I want the federal government to declare "war" on Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other poverty stricken areas. Maybe then these impoverished areas might get some infrastructure improvements which will generate jobs in the short term and help attract businesses in the medium-long term.
Why did it take almost a whole year to get $170m (or just one F-35) to the people of Flint? Why is a military toy built to fight a fictional war against nobody more important than actual people who are suffering?
The US will happily declare war on Iraq and spend $1.7 trillion, but just the thought of spending a dime within the country turns everyone's stomachs! We need to declare war on poverty, we need to declare war on collapsing infrastructure, we need to declare war on lack of public transport, and we need to declare war on shitty internet stifling the country's competitiveness.
This is all GDP generating. Every dollar we spend on infrastructure provides almost twice that in GDP. What is the F-35's rate of return?
Reelection of politicians in areas with military industry, of course.
That's also the reason why the Airbus plane parts are built, shipped around all over Europe before final assembly - in order to provide funding to EADS/Airbus, European politicians wanted to secure jobs for their specific countries, even if this adds significant logistic and cost challenges.
Even science suffers from this "localism"... just look at ITER.
Summarized: No one will dare to cancel or significantly reduce any major weapons/science/collaborative project, because any politician who votes for "shut down a program that employs people in my voter area" will face the consequence of not being reelected.
We had a federal war on poverty, starting with the Johnson administration and ending when Bill Clinton gutted the federal welfare program in 1996. Hell it even has a wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty). Slim chance of that ever happening again given the current political climate...
Had we taken the money we spent on the war on poverty and just given it out to the poor, with a inexpensive financial literacy and education program to go along with it, we could have actually solved most poverty.
Most poor people just need a little bit of a leg up to get them out of the hole, and then are able to crawl the rest of the way out and better themselves without much additional help, often within the same generation.
Instead we formed an endless number of programs, targeted at specific regions, minorities and groups, with an seemingly endless number of bureaucrats to run them, and we end up only one or two pegs ahead of where we started. I just try to imagine how far we would be had we instituted a minimum income in 1975.
The current political climate is because of perceived government overreach (real or imagined) - where the overreach comes from however depends on your political stripe (the right blames environmental and regulatory issues, the left, the national security circus/military-industrial complex) in the end the people are tired, and the attitude of the country has seemingly shifted (if even only perhaps temporarily), people want a return to normalcy, so I fear for a generation or so more, the chance may be lost.
Not defending the details for the F-35 program, but military spending in general:
Every dollar you spend on weapons also increases GDP. Because GDP is not a measure of economic good, only of economic activity.
In fact, wars create huge jumps in GDP. That doesn't mean they're economically good.
And anyway, you can't measure military deterrents by "rate of return". The F-35's rate of return is "we don't have to fight another world war", because potential adversaries will understand they don't have a chance of winning and thus won't start a conflict.
> The F-35's rate of return is "we don't have to fight another world war"
The F-35 budget overran due to mismanagement, not because it just costs trillions to create the technology. I can see China working with Russia being able to afford their own competitive machines. There doesn't seem to be a clear "we don't have to fight another world war" end game.
> The F-35's rate of return is "we don't have to fight another world war", because potential adversaries will understand they don't have a chance of winning and thus won't start a conflict.
Meanwhile, the F35 barely goes toe to toe with the Rafale F3, which is cheaper to produce and maintain.
War doesn't increase GDP, that's called "inflation". Jobs are the cost of the military, both a benefit. And We won't fight another world war because of nuclear weapons.
Flint's not a great example of alternate ways for how F-35 monies could be spent. Political and administrative ineptitude led to unsafe water conditions in Flint and now federal taxpayers are bailing them out to the tune of $170M. That's wasteful all around as the situation was entirely avoidable.
Most infrastructure has long term value, 90% of military spending does not. The Big dig will probably be useful in 100 years the F-35 is already useless today.
This ignores multipliers.. building a military plane employs people, and they go on to spend their incomes but that's essentially the end of it. Building a bridge employs people who spend the money, but then the bridge makes an entire region more productive for decades, leading to much more (and longer lasting) growth -- as long as it's not a bridge to nowhere...
What is the GDP impact of an effective military though? Maybe the spending on the A10 etc deterred Soviet ambitions in Europe. We are certainly seeing a loss of US influence in Europe and Asia due to Trump devaluing NATO.
Right but surely we're well past the point of diminishing returns.. what's the incremental value of the 750th A-10 or the 400th C130, or the 1,000th F16 to pick on the air force a bit?
It's a classic OA or logistics problem: how many units of X do you need to meet need Y? C-130s to supply the force, F-16s to provide air cover or strike, pilots and aircrew to fly and maintain them, training required to maintain strength and readiness.
Everyone does that assessment on the opposing force, to get an estimate of how credible they are. For the US that goal is two wars at the same time, anywhere. Right now they USAF has the problem of being 'hollow': not being able to meet their readiness requirements due to lack of people, operating airframes, or building technical debt through over-using equipment and people.
So they have the 750th A-10 because they did the math. It's not about heroes, it's about being organised. The force is more than the individuals or the gadgets.
I want the federal government to declare "war" on Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other poverty stricken areas. Maybe then these impoverished areas might get some infrastructure improvements which will generate jobs in the short term and help attract businesses in the medium-long term.
Why did it take almost a whole year to get $170m (or just one F-35) to the people of Flint? Why is a military toy built to fight a fictional war against nobody more important than actual people who are suffering?
The US will happily declare war on Iraq and spend $1.7 trillion, but just the thought of spending a dime within the country turns everyone's stomachs! We need to declare war on poverty, we need to declare war on collapsing infrastructure, we need to declare war on lack of public transport, and we need to declare war on shitty internet stifling the country's competitiveness.
This is all GDP generating. Every dollar we spend on infrastructure provides almost twice that in GDP. What is the F-35's rate of return?