Tea Party candidate taken behind the woodshed by an old man asking a simple question

[Anomalocaris]

Not taxing something is not a subsidy.

Correct. In many - if not most - countries 100 dollars of tax cuts is worth more than 100 dollars of subsidy.

Funny, we assert loudly, repeatedly ,and consistently, that the Chinese are giving their solar panel industry egregiously unfair and anticompetitive subsidies because they unconscionably gave their solar panel industries tax cuts. We apparently thought the equivalence between tax cut and subsidies is so tight we would take them to court.

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A lot of military spending is not on actual tanks, bombs, and guns but on people costs. Medical benefits, retiree benefits, wages(we pay our soldiers very well compared to other countries). Contractors are required to pay their employees a prevailing wage. If a new building is built on a base, the construction workers get paid government prevailing wage....but on the budget it shows as a capital purchase...not an expense on personnel. In many ways the DOD is being utilized as wealth transfer vehicle....a social program.

If you're looking for economic stimulus from government spending, the defense department provides the weakest return on investment. It's not hard to figure out why. At the end of the spending program, you have bullets and military bases, which themselves don't have economic output.

Just so no one misunderstands my point, their function is important for other matters, like protecting our nation from foreign enemies, but right now we don't face any significant ones. I'm not making light of the threat of terrorism but we face a very different situation now. We used to face an adversary that could wipe us out in 30 minutes, delivering bombs by intercontinental missiles. Now we face an enemy that stuffs bombs in their shoes and underwear and fail to even set that off for want of a bic lighter.

Getting back to economic impact, sure you put people to work in the military but you could alternatively put them to work building roads and bridges, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, which would does have an economic impact, allowing for the delivery of goods and supplies. We could put people to work building schools, which invests in the future minds of this country. We could put people to work finding a new energy alternative, which would solve a lot of problems.

Even food stamps provides a greater return on investment, as far as government spending to generate economic activity goes. Poor people spend money when you give it to them. Rich people send the money into offshore tax havens when you give it to them in the form of tax cuts.

This is why I'm both a businessman and a liberal. Liberal policies would not only be more humane, they would be good business.

Military spending can be good economic stimulus if it is invested heavily in dual use infrastructure, like enhanced road and rail networks, higher capacity ports, expanded airports. American interstate highway system was justified to a large degree on its anticipated military utility in evacuating population centers in case of nuclear war. A good portion of Government works program under FDR west of the Rockies under was justified by enhancing the capacity of west coast infrastructure to support the logistic need of an anticipated war with japan.