2020 US Election (Part One)

[Takhisis]

…military spending can almost always be spent on other, better things.

Especially taking into account the ridiculous profit margins contractors and suppliers get away with.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't disagree, Zardnaar. But military spending can almost always be spent on other, better things.

Maybe I had to do an assignment on it in uni. It helped out postwar Korea and Japan with money that would be spent anyway.

It also helped the US out from the after effects of the great depression via UK and French spending. Wages doubled in the war years.

How the US does it now probably not the best example but it's probably propping up the US economy.

 

[Takhisis]

As far as I understand it the US economy is kept afloat by being the single most indebted one in the world. With usurary rates, apparently, in consumer credit e.g. credit cards. USians on this very website have called me a thief because credit cards here charged maybe 10 percentage points higher than the inflation rate as annual interest.

 

[Farm Boy]

In fairness, @Farm Boy's comments are so cryptic Republicans may just walk away slowly, attempting to hide their utter bafflement.

Meh. I realize this is a thing around here, but come on. He said that examples are never picked out. I named three specific people. I made sure to find a statewide office, a senator, and tacked on a representative when I realized I forgot to include one.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Especially taking into account the ridiculous profit margins contractors and suppliers get away with.

I think waste is a bigger issue and truly not all of that falls at the feet of the contractors but at government officials and Congress for constantly changing their mind or not making up their minds to begin with. Don't take this post as an apology for contractors, I just wanted to prop up the basic argument with more nuance.

 

[Estebonrober]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ssing-wealth-of-u-s-middle-class?srnd=premium

The very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans -- much of the middle and upper-middle classes.

Hooray!

 

[Estebonrober]

To elaborate I found this nice list. . .

1. The belief that 10,000 climate scientists all around the world are either stupid, or engaged in a massive criminal conspiracy to concoct bad science in order to receive…more government grant funding. And that no other scientists are exposing it.

2. The belief that there is a giant conspiracy across all of news media to make Republicans look bad and elect Democrats–in spite of continually unfair press coverage of candidates like both Bernie Sanders *and* Hillary Clinton–in exchange for…what? It’s never really clear.

3. The belief without evidence that there is a giant conspiracy across local, state and federal elections officials all across the country to engage in mass wide-scale voter impersonation fraud. Needless to say, this would be insanely complicated, incredibly risky and hugely inefficient.

4. The belief that that there is a giant conspiracy to push migrants to the border in order to change the demographics of the U.S., in order to…increase taxes and gain “control”? This is a pretty nonsensical conspiracy, but it’s among the most common. It’s no surprise that this sort of rhetoric echoes fascist antisemitic tropes, which is why George Soros is so commonly included.

5. The belief that there was a deep conspiracy to elect a man named “Barack Hussein Obama” to the presidency in order to implement socialism in America…and that the shadowy socialist cabal picked a guy named “Barack Hussein Obama” for the job. Or made up his birth certificate from scratch and decided on one of the most unlikely presidential names imaginable in his birth year.

6. The belief that the “Deep State” entrapped Trump with Russia entanglements before the 2016 in order to derail his presidency if he won, but didn’t use it to stop him from winning, but were blindsided when he won, but have stymied his every move afterward.

7. The belief that there is a giant unexposed conspiracy of 100,000s of teachers/faculty across PreK and higher education to indoctrinate young people. Rather than, you know, people not buying into garbage and bigotry once they learn something.

8. The belief that a tiny group of obscenely rich industrialists are the only truthtellers, the only ones looking out for the “forgotten man”, while millions of middle class professionals and civil servants are corrupt liars. This one is particularly ironic, as it represents a twisted funhouse version of Marxist theory.

9. The belief that millions of people want to disarm them to leave them defenseless against looters, burglars and Liberal Fascism ™, rather than just want their kids not to get shot at school again and again by trigger-happy Rambo cosplayers.

10. The belief that Green Energy is a scam to give connected companies money and make coal miners homeless, rather than an effort to save millions of lives from climate change, pollution and black lung.

11. The belief that social services are an intentionally corrupt scam to keep minority groups on the “Democrat Plantation” ™, rather than a good-faith effort to make up for the predations of a brutal market in a society riddled with horrific structural racism.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/11/10/the-conspiracy-theories-a-republican-must-believe-today/

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think waste is a bigger issue and truly not all of that falls at the feet of the contractors but at government officials and Congress for constantly changing their mind or not making up their minds to begin with. Don't take this post as an apology for contractors, I just wanted to prop up the basic argument with more nuance.

