Friday, April 10, 2009

Good Question of the Day

"Shouldn't Obama Triple the Defense Budget?" Asks Mike Farmer at Bonzai. Mike is a libertarian, so I'm sure he isn't actually in favor of a massive defense increase. But he points out the logical inconsistency of the Obama administration's economic policies.
You would think that by increasing the defense budget drastically, this would stimulate the economy.
According to Obama, Democrats in general, and even some Republicans, massive government spending is necessary to stimulate the economy. That's the rationale behind the stimulus package, and the all-out borrowing and spending of Obama's budgetary proposals. Why then should we be worried about reigning in runaway pentagon spending? Let's put aside the fact that we are involved in two wars, and currently increasing our military commitment in Afghanistan. Just from a purely economic standpoint, the argument is that we need to spend, spend, spend. When certain GOP critics attack individual pet programs of Democrats as wasteful & unnecessary, the answer is usually that they provide needed jobs, perform some useful service, and that anyway, we need this spending to stimulate the economy. Sure, we can't afford it, but we are doing it anyway. Who cares if we go deeper and deeper into debt. Now isn't the time to worry about the debt. Democrats say we must spend.

It is indisputable that defense spending, wasteful and inefficient as it is, provides numerous jobs -- often good, high-paying jobs. All those military programs that are overbudget & behind schedule have thousands of people whose jobs depend on them. Why not just keep cranking out more F-22s? Instead of gutting the Future Combat System, shouldn't we expand it and bring in more contractors? Why won't that provide good jobs and stimulate the economy? Yeah the Zumwalt destroyer costs way too much and hasn't met expectations. But so what? Don't shipyard workers need jobs too? Huge expensive programs like missile defense not only require large numbers of skilled workers, those skilled workers need a support system of service jobs that create even more employment.

So why is military spending getting only a modest 4% increase? Why is defense the only exception to Democratic economic policies?

5 comments:

  1. We're in the middle of a couple wars right now so that throws a wrench to things, but for the long term I'd like to see the defense budget cut significantly. There's too much cold war-era crap and other wasteful programs. I imagine many Democrats feel the same way, but it's politically difficult because of all the parochial interests (don't cut programs in my state!) and of course all the bitching that will come from the Right no matter how good the case for cutting a particular program is.

    It's also generally a bad idea to cut many programs in an economic downturn.

    The reason defense is an exception to stimulus plans are because it's bad economics. Theoretically paying people to dig holes and fill them back up might have a stimulating effect if unemployment is too high. But are you creating a useful product? If not, work is going to waste.

    Basically Democrats think stimulus spending on infrastructure and social services offers more benefits than building extra tanks or re-filling holes.

    I'd much prefer something like a payroll tax cut, but since they insist on spending it may as well be on things we have some use for.

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  2. " I'd like to see the defense budget cut significantly. "

    I'd support that only as part of across the board cuts.

    "The reason defense is an exception to stimulus plans are because it's bad economics. Theoretically paying people to dig holes and fill them back up might have a stimulating effect if unemployment is too high. But are you creating a useful product? If not, work is going to waste."

    You can make that same argument about virtually everything the Democrats want to spend money on. That's the point.

    "but since they insist on spending it may as well be on things we have some use for."

    Yeah, like defense -- one of the main reasons we need a government in the first place. Defense spending doesn't have to mean bloated unnecessary projects.

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  3. > You can make that same argument about virtually everything the Democrats want to spend money on.

    You can make the case that it's inefficient and unnecessary, not that virtually everything they want to spend on is useless.

    > Defense spending doesn't have to mean bloated unnecessary projects.

    But it isn't useful past a certain point, and we're definitely well past that point.

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  4. "But it isn't useful past a certain point, and we're definitely well past that point."

    No we aren't. There are all sorts of military expenditures we could make that would both be useful and would stimulate the economy, if you believe government spending helps the economy. Here's a few examples:

    1) Build more VA hospitals. Aside from the benefit to veterans, this would create jobs, not just for the hospitals, but also in construction and related fields.

    2) Increase benefits for veterans and their families -- putting more spending money into their pockets. This would also help recruitment.

    3) Build more sealift and airlift capacity. This would create jobs in both shipbuilding & the aircraft industry. And it would improve our ability to deploy/redeploy forces abroad, among other things.

    4) Create one or two more army divisions. We can use more ground forces. They will have to be equipped, and they will have to be based somewhere, allowing us to reactivate idle base capacity, and providing massive stimulus to the local areas where they are based.

    Military spending isn't limited to producing unproven weapon systems with 10 year development windows, that we aren't even sure will be all that useful.

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  5. Nah, from the average Democrat's perspective military spending is a black hole that's already sucking up too much money.

    The things you list would be beneficial relative to current wasteful expenditures, so redirecting funds as Gates means to do will be a plus (assuming congress can overcome the parochial interests)

    But you'd never convince an average Democrat that a dollar spent on one of those military projects is better spent than on something like expanding health benefits, stem cell research, or environmentally-friendly energy research.

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