Rep. Alan Grayson is a Florida Congressman, now standing for the US Senate.
TV interviewer: “Some defend military spending by justifying the jobs it produces. So how do separate job cuts from military spending?”
Rep. Alan Grayson: “Well, there is a simple answer to that. When you put people to work making bombs, what you end up with are bombs. When you put people to work making bridges, what you end up with is bridges. When you put people to work making schools, you end up with educated children. Military spending to create employment is an utter dead end. You might as well have half the population digging ditches, and the other half filling them in. The important thing is to unleash people’s work, their time, their creativity, what they have to offer, so that they can serve others”.
Well said. Too many people already depend on warfare for their income. If I may repeat myself: if you are not shooting people there is no need for the manufacture of more bullets.
“A great country can have no such thing as a small war”. (The Duke of Wellington). Or a small military machine-industrial complex, he might have added
I completely agree. We need military spending in order to defend the country and defeat terrorism. But military spending as a form of stimulus is wasteful- for every $1 you spend on the military, that could’ve been $1 spent elsewhere.
On a more general point, US military spending ought to be cut. Of course its a dangerous world, and the military budget ought to reflect that. But the budget is so high, any additional spending will not result in anyone being any safer. There needs to be a comprehensive review of which parts of the military that if cut, will endanger us, and which parts won’t. I suspect we could save hundreds of billions of dollars annually and we would still be just as safe. Moreover, spending on the sorts of programs you describe, tend to be on traditional means of defence: tanks, helicopters, etc… But these are unlikely to be used en masse in the near future. Rather, resources ought to be diverted to cyber security and military intelligence, as those matter more in the modern age of warfare.