Funny thing about the "waste." If you look at defense spending in purely Keynesian intervention terms the waste doesn't matter. It is still part of the huge block of cash injected into the economy. When you look from that standpoint, in fact, defense spending comes off pretty well. Sure, the management and ownership (in the form of huge stockholders, not the everyday "I got a hundred shares of Lockheed in my portfolio on e-trade" types) get their pockets lined with a bunch of money that doesn't circulate, but the labor force in defense industries, generally, is vastly overpaid compared to any comparable work force...and workers' pay gets circulated.

 

[Lexicus]

If you look at defense spending in purely Keynesian intervention terms the waste doesn't matter.

Purely New Keynesian terms, maybe, but wasteful spending absolutely does matter insofar as it's far more inflationary than non-wasteful spending. Spending on armaments is far likelier to be inflationary than military spending on, say, housing and education for military personnel.

 

[Zardnaar]

Military spending includes wages etc?
And how many are employed in the defense industry?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Purely New Keynesian terms, maybe, but wasteful spending absolutely does matter insofar as it's far more inflationary than non-wasteful spending. Spending on armaments is far likelier to be inflationary than military spending on, say, housing and education for military personnel.

Spending on armaments fills the pockets of the workers who build them far better than spending on infrastructure fills the pockets of the workers who build that, and also far better than spending on housing fills the pockets of the workers who build housing...etc etc etc. By definition we all want spending on armaments to be "wasted" because the alternative is that the armaments get consumed...meaning fired off at someone who is probably an innocent of some sort.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Military spending includes wages etc?
And how many are employed in the defense industry?

Most government spending ends up as wages or profits. Everything the government buys pays the wages of those who made it/did it somewhere along the line. Scientists, researchers, construction workers, administrators, cooks, farmers, etc. What doesn't get spent on people goes to profit. Even capital expenditures are heavily wage oriented. When the government buys a widget, people got paid with that money.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Military spending includes wages etc?
And how many are employed in the defense industry?

Yes. As Birdjag said, eventually all spending becomes either wages or profits. The defense industries have a far higher wage to profit ratio than most, because there is less competition in that labor market. It is impossible to pay a sheet metal worker in the US a living wage to put screws in a refrigerator because you can pay someone in the far east a nickle an hour to do it instead. Arms are proprietary and protected by national security, so it makes no difference what an Asian national can live on, you have to pay a US living wage to get screws put in the wing of a warplane.

 

[Zardnaar]

Most government spending ends up as wages or profits. Everything the government buys pays the wages of those who made it/did it somewhere along the line. Scientists, researchers, construction workers, administrators, cooks, farmers, etc. What doesn't get spent on people goes to profit. Even capital expenditures are heavily wage oriented. When the government buys a widget, people got paid with that money.

I know, I just figured the military spending if done right can be a big driver in the US economy.

Since military bases, factories etc don't need to put in big cities it's good for the local economies.

A lot of government jobs can be decentralized as well. You don't need to put them in Washington DC, New York, LA etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

Interesting article here. How Trump can still win.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/world/america...-pains-me-to-admit-that-trump-could-win-again

 

[Birdjaguar]

Trump wins if Dems don't vote. It is all about turnout. The nominee needs the charisma to get out the vote; it is pretty simple. The platform: Flush the turn November 3rd.

 

[Takhisis]

I think waste is a bigger issue and truly not all of that falls at the feet of the contractors but at government officials and Congress for constantly changing their mind or not making up their minds to begin with. Don't take this post as an apology for contractors, I just wanted to prop up the basic argument with more nuance.

I've seen profit margins of over 4,000% quoted by journalists without defence contractors even bothering to pretend there'd been a mistake. There's no way that money's going to anything other than profits that help imbalance the economy by encouraging wild investments.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes. As Birdjag said, eventually all spending becomes either wages or profits. The defense industries have a far higher wage to profit ratio than most, because there is less competition in that labor market. It is impossible to pay a sheet metal worker in the US a living wage to put screws in a refrigerator because you can pay someone in the far east a nickle an hour to do it instead. Arms are proprietary and protected by national security, so it makes no difference what an Asian national can live on, you have to pay a US living wage to get screws put in the wing of a warplane.

And Boeing has spent the last two decades attempting to unravel that by distributing the workload to foreign suppliers as much as they can get away with. It's not as common on the defense side of Boeing but not unheard of either. They teamed with a Brazilian company to market a small attack turboprop plane to the military recently.

I've seen profit margins of over 4,000% quoted by journalists without defence contractors even bothering to pretend there'd been a mistake. There's no way that money's going to anything other than profits that help imbalance the economy by encouraging wild investments.

That's atypical.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Bootyjudge is leading in a recent Iowa poll.

Him winning Iowa would certainly thicken the plot.

 

[Lexicus]

Iowa is a caucus, remember. The predictive value of polls is virtually nil.