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Irony: Our Huge Military Is What Made Us an Empire ... But Our Huge Military is What Is Bankrupting Us, Thus DESTROYING Our Status as an Empire
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As I've previously pointed
out, America's military-industrial complex is ruining our economy.
And
U.S. military and intelligence leaders say that the economic crisis is
the biggest national security threat to the United States. See this,
this
and this.
As
RT points out, it is ironic that America's huge military spending is
what made us an empire ... but our huge military is what is bankrupting
us ... thus destroying our status as an empire:
No
wonder people from opposite ends of the political spectrum like Barney Frank
and Ron Paul are calling for a reduction in military spending.
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Actually its the welfare state.. But nice try..
Hey, so did you short that Head and Shoulders you thought you saw, or was your post just to bait the lemmings.
Heh ;-)
Seems to be a bunch of "buyers remorse" on many levels.
Ya know...I'm actually FOR pulling our troops out of every nook and cranny of the world...close up the bases in Europe FIRST. All that payroll GONE.
Fly em straight to a brand new sparkling base somewhere in...southern Arizona.
I can hear the squealing now.
The military is another form of government busywork. What is destroying the economy is that our currency is debt based, rather than productivity based, so we are focused on creating enormous amounts of debt. It creates the illusion of wealth, since saving means lending. As opposed to actually developing an economy which rewards productivity and distributes the rewards sufficiently for the production to be afforded and not just charged.
Exactly. And isn't that the sad result of the entitlement society that really took off with LBJ. Ever greater hand-outs that discourage productive and responsible behavior. Career politicians won't burst the illusion. They only care buying votes to win the next election. I worry we have passed the point of no return...
Yep. 60% of farm labor in the US is illegal. And yet we have far more people on relief and make-work schemes than we have farm laborers. Couldn't tell the angry urban poor, or the starving rural poor "there IS a job. Pick apples. Work your way up. Read at night. Learn. Teach your kids to behave and study in order to become more valuable as workers, even entrepreneurs." People don't study? Hire more teachers. What's wrong with this concept? McDonalds serving and apple picking aren't undignified jobs, they are the first step in improving family culture. The rich and the poor want give-aways. The middle and upper-middle class know better. "Attitude" will make a family poor. Discipline and luck will make them prosperous, eventually.
Amarillo Texas has a 2 to 5% unemployment rate. How about each of us buying a bus ticket for anyone willing to leave Detroit or Flint Michigan, or Yuma, or Fresno...? Yeah, I know what life is like in AMA, but I've seen Detroit, so there really is no arguement for staying. Got family? Do what the "60% non-citizen farm workers (paraphrased)" do and send back your money. It has kept Mexico's economy alive. Best chance Detroit will ever have. Texas too "red" for you? There's lots of places in North Dakota with unemployment rates less than 4%. I've never spent a winter there, but I would still pick wintering in the Panhandle of Texas over ND.
How much could a bus ticket cost?
"Work your way up."
To what? A banker?
You sound a bit snootish to me...
In addition to my other comment, Seer, I should admit this: That my mind first applied itself to study and careful work when I had my first really tough job. It was dangerous. And on days I wasn't sent out to danger, I had to share some tasks with my fellows such as burning shit. Really. From the latrine. For sanitation. I realized that my life depended on making myself more valuable, educating myself, improving my routine habits. Of course I would have liked to start a bit higher up. laugh. But that wasn't my lot. We should encourage hard work. We shouldn't import labor when we have millions sitting depressed, on food stamps and SSI, angry at the world. We should encourage them to work. Any work. That work, however hard, will awaken in them their ability to struggle and contribute. It's worth a shot.
Seer... am I snootish? Is a banker "up"? Maybe a teacher working in an underserved community is up from apple picking. Maybe renovating houses is up. Your values, and Mysery's, determine that. What I meant was heartfelt: "Don't fear. There is a path. Find it." In this I believe. Of course I realize that where you end up often is related 50% to where you start. All you and I can do is work the other 50% hard. Each person also has somewhat different talents. Countries vary in opportunity. I just wanted to encourage Mysery. You'd find that in my life I'm not very snootish, if you mean preference for people with old money or pedigree. If you mean do I prefer people that continue to learn, and avoid people who stop thinking and reading once they find an adequate paycheck, then yes, perhaps I do. Except when I volunteer.
