Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ECrownofFire]

Not all private contractors are the same. Construction involves more jobs than maintaining an army.

Not when that army contains massive infrastructure of everything from hospitals to munitions.

Especially considering how often the federal government actually does something relating to domestic construction (i.e. almost never).

[Nadaka]

I'm pretty sure you could get more than 1:1 jobs, if you count jobs created in private sector by increased demand for construction materials.

And then there's lowering costs for private businesses by providing cheaper transport and power, which means they can afford more employees.

Just going to say here that the VAST majority of employees and money that the US spends is on private contractors that they overpay (mostly because the government is willing to do so).

Government contractors are generally underpaid for the work they do. The "expense" comes from the complexity of the process, its documentation and oversight requirements. But all of that means that more people have jobs. The vast majority of defense industry companies are small, with low overhead and modestly paid executives. It is far more effective at returning money into the economy with a large number of middle class jobs than the banking and retail industries.

[GlyphGryph]

The contractors (as in, the companies) are often overpayed (when compared directly to employing similar roles directly).

However, only a relatively small portion of the "per employee" cost goes to the employee, so the actual contract WORKER will often be underpaid, and because of those costs you mentioned sometimes the contract company doesn't make out well either.

Meanwhile, the middlemen are rewarded, but the government doesn't have to do their job.

There are also other factors involved, though, obviously.

[DJ]

Defence spending by it's nature involves a lot more red tape than other government spending. All this red tape just channels money towards people that are already well-off, and ideally government spending should be geared towards filling the pockets of blue-collar workers since they almost immediately spend everything they make (on domestic products as well, rather than on exotic vacations and Italian shoes) and thus stimulate the whole market. I prefer construction work mainly because it involves so much blue collar labour.

[darkrider2]

You know, cutting defense spending does not entail abandoning the US military all together. This false pretense that some people base their arguments on is completely absurd, that the world is so fucking unstable that even to touch the military budget will be some kind of beacon to the world where anyone can invade anyone and Earth is now a lawless state because America (fuck yeah) isn't pointing a barrel at their forehead.

How can we police the world if we are so corrupt ourselves?

The USA already has the largest most advance military in the world, is it absolutely necessary that we continue to make it bigger? A single fighter jet costs upwards of millions of dollars. Can't we just move the money from producing tanks to producing infrastructure?

Just move some of that production money to domestic spending, mostly infrastructure (schools, libraries, police, fire dept, hospitals, roads, highways, drinking water, efficient green energy, telecommunications, high speed railways, the list goes on). Doing this does not mean cutting military payrolls, or cutting payments for maintenance, keep the military running, but geez, we don't need to make it any bigger.

And I know weapons contractors produce jobs here, but I can tell you I would much rather appreciate any one of things on that list than even a single weapon meant to blow those same things up.

[ECrownofFire]

Defence spending by it's nature involves a lot more red tape than other government spending. All this red tape just channels money towards people that are already well-off, and ideally government spending should be geared towards filling the pockets of blue-collar workers since they almost immediately spend everything they make and thus stimulate the whole market. I prefer construction work mainly because it involves so much blue collar labour.

Not to mention a lot of red tape is completely unnecessary and leads to things like over-classification of data. I bet companies are paid more for handling "classified" data anyway.

Also, the entire basis of defense spending is based on the broken window fallacy...

[Phmcw]

Just don't cut the government spending overall and you'll be fine. Social security, education, infrastructure, street prevention, culture,... all this give back in the long term, and is where money would can be well spent. After all, an army is just as necessary, and can bring back as much as the domain I cited, but too much is too much.

[Nadaka]

Point of fact: I know the defense industry fairly well. Its where I work. Its where I live. You guys really are mischaracterizing it quite a bit.

[Phmcw]

Point of fact: I know the defense industry fairly well. Its where I work. Its where I live. You guys really are mischaracterizing it quite a bit.

Please explain, then, what are we getting wrong?
I mean ok, an army is needed, but... it's a bit complicated to understand why so much spending is necessary.
Especially since in term of expenditure, at least, Russia doesn't stand a chance against Europe. Nor does China.

Yeah, if any misconception is left, in term of world wide expense : US 43% China 7% France 3,6% England 3,7% Russia 3,6% .
I say again, the US count for close to half the military spending for the whole world and close to five times more than the next power. Europe as a whole is the second spender and china is the third.

[sluissa]

Point of fact: I know the defense industry fairly well. Its where I work. Its where I live. You guys really are mischaracterizing it quite a bit.

On that same note, you can be quite biased as well.

I know people in the defense industry. I will admit I've never been a part of it myself, but everyone I know despite being a generally nice person otherwise, does have a small bit of war profiteer showing through.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I mean ok, an army is needed, but... it's a bit complicated to understand why so much spending is necessary.

Because 4% of the country is employed in it directly, and more are relying upon the military to buy their products. Cutting spending for the military, by definition, is going to put hundreds of thousands if not millions of people out on the street with no marketable skills.

[GlyphGryph]

Which is why I said what I did earlier - I would rather rehire those people to do something completely different, something ultimately more productive, instead of what they are doing now. Rather than simply "slash" the military budget, I'm much rather see it retooled into a combination of welfare, education, legal, and science spending.

[Nadaka]

Point of fact: I know the defense industry fairly well. Its where I work. Its where I live. You guys really are mischaracterizing it quite a bit.

Please explain, then, what are we getting wrong?
I mean ok, an army is needed, but... it's a bit complicated to understand why so much spending is necessary.

It isn't an executive money pit that efficiently funnels billions of dollars out of the economy, especially compared to banking, retail and energy. It very efficiently produces middle class jobs. Middle class jobs that can not be transferred overseas for profit. Middle class jobs that create more jobs in the local service industry. It directly creates more employment more effectively than any other part of the federal budget.

[Phmcw]

It isn't an executive money pit that efficiently funnels billions of dollars out of the economy, especially compared to banking, retail and energy. It very efficiently produces middle class jobs. Middle class jobs that can not be transferred overseas for profit. Middle class jobs that create more jobs in the local service industry. It directly creates more employment more effectively than any other part of the federal budget.

Yeah but it doesn't create any more value, it just consume stuff. I mean you must import prime material, skills, .... from oversea to support it, which in turn add to your trade imbalance, and fuel your debt crisis.
A debt is not a problem while it's internal. If your loan was to your own bank and citizens, then no problems. But a trade imbalance, that is nasty for the economy, and pretty much mean that you are living above your income.

A wasteful budget, in any field, won't add to the prosperity of the nation, but burn through its assets in order to sustain itself, pretty much like it's not the same thing to have a good social security and a wasteful one who give away load of money.
In Belgium we are now slashing retirement age, because complacent politician gave so much exceptional cuts that retirement age is effectively 55 year in many field instead of 65. That is a good thing to do.

[sluissa]

I don't think anyone is arguing that it doesn't create jobs. However, it doesn't create useful jobs for the most part. It's letting things fall apart in our own country just so that when we go overseas we can carry the coolest guns and fly the coolest planes.