- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/62796168
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Not really though.
The US would have more money available for weapons if schools, healthcare etc. was properly founded. That’s basic macro economy.
Without defining that a bit more, basically no.
The US has a certain tax base in a given year, and then has to fit their spending into 140% of it or whatever. Simple as. Where medicine and education might help is tax base in a decade or two, but then again a tax cut or basic research grants might work even better. (Spending on weapons now definitely doesn’t help weapons later; that’s “guns vs. butter”)
Where most would say it helps is still having a stable democracy to spend it, but then that’s not really macroeconomics anymore.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Perhaps my favorite speech.
It is emblematic that the Americans care more about the economic cost than the human cost of using their missiles.
Yup just Americans.
[The rest of human history glancing off to the side]
Edit: And actually, it’s only true of distant, unfamiliar people’s lives. If Iran had gotten that pilot, the American public discourse would look very different right now, because it’s an American in imminent danger.
It’s not an either/or thing, nor is such a dichotomy implied. It’s possible to waste money committing atrocities.
Genuinely curious: I would have guessed the payload and guidance were the expensive bits, and the rocket fuel/body/shell were fairly cheap?
The picture is metaphorical, not literal.
I bet fuel/body/shell have a 100-1000x markup either way though.
From what I’ve heard it’s like 100x markup on certain things to pay for the massive losses on whatever other crazy project the government demanded, or just on making only a few of whatever bespoke technology.
In the end, defence manufacturing is good money in wartime, but the rest of the time has a reputation as “a rat trap without the cheese”.