Granted, we spend too much on the military.
But all other Government spending is out of control as well. Buy votes with ponzi scheme entitlements ring a bell?
In fact, given how insolvent the country is perhaps military spending is the worst thing to cut now? The biggest bat may be our best asset when are debts are called in? Sad...
You know the framers of the constitution envisaged an army spread out all over the world to protect our interests. It would be a shame to let them down by cutting back on all that, say to the point where we were ownly concerned with protecting our own shores.
"manifest destiny" eh.
how fucking deluded does one have to be to believe that "the world" is something a single nationstate, or "race" owns, and has to "protect your interest" in? seriously, amrka does NOT own the world, and would do well to wake up to that fact. nor does any particular favoured "race", by the way. . .
time to stop hiding behind the skirts of old man jehovah.
+1
BRUTAL TRUTH: When under stress, corporations usually cut thier 'weakest' assets. Usually, the ones that aren't currently producing, or don't have future potential...
Sometimes, I hate being young because that means I'll be old in the future.
Lots of retirees and other gov entitlement recipients living in the Gulf states...chemtrails and GM food will get the rest.
Don't hate being young. Just don't waste it. If you do what a young person ought, you'll minimize your regrets, and later being old, like me, making comments will be fine, because you've got assets, and less, uh, drive. Your Vietnam comment wasn't out of line. I was there in 70-71, and think life is improving for them. We recently funded and equiped a dental clinic in Ho city and one in Danang. Friends from the war who go back to visit get a good reception. They actually get us, to some extent. As for cutting the weakest assets, so too we should eliminate the silliest foreign costs, but not all, and focus on building a smarter economy. Stay healthy. I'll be gone. You'll still be here. laugh.
Thank you.
I'm not worried about regrets as I get old, I'm worried about how my lifestyle is going to change.
I was born into the greatest situation possible. White, Free, living in America, tons of cheap energy to burn. (All thanks in part to your sacrifices.) Sure, my family had no money but I had opportunity and a public education (hence the shitty spelling). Am I'm seizing it.
I'm worried about the physical constraints of living on a spherical planet with a dwindiling energy supply, and an increasing number of inhabitiants.
And I'm worried about the natural biological response to such constraints. That is, to fight.
I'll be honest. I volunteered for RVN to share the sacrifice being made by those I knew who had less, and had been drafted, and consciously to learn about war and my government. Henry and Colonel Haig caused me to go to Laos for 7 weeks. I learned much. laugh. Energy won't dwindle. It will change. Electricity from small nuclear plants and other technologies will grow, but nations which don't manage their DEBT will struggle to partake. You are wise to fear war, but if war comes, do not think it is the end. Survive it. Fear loss of values in your life more. Identify good values, rules, and defend them. Fear the dissipation of US wealth on social welfare. A safety net is good, but a claim on endless life, every new medical treatment at age 90, and Supplemental Security Income for minor disabilities has broken the citizen's bank, their credit, which resides with "the government." You possibly fear the lack of good jobs or entrepreneurial opportunity. Don't. Just look for them.. for it. I don't minimize the difficulty. I just want to encourage you to realize you can do it. I'm a lawyer/investor. I started out poor. Look at your talents honestly. Focus on making them useful to a town, a company, or clients. Fear nothing but paralysis (and addiction to gaming, laugh.) I wish you well.
Absolutely. Have to decrease SS and Medicare payouts, somewhat increase FICA taxes, and keep the military in good shape as we right-size, for the sensible (perhaps sad) reason. Balance the budget. Left, middle, or right-wing may "win" year by year. At least the accounts will be healthy, and shifting priorities the next year will not meet the problem of "sorry, the money's all spent, we can't affort a better world even though we have new understandings and technologies."
No. No. The USA was an empire BEFORE it had standing armies and a military industrial complex, which was an aftereffect of World War II/ColdWar/death&inheritance of European Imperialism. I think it should clearly be understood that there was, and is, a difference between the two.
