless. Everybody knows what’s wrong with the system and how to make everything cheaper, but nobody wants to make those changes. And, if you need someone’s vote and they tell you to use fuel made from unicorn pee, you’ll gladly use fuel made from unicorn pee.
Yes, in the sense that government usually spends too much whenever it spends. Take out the pork, waste, graft and stuff the government doesn’t need to be doing, and you’d come closer to the right amount.
How would you know, how would anyone know, if we do or if we don’t spend too much on national defense if no one here even knows what we spend on national defense.
Sheesh!
We definitely waste too much on it. The prices the military pays for stuff is insane bordering on legalized fraud.
Beware of the military-industrial complex, as someone warned us once.
Same goes for all the other agencies. Their goal is not to save money but to spend every last dime of their budget so they can ask for more the following year.
A better question might be, “Do you think the defense dept wisely spends the huge amount of money we give it every year?
What do you think?
“Question: Do you think we spend too much on national defense?”
In 1949, we were on top of the world and disarmed BIG TIME. At the end of that year, we even pulled our troops out of South Korea - after all, we just won WW2, no one could mess with us. In fact, no need to spend money, after all the world was at PEACE!!!!
364 days later, we had the draft again as we had to get nearly 2,000,000 Americans in uniform to fight over there. And 4 years later, nearly 40,000 of them dead, plus 1,000,000 Koreans dead.
Bottom Line: If we want war, then yes, we spend too much today and need to cut back. If we want peace, then we should NOT be cutting back, and if anything, increasing our spending.
And yes, I know that Rand Paul will object to the above, as peace to him flies in on doves or something.
Yes. Defense is now foreign welfare for Europe, Asia and Africa. It was never for this purpose.