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Ending the war will really make no difference really. I mean the rise in the deficit from recent and proposed spending will triple the deficit. That doesn't count ay of the proposed program either.Jusat the total cost of the bailouyt will equal the curent deficit under bush with both war. If they try to fix medicare;social seciurity and medicaid that will mean real tax increases or deep cuts.
Ending the war will really make no difference really. I mean the rise in the deficit from recent and proposed spending will triple the deficit. That doesn't count ay of the proposed program either.Jusat the total cost of the bailouyt will equal the curent deficit under bush with both war. If they try to fix medicare;social seciurity and medicaid that will mean real tax increases or deep cuts.
Where to cut? Budget hawks often target politically powerless small guys like NASA to vent their anger while the biggest spender of all: the Pentagon, can safely wrap itself up in the flag and continue asking for more and more. A while ago, Pentagon officials claim defense budget needs to go to $800 billion to fund the kind of "capabilities we need". Every once a while, we hear Ike's age old warning to us: beware of the military industry complex, yet every election, anybody who dares to propose cut in defense gets pounded as unpatriotic and not supportive of the military. Apparently, Russia can defend itself with less than 100 billion defense budget, China can defend itself with less than 100 billion budget, while US has to spend up to $500 billion and still needs more. US's defense budget is bigger than most of its adversaries' entire GDP, yet Pentagon still wants more because of the so called "threat" from those nations. One might wonder indeed how good this supposed "best trained and best equipped" military really is when a military with $500 billions annual budget feel threatened by a nation with $20 billion annual GDP.
I suppose I am due for a rant. Until the blanket of economic delusions is overcome I am afraid there is little hope. If you want to understand economics ask someone who might know like an 8 year old or someone who never read a book. Perhaps a pre-industrial society in South America or southern Asia...Let us make them economists. We all know diamonds are more valuable than water but that water was more essential but how long did it take us to solve this in the classroom? We can thank the Austrian school for solving the question an 8 year old would know after he has had a few super size drinks.
The cost of war is not a fiscal issue. The war is not going to cost us in dollars and we need MORE dollars/government debt anyway not fewer as we move into deflation. We don't have a national "debt", debts imply they must be paid back and in our case its simply folly to destroy the money supply. So the day we stop pretending we are borrowing something more plentiful than sea water aka moving decimal points on a computer, the better. We do not owe when the debt expands, we have already paid through inflation(especially when the banks "print" it far beyond our government). The best test for any policy is if the society is put in a direction that fails the 8 year old test or the pre-industrial tribal chief test.
The next source of folly is not understanding how war really costs us. If one has a hundred sea shells representing an island economy and in 1 year it goes from 100 kayaks to 200 kayaks has the sea shell grown in value? I hope your answer is yes because now it has more kayaks and fewer relative sea shells. The government could even produce a few more sea shells and expand the economy and build a communal hut with this new money. In that case expanding the money supply also expands the base value of the economy, all good.
What if instead the island decided to go to war with the next island where they would be both burning each other huts, coconut groves and kayaks? Oh look they still have 200 sea shells, fiscal stability! Its the same reason why social security isn't "saving". Saving what? A dollar is worth what a society can produce and is producing. Real saving is a cure for cancer, advances in technology and wealth creation not 3% in nominal terms going in to ketchup flow rate studies(real tax payer funded research). Hows that new M1 Abram that rolled off the assembly line improving your commute? It does not matter how much we owe(current basis for money supply) but what is underneath it.
Try the island test or the family of 8 test. Tell them you can create jobs. Tell them you can give them your laundry. Tell a tribal chief he will be fiscally stable with half his island burned. You will get clear understanding from some of the greatest unpublished economists of all time.
War is not a future expense or a debt but an immediate diversion of resources to create instruments of war with current capital and labor fiscally accounted for now through relative inflation. More M1 Abrams on the North American island does nothing for me to support trumped up wars. Look at what people are doing right at this very moment to see the cost. What is that group of talented engineers working on right now? That is what the dollar will be worth or will not be worth and the price we really have paid.
That is why we can fight 2 wars with the fiscal status quo in the wretched reality that it is completely hidden in plain sight.
My guess... the new admin. will continue both wars and come 2010/2011 their will be a tax hike on the rich. As soon as our economy stabilizes, businesses/rich/corporations are in for b*tch slap from Obama. He won't be doing anything that could destabilize us even further in terms of tax increases. Wars are good for economy? Or so I've heard. Isn't war cost a part of gdp because it's considered part of government spending? By cutting off war expenses, wouldn't that be taking money out of our economy (since we have to pay our troops and for the equipment to be build etc). Therefore, it would make our GDP go down...??? I'm confusing myself... dusting off my economics book...
china signed a deal with iraq to develop the ahdab oil fields there, so they are on course for their own preservation. i still can't figure out the reason we went to war with iraq if it wasn't for the oil. (which we did not get). i don't believe for a minute that it was to "liberate" the people of iraq.
There is so much smoke and mirrors when it comes to this sh*t... The way I grasp it weather it be right or wrong is that "The War on Terror", invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a reason to get serious military around Iran.
Iran does not and Iraq did not until now, recognize the US dollar as the currency of trade for oil. The war on terror killed 2 birds with one stone. Eliminated Iraq as a threat completely and stopped (so far) Iran from dumping oil from the 3rd larges oil field in the world on the market at cut rate prices traded in Euros. What that would really mean for the US dollar, I don't know but it sure is funny and I have a hard time understanding why we need nuclear subs, nuclear aircraft carriers and the military power that we have almost completely surrounding Iran like we do when we are supposed to be looking for some fool named Osama Bin Laden.
Do we really need nukes for that ??????? Hummm. War on Terror... smoke and mirrors for a greater plan IMO !
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Real economic discussion is DOA