Before the US ever had a standing army it had nearly claimed a continent whole, and many colonies, in confrontations with many nations and peoples.
The standing army is the military industrial complex, and this is a new thing in American History, an aberration as a professor of mine put it.
Crab Cake
Didn't really claim a whole continent without a standing Army at least if this is accurate.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Army
After the war, though, the Continental Army was quickly disbanded as part of the American distrust of standing armies, and irregular state militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal. However, because of continuing conflict with Native Americans, it was soon realized that it was necessary to field a trained standing army. The first of these, the Legion of the United States, was established in 1791.
yep, first justification for standing Army, ...need to "defend" against terroristic natives which really was the need to steal their lands by military campaigns and genocide (because, strangely, native people did not take kindly to being pushed out and violently resisted settlement of their lands) ...a never ending theme..
1800: In the “Revolution of 1800” Slave-owner and ethnic cleanser Thomas Jefferson captures the White House solely as a result of the “three-fifths” clause of the Constitution which gives slave-owners political power far out of proportion to their number.
Successfully marketed to generations of Americans and others around the world as a wonderfully articulate advocate of freedom and liberty, Jefferson was, in reality, a thoroughgoing fascist, a hypocritical windbag, an ethnic cleanser of considerable accomplishment and, very likely, a sexual predator.
He owned thousands of slaves in his lifetime, almost certainly had sexual relations with at least one of them, and was an avid proponent of the expansion of slavery to the western territories then being stolen from native Americans by land speculators.
Even Jefferson’s much-lauded championing of the University of Virginia was largely an effort to turn out educated and articulate defenders of the expansion of slavery westward into the land then being stolen from Indian nations in violation of legally-binding treaties.
The much-revered “apostle of democracy” had his slaves whipped and sold into the Deep South as a terror tactic to induce his remaining slaves to obey.
By 1822, Jefferson owned 267 slaves, among them, unbelievably enough or perhaps not, were almost certainly several of his own children. Of the thousands of slaves he owned, despite the mountain of hypocritical nonsense he spewed about "freedom", Jefferson freed only three of his slaves during his lifetime, and five more at his death, all likely his own descendants.
A typically Jeffersonian contribution to democracy, equality, freedom and liberty is contained in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in which he advanced his doctrine of black racial inferiority, a bit of nastiness which formed the ideological basis of American racism and the justification of slavery and apartheid in the U.S. for decades.
The great Jefferson was scarcely more “democratic” when it came to whites who were not part of the slave-owning ruling class and who were not allowed to vote in the new demockracy.
Of ordinary white Americans, the "great democrat" said, “common folk must never be considered when we calculate the national character”.
Jefferson’s finest contributions came, however, like George Washington’s, in the field of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. A brilliant and articulate champion of genocide against native Americans, the great democrat wrote that the government is obliged "now to pursue them (the native owners of the land Jefferson and his kind so coveted) to extermination or drive them to new seats beyond our reach."
1830:
Land speculator, mass murderer and slave-owner cum U.S. president Andrew Jackson urges American troops to ever greater efficiency in the ethnic cleansing of native Americans. He tells troops to "root out from their dens" and kill Indian women and their "whelps" adding, in his second annual message to Congress that, while some people tend to grow "melancholy" over the Indians being driven to their "tomb," an understanding of "true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another." The U.S. government offers bounties for murdering Indians and free land and other fine business opportunities to settlers willing to steal Indian land.
1822: The American Colonization Society, headed by slave-owners Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, buys land in northwest Africa, reportedly at gunpoint, to create a “home” for freed blacks by inventing from thin air the fabulously-named "country" of Liberia with, as its capital, the city of Monrovia, fabulously, if immodestly, named after slave-owner Monroe.
Slave-owners like Jefferson and Monroe were eager to get slaves who had been freed, for one reason or another, out of the U.S.
The majority of the free “blacks” who occupied Liberia were, in fact, more brown than black because they were the children and grandchildren of slaveowning champions of liberty, such as Jefferson, who sexually exploited the slaves they owned, fathering their own children into slavery.
