US Military Budget Just Increased By Another 100 Billion...Media Silent

[Anomalocaris]

Self defense is absolutely necessary. BUT....using it as a means of welfare for large contractors is a big no no in my opinion. We could easily trim off 25% of our defense budget, put that money somewhere else more useful. What's funny is this money only drips to those who are actually serving.

As a country protected by oceanic moat on either side and neighbors with 10% of war waging potential on the other two sides, such self defense as might extravagantly be deemed absolutely necessary would still be minuscule compared to grotesquely bloated complex we are loath to trim.

In our circumstances an absolutely necessary defense spending might be "equal to the largest naval budget in either ocean", 0.5%-1% of GDP, not 6%.  The other 5.5% exists for self aggrandizement, and to placate majority of the population with whom the country has no seen fit to share the increase in the size of economy for over 40 years, so must be brough off by being made stupid and suck on the lollipop of being part of the flag wrapped construct that can “kick ass”.

Gradually, over the 75 years since the end of WWII, American economy has declined from 60% of the world economy to 20% of the world economy, while a level of defense capability deemed "absolutely necessary" has grown from "being able to hold off aggressors long enough for economic and industrial superiority to be brought to bear" to "the only way to be secure in our home is to have such offensive power always ready that everyone else is totally and continuously vulnerable to us in their homes".

Not that I think it is illegitimate for a country to seek to aggrandize itself.  But let’s not sell aggrandizement as absolute necessity.