You probably hear all manner of numbers thrown around when it comes time to talk about the budget for military spending.
Wait. Fear not, no eyes will be glazed by this post. This bit, from Matt Yglesias, is a marvel of clarity:
It seems to me that if you told the man on the street that you had a plan to spend double on defense what China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran spend combined that said man would assume you were proposing to spend a healthy amount of funds on national defense. Such a standard would, however, imply very large cuts.
I'm sure I'm far from the first person you've ever heard express not only amazement at how much money we spend but despair at how utterly out of the question it is to think that there's any hope of reducing it. (You'll recall the last time I touched on this.) Still, we've got to keep talking about it, keep trying to nudge that Overton window just a little bit. It's absolutely insane what we spend, it's far from clear what we're getting for the money, and it can't last forever. Coming up with clear illustrations like Matt did could help. Imagine conducting a survey with questions framed like that.
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If you would like a few more numbers, read Matt's post, and for a few more than that, read the post by Robert Farley that Matt links to.
Want still more? For a look at some details in just one program, start with Farley's posts from last month on the F-22 boondoggle here and here.
3 comments:
This is, in fact, the ultimate form of welfare, but it's for affluent white people, so it's OK.
You know what Pentagon contract approval officers do when they retire? Yep, six-figure jobs at Boeing, Grumman, etc...
Couldn't agree more, except the thing is, the revolving door issue is (comparatively) not such of a problem anymore. The real problem is that the big contractors were smart enough to spread their operations out to almost every state, so that almost everybody in Congress can be clubbed with the JOBS AT STAKE mantra.
Actually, now that I think about it, the revolving door thing probably aggravates the costs for individual programs. Someone looking to retire from the Pentagon in two years is going to be awfully motivated to sign off on a bloated contract or a cost overrun if he or she gets the right wag of the eyebrows.
So, yeah.
Stuff like this makes the stimulus plan seem like a bandaid...
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