Shipping the slave-owners' own children and grandchildren to Liberia not only got a lot of uppity niggers out of the U.S. but also eliminated the possibility that they would ever be in a position to make claims against the estates of their parents and grandparents in competition with their lily white half-brothers and sisters.
The freed “blacks” had learned their lessons from Thomas Jefferson et al all too well and soon established plantations in “Liberia”, enslaving the local Africans and parading around in top hats and corsets in imitation of their white parents, grandparents and erstwhile owners.
1830-38: Mass murderer and slave-owner cum President Andrew Jackson signs into law the Indian Removal Act, part of his quest to steal ever more land from the Indian nations. The act enables the militias of the Appalachian and southern states to carry out forcible ethnic cleansing, rounding up native Indians and pushing them ever further west. The Removal Act brings about the “Trail of Tears”, resulting in the genocide of most of the remaining Cherokee nation by the U.S. government.
More Black Liberation theology from assistant professor Pierre.
No mention of the yankee abolitionist's who raised money for deporting FREE MEN?
And the North East whites who didn't want job competition from freed slaves?Deafening silence.
Have you researched the Black Codes of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana etc.?
Or do you just have a particular dislike for Virginians?
This tired meme of the Indian's is getting old also.
The Cherokee stole land from the Creeks by waging war, as did just about every other Indian tribe, yet it is whites who are reviled for stealing something that was stolen from another?
Pish posh.
Throughout human history, across all civilizations, slavery and imperialism have been pretty consistent.
Could not agree more.
My beef with Heir Pierre is his agenda of selectivity. The people he is using and abusing in his agenda are people of color. Only a bigot or racist would not be able to see it because in his world only the white is "evil".
As you state quite accurately, slavery and imperialism are not exclusive to the "white" race. It is humans who do these things across all ethnic lines.
Pierre is a racebaiting bigot, at the least, and I will continue to call his ass out on it.
Regards.
Your professor could be a moron? I'm just saying...
He taught at West Point, is published, and was a decorated officer retired from the US Army.
Best prof I ever had. Go fuck yourself, and maybe next time go troll somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.
You seem a little touchy. I graduated from West Point and am an Army Ranger serving in Iraq. Now none of that is true but it was easy to type. And your professor may still be a moron. Or he could have a well hidden point...
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good point, we should focus $ on stuff like this
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/07/nasas_muslim_outreach_106214.html
That's beautiful...
When the Secretary of Defense starts questioning why we are running a Navy with ten carrier strike forces with no other navy in the world having more than one maybe common sense and reason is slowly seeping into the complex.
Total Fail.
You guys all need to get econ PhDs. Seriously. This is what that gander from the fed was talking about. You don't understand how U.S. Hedgemony, U.S. Military, and our entire way of life are intertwined. Culture, technology, American Idol, everything. You live the life you do (and get to comment on blogs about how bad it is) BECAUSE of the U.S. hedgemony.
People talk about how our dollar isn't backed by anything but the word of the fed. Bullshit.
Our dollar is backed by 10 Nimitz-class fleets, CIA agents around the globe, and about 4 million AR-15s. Our dollar has purchasing power because our military aquires resources for us.
You cut these, and you cut the assets backing our dollar, our economy. Your biting the hand that feeds you.
99% of the population doesn't understand this, and thus they think "war is costing this country billions of dollars." Sheeple think they can just 'bring our troops' home and everything will improve in the budget deficit. Yeah, it might make the numbers look good but the material, real impacts will be devastating.
You want to cut military spending and pull out of the middle east?
There goes our cheap energy, there goes our world influence. Here comes Yuan and Peso parity.
Good luck building Prisuses and solar panels without resources from Afghanistan. (You all know why we are in the cacusus and middle east, right?)
To anyone that replies how the standards of living are compartive in other countries... each and every instance is because of U.S. Hedgemony. Anyone actually been to an area outside of U.S. influcence? Yeah... Cubans and North Koreas live great lifestyles.
Hypocrits. All of you. You don't know what you have until you lose it.
