Comment by kunle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kunle | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>I've paid into Social Security my entire life. It's one of the few things my massive federal taxes are going to give to me in this life. Of course, this one "entitlement" (it's apparently an entitlement to at some point pull out some of the thousands I pushed into Social Security) is the only thing really on the chopping block in any form.

The bases around the world were how the US bought global security, upon which our economic growth for several decades was premised. Without (what looks like) a sprawling military with bases everywhere, we would have less safe/reliable sea lanes, which means higher prices of inputs and lower value for exports, and we would also have much of the advanced world spending ever more of its money on defense goods (it's called a nuclear umbrella for a reason).

Social Security is one of the few things your massive federal taxes are going to give to you in this life THAT ARE OBVIOUS. The other stuff is just as important, though way less obvious.

The bases in Germany were certainly "necessary" after WWII, but 70 years later, do we still need so many and do they need to have so many personnel? Especially with all the "force multiplying" technology that's been developed since WWII.

We definitely need to revisit how much of this is "necessary" today. I will say this though, for the populace in Japan/South Korea/Eastern European countries, the necessity of the nuclear umbrella is not theoretical vis a vis China (in Asia Pacific) and Russia (in Eurasia, particularly after the events in Georgia a few years ago)

Question: What inputs does the US need that cannot be found or created in one form or the other in the US?

Is there some natural resource that the US does not have access to within its own borders?

Rare earth metals for one. Human capital for 2 - there are simply more smart humans outside the US than inside (simply because there are more humans outside the US than inside it.)

Inputs found outside the US sort of misses the point though - we dont live in a world that is getting less connected. Instability elsewhere will find it's way here in one form or another, hence the need for someone to underwrite security. For the moment (and for the last 90 years or so) that someone has been mostly the US. It wont always be - eventually it will be another country, or coalition, but someone will underwrite global security, or the globe will be far less secure than it is today, with the attendant costs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com