But can we really afford a larger military right now? Will the markets allow for more spending. The problem now is the lack of revenue streams for government to function on. I don't see how a larger military can be achieved without raising taxes which simply put Washington is not willing to do. We can talk all day long about how great it would be if we could realize a libertarian/conservative government whose main concern was national defense, but I don't see that happening ever. People like their Medicare/Medicaid, and they like Social Security (I don't want this discussion to devolve into a discussion of Social Security it has been done in other forums).
Personally, I don't think that raising taxes for the expressed purpose of investing in the military is a bad thing. The money should translate to jobs in the private sector. That however does not solve the problem of people or more precisely lack therof. I do not see anyway around a draft on this one.
To the comment that 600 billion isn't all that much in treasuries. I completely disagree especially if it is taken in conjunction with a complete nationalization of all factories in the PRC. If you personally have enough liquidity to purchase them I congratulate you, however, from what I've seen of the most recent set of economic data, most Americans simply put do not have the savings to prop up our debt in that manner. If you follow the economic/business news then you are no doubt aware that even Warren Buffet is moving away from the dollar and into European markets, and the saying is where the Wizard goes Wall Street follows.
Free trade has been an unmitigated disaster for most Americans, and the national security angle of relocating our manufacturing capacity in China has not been covered in the MSM (am I surprised of course not).
"To the comment that 600 billion isn't all that much in treasuries. I completely disagree especially if it is taken in conjunction with a complete nationalization of all factories in the PRC. If you personally have enough liquidity to purchase them I congratulate you, however, from what I've seen of the most recent set of economic data, most Americans simply put do not have the savings to prop up our debt in that manner. If you follow the economic/business news then you are no doubt aware that even Warren Buffet is moving away from the dollar and into European markets, and the saying is where the Wizard goes Wall Street follows.
Free trade has been an unmitigated disaster for most Americans, and the national security angle of relocating our manufacturing capacity in China has not been covered in the MSM (am I surprised of course not)."
Good points but Warren Buffet didn't exactly please his investors this year with almost nil movement of their funds.
The real bad news is oil. After 9/11 we should have dumped 100 billion dollars into building massive synthetic oil plants and ethenol conversion facilities. Because with our own energy independance, we can overcome anything. Without it, recovering indeed will take decades and you can be sure China and Russia will own 1/2 the globe by then.