The military isn't the problem. Arrogance and confusion are the problems. Stabilizing Iraq was and is a legitimate goal as a hegemon-at-sufference. The left and right alike became confused by Afghanistan. "But that's where al-Qaeda trained!" So what. We should have left it at the bombing and come home. "Another terrorist camp? We'll be back." It's a dangerous world. If we want to keep our role, we have to stick to keeping the peace and protecting the global economy. Democracy in Afghanistan? Kyrgestan next? As what? A buffer against and irritant of the Chinese? Chinese money will wipe the slate clean in a year or two. I'm the 11th generation here in my father's line of fathers. The Quaker meeting kicked us out in 1778 for joining the revolutionary army. Think about it. They let us back in after the victory. Our county had 200,000 people in 1890. By 1926 it had 1,200,000, mostly of a different version of religion and regional origin. Things change. We have to be vigilant to assure that despite the changes, we protect the economy. The country was built by hard-working colonists, slaves and (mainly) indentured servants, all living hard lives. We've become soft, careless, and unappreciative. Our politicians are overwhelmed by the number of issues and complexity of their constituencies. If they are overwhelmed, how is a citizen with a demanding job supposed to sort the issues? Hence single-issue voters. We need to get beyond that, and the goody-two-shoes view of our "mission" in the world, or the Chinese will eat our lunch. Medicare costs are the physician's feast. Social Security pays out too much assuming endless growth in revenues. The military is both too large and over-tasked. Only a balanced-budget amendment will force US citizens to make the hard choices. There is no other solution. Force citizens and politicians to make priorities under constraints. Realize we must economize. It is the basic fact of life, eternally.
"Stabilizing Iraq was and is a legitimate goal as a hegemon-at-sufference."
I call BS.
It's the actions of an empire, one that's quickly gobbling up the world's resources. THIS IS A DEAD END- basing your whole way of life on an exhaustable resource can ONLY lead to one outcome- collapse! What's legitimate about that?
Saddam took Kuwait and tried to turn south on Saudi Arabia. We stopped him. We made sure his war on Iran was neither a victory nor a complete failure, but a stalemate. In this we serve as the world's hegemon-at-sufference, and neither Japan nor China nor Germany much minded. The oil needs to flow, both for income to the population and energy to the world. We will build other energy sources, but we won't do it in just a few years. We need things to run while we develop the next sources. I, personally, do not volunteer to go back to a 1700's way of life. Big oil and the confused left killed nuclear. It's coming back. Just in time. Solar, geothermal, and others will come along eventually. They are not efficient yet at scale. No one thinks oil is forever. Most think it is necessary for the short term. I'd think it rational if the US cut SS, Medi, Military just enough to subsidize a bunch of nuclear plants and soon. War is evil. Catastrophic poverty is worse.
+1
But theres gold (and uranium... and Yttridum... and lithium...) in dem mountains! And if I don't get it, someone else will!
Mining in Afghanistan. You want a green economy, right? It starts in the Hindu Kush (mmmm).
We're wired grow and grow and grow..... until we don't. Fixing this flaw in human nature is the answer, everything else is only a temporary solution.
Yep. You've got the essence of it. And if we have to grow, perhaps we can follow the German and Israeli path, and simply become the best at adding value to the yttridum and lithium, instead of dying for it. Just pay for it. Add value. Sell the product. Are we shifting to a model of "don't emphasize smart. Emphasize strong."? Disaster. If we let the "why burn the midnight oil" brigade steer our future, we're toast. No?
This is the essence of it.
For 40,000 years, humans have wanted 'more'. And we've created an economy, currency, military, and society to fulfil that need.
We need to raise the next generation of humans to want 'better'.
I'm seeing signs of this 'change' (Gawd that fucking word is ruined after 2k8), many of them on ZH. But developed nationals are overwhelmingly directing thier efforts at displacing the current agents, not fixing the cause.
Your gripe is not with the PBoC, the fed, GS, U.S. Military, Obama, Bush, Wal-Mart, etc.
Your gripe is with living on a spherical plant with a limited energy supply while having an insatiable thirst for growth.
Until you can change this habit, you'll probably want support the U.S. Military.
