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Comment by thoutsnark | Hacker News Reader

Of that 800 billion, where is the money spent? If it goes to US military/industrial complex, it is basically a creator of US jobs.

So it doesn't cost the US anything.

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This is "broken window fallacy"[1] territory. In economic terms defense spending is mostly waste because a lot of it doesn't get used (hopefully) or gets used to blow other stuff up causing net damage. The fact that it creates jobs is better than nothing, but spending the same money on infrastructure would increase the future productivity of the country.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The defense budget is a social support program that conservatives will agree to. Rather than just providing people a basic income and healthcare directly, they add the hoop of holding down a job to access it.

It also is meant to keep American industry active (to some degree) in case it is needed.

No one else can project conventional military force anywhere on the global like the US. China is getting there but not quite yet. India and Russia are still regional.

The Europeans couldn't deal with a few land pirates practically in their backyard.

If the US has convinced itself that able-bodied young men who are good at following orders are the people who need social support then it is quite a bit worse than mere waste. That is $800 billion spent keeping the US's best labour out of the labour force.

The US isn't sending sad cases over to Japan to cash welfare checks.

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