The problem is this is what Americans want. We just had an election, and the parties that advocate high defense spending got 98% of the vote.
False equivalency, as usual. Would a post-Cold War drawdown make a ton of sense? You bet. Are the two main parties anything like one another on defense spending? No.
Back to cities. The response from the food truck community to Sandy has been nothing short of amazing. Who wants FEMA MRE's when Mexicue and Coolhaus are giving away amazing food in every town in the Rockaways?
Right. The Red Bulls are already in an urban location, even it's not in the city. And it's one thing to try to accomodate 24,000 fans in NYC, it's whole another to do the same for 80,000+ that currently pack Met Life Stadium.
perhaps. but did they get 98% because "that's what americans want" or because there's no reasonable alternative? libertarianism™ is such a loose blanket term for so many diverse currents that i can't hang this on whatever particular flavor your shake happens to be, but the first libertarians i heard voice their idea for a brave new world were saying that beyond military and police forces and a justice system (all kept to the very strictest minimum) government should have no role in anything at all : no public schools, utilities, transport or even roads. i fail to see how this is going to revamp a crumbling infrastructure. all very laudable. and FEMA may also be the biggest boondoggle in the world. but thinking a few burrito wagons can really deal with a major disaster is mad-eyed screaming utopia. i remember the SF quake of '89. as i was running down geary to where my wife worked, walgreens employees were handing out to everyone going by bags with a bottle of water, a pack of batteries, and two candles with matches. and a box of band-aids. it was a great thing to do, but in the end, it was just band-aids. the disturbance following that quake was really very minor, and even so a liter of water and a couple of candles really didn't make much difference.
It doesn't matter. The parties who got the votes will interpret the mandate however they wish. You've heard Republicans begin to talk about having a second look at their immigration stance. You have heard no talk about reducing defense spending in any meaningful way. And obviously the Democrats have no reason to re-examine their policies. I can't speak for your experience, but I imagine if you asked what the first few things any libertarian would do if they were taking the oath of office in two months, no one would be talking about roads, or if they did it would be to let state governments handle it, not to instantly privatize them (and plenty would never go that far).
I'm guessing because when you cut defense spending, you are cutting jobs. I'm in the design side of the construction industry and the majority of our work from 2009 through 2011 was military construction and other government construction. That's changed this year with military construction furnishing a far smaller percentage of our work. But cutting defense spending (military construction) would effect our business.
When Wall St/mortgage market collapsed lots of people lost their jobs. It sucks but if we're not going to be world policeman any more (hopefully) then we have to re-set our military spending.
The notion that military spending creates jobs is incredibly short-sighted. There are few ways to spend money that are less effective at creating jobs.
we only have two real parties here in America. the one that advocates high defense spending, and the one that advocates higher defense spending.
military spending actually helps in two ways - it creates jobs, while also helping with the problem of overpopulation, and all its attendant problems.
In a nutshell, because building weapon systems, submarines, and the like doesn't generate very much carry-on economic activity. Compare $1b spend on the newest attack helicopter project with $1b spent on repairing roads and bridges. Both provide direct economic benefit in the jobs and materials required to build them. But once that chopper is built, it gets sent off to Afghanistan, where it becomes a resource sink. Once that road is repaved and the bridge repaired, it stimulates commerce in a myriad of ways.
Okay, I'll totally buy that spending on infrastructure is more economically useful than spending on helicopters.
Though one could also argue that military spending leads to some seriously high-level technological innovation that isn't demanded by civilians, but eventually find civilian uses anyway. Not that I necessarily buy this argument, but it's there!
There's a multiplier for just about every form of spending, government and private. My minimal research on the subject tells me it's a pretty active field of economic research at the moment. Here's are the multiplier calculations done by Mark Zandi of Moody's for his testimony about the stimulus: That particular chart doesn't include defense spending, but should give you the idea. Military spending multiplier estimates are usually somewhere in the .6 to .7 range. Here's a 4 page excerpt from his testimony, which I think should be required reading around here regardless of your economic slant: http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/Small Business_7_24_08.pdf
Surely there needs to be some rule where you have to wait X days after becoming a member (where X >>>>> 1) before posting on the non-soccer boards.