The United States has a post-Cold War military in a pre-world war world. It should be devoting about 5 percent of GDP to defense — significantly more than its current 3 percent.
Everyone knows the best way to defend yourself against widespread global cooperation is not to participate in that cooperation or give the world reasons to cooperate with you. No actually the best way is to just spend all of your money on bombs and bomb the entire world!
Yes I am available as a government consultant. No I don’t care what party.
Commander: Have we bombed anywhere? Have we shown 'em we got teeth?
Carpenter: Oh yes, sir. We’ve bombed a lot of places flat, sir.
Commander: Good. Good. We don’t want anyone to think we’re chicken.
Carpenter: Oh no! They don’t think that, sir. Everyone’s really scared of us, sir.
Commander: Of us?
Carpenter: Yes, sir.
Commander: (pleased) Of our power?
Carpenter: Oh yes, sir! They’re really scared when they see those big planes come over.
Commander: Wow! I bet they are. I bet they are. I bet they’re really scared.
Carpenter: Oh they are, sir.
Commander: Do we have any figures on how scared they are?
Carpenter: No … no figures, sir. But they sure were scared.
Commander: Ah! But it’s not working?
Carpenter: No, sir.
Of course they leave out any consideration for whether or not the US actually has the workers, soldiers or industry (it doesn’t) to make use of a whole extra 2% of its GDP on war. Literally the pentagon can’t even use all the money it already has (which is why money keeps disappearing and the pentagon keeps failing audits).
![[Not the Onion] The looming Eurasian menace](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/75a35862-f14e-448b-ad22-46b6388d4ec0.png){kind=link}
Everyone knows the best way to defend yourself against widespread global cooperation is not to participate in that cooperation or give the world reasons to cooperate with you. No actually the best way is to just spend all of your money on bombs and bomb the entire world!
Yes I am available as a government consultant. No I don’t care what party.
Of course they leave out any consideration for whether or not the US actually has the workers, soldiers or industry (it doesn’t) to make use of a whole extra 2% of its GDP on war. Literally the pentagon can’t even use all the money it already has (which is why money keeps disappearing and the pentagon keeps failing audits).
Finance capitalism says the more money the more better. Factories have a lower return than speculation on annual ammunition production