So, I gather that your answer to:
is a big no?
Big no.
But who's gotten us closest to fixing this problem....
OMFG, the U.S. Military.
(Ok, the USSR military industrial complex too!)
{ Developed National's Head }
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StychoKiller... if that was to Ropindown, the answer is not no. Expanding technological civilization is exactly what will and must happen. What we need to discourage is the growth of dumb processes that rely on unskilled labor. The chief challenge of our age is education. As our knowledge grows the transfer to the next genration becomes ever more difficult. It requires motivating 'them' and refining intelligently what is most valuable to know. We have failed at that, emphasizing PC and lit over math and science. We socially promote. We allow employers to ignore the work of a young person, allow him to hire a non-learner if he can get him for less pay or better terms. We encourage endless sports more than a knowledge of electricity or (god forbid) banking and finance. Insentives matter broadly, and at low levels which will define our future, since we are a democracy of sorts (see "theory of democratic elitism," Bachrach).
I actually have no gripes, only recommendations, like an old happy tenured professor. If I have recommendations, they are these: Pick our long wars more carefully based on the value to our economy (and that includes our trading partners' economies). Shift incentives in the US toward efficiency in learning (not more teachers, more reward for learning to teach yourself.. what teachers should be doing). Realize our energy supplies are practically limitless, but require capital and organization to develop, so we shouldn't waste our capital or thoughtlessly add friction to organization. Oh, and exercise regularly, but in a way that doesn't cause serious injuries. I'm old. I can say crap like that. laugh.
I think a person really has to be afraid of work to get an Economics PhD. But your points are interesting. Yet I don't think our military "acquires" resources for us. I mean we gave the Saudi's their oil back. I haven't seen the windfall from Iraq. We rebuilt Europe and gave them their assets back. We might be better off if our military "acquired" assets for our Country. But I think we march to a different moral drummer. American bashing is becoming more prevelant on this site, but I still view the U.S. as the light on the hill with a bad Government...
Two pieces of reading for you to consider:
War Is A Racket (http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm)
and
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (google it)
One could argue the windfall from Iraq is relatively (i.e. not exponential) consistent energy prices. It's tough to say for a non-PhD what energy costs in America would be have we not 'influenced' the middle east by invading Iraq.
(BRUTAL TRUTH MOMENT: It's too bad for Americans that the PR out of Iraq and the oil field auctions were horribly mismanaged. We didn't get the ROI we thought we would after 9/11.)
Keep in mind Saddam was selling oil for non-dollar currencies, directly cutting you (Americans) out of the deal. That didn't end well in Scarface, and it didn't end well for Saddam. Right, or wrong, this impacts American purchasing power.
We give the Saudis paper with pictures of dead presidents. The Saudis give us oil. The verdict is still out, but I like our odds on that trade.
It's tough to say for a non-PhD what energy costs in America would be have we not 'influenced' the middle east by invading Iraq.
Oh, come on, give it a try and we'll put forth our best effort to understand. Are economists the ones that always use PhD after the name of the author on the covers of their books? Maybe I don't understand in what sense you are using the word "for": It is tough for a non-PhD to say...
It's ironic. The dollar has been devalued to pay for the empire, which in turn is the only thing holding up the value of the money. Small military and honest money went together for well over a century. No surprise that the American Murder Machine, Inc., followed shortly on the heels of Fake Fucking Money.
And your pristine fiat currency is called???...
The war machine produces minimum basic value. Weapons production doesn't feed, clothe or shelter humans and is therefore mostly unproductive. Productive to the extent that it protects the infrastructure that supports productivity, but beyond that, mostly a waste of resources that could be used at home improving the quality of life of the workers, the one and only source of wealth.
Sure, war equipment creates secondary jobs around its production. But the production itself is a waste of resources that would otherwise be used to keep us alive and improve the quality of that life.
War machinery is a transfer of wealth from the productive worker to the government and the people who own and operate the government. And NO, that's not the American People.
And if you're gonna call people names, at least learn to spell your chosen epithets before you hurl them.
Now, let's get out there and kill something so that all of this seems worthwhile!