I've always wondered how much of the world superpower is sold to us as "to keep us safe" when the honest reality is "too feed our national ego". I do believe that the world is a safer place than it was 30 years ago. But I can't think of a conflict since WWII where U.S. efforts in the region seemed to be the stabilizing factor.

"The U.S. spends more on health care than other high-income countries but has worse outcomes." http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20...

"American Schools vs. the World: Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math" http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/america...

Yes, you could cut military expenditure and push the money elsewhere. I really think unless you change things about the way that money gets spent you are just tossing it away.

> I can't think of a conflict since WWII where U.S. efforts in the region seemed to be the stabilizing factor.

Korea First Iraq war Yugoslavia

The US presence in Europe and NATO creation during the cold war?

That sounds great, but even more than that I hope you want for them to be alive and free. Without a strong national defense, their chances of survival as free citizens are pretty low.

Where does this sentiment come from, the same as in the argument that the USA protects Europe? Do you really believe all countries would constantly try invade each other if they had less weapons? Citizens are not that eager to get killed on the battlefield, especially in developed notion with pretty good living standards at home. Maybe I am a bit idealistic but I just can not imagine the world falling apart if we had lesson weapons. I am not saying zero weapons, it is certainly not a bad idea to have some defense capabilities just in case, but being prepared to fight another world war seems over the top to me.

While I don't necessarily agree with the large US military spending, I feel better knowing we have more national defense than necessary rather than not enough/just enough.

I don't think this is an accurate statement.

People who keep supporting more military spending aren't patriots. Quite the opposite. Those that want their army to run well and effectively are the true patriots.

The #1 way to reduce waste would be to change the accounting rules. As it is, if you don't spend your full budget for the year, next year's budget will be cut by that amount. And you aren't allowed to keep a "rainy day fund".

This causes problems when you have expensive equipment that only fails occasionally. You have to budget for a possible replacement, but if you make it through the year without a failure, you've got all this money that you have to suddenly find a use for.

The answer to "why not" is lobbying, constituents, and corruption. Military spending influences the economy in literally every state. That's why they don't close bases. That's why the legislature optimizes for maximum spend rather than ROI.

Like private industry, government is huge, contains many agencies at many levels, and some of them are well run and some of them are poorly run and some of them are somewhere in between.

The "plan going bankrupt" has nothing to do with the administration of benefits, however. It's not happening because the bureaucracy is screwing up and wasting too much money -- even if they worked for free, you'd only gain 0.39% more per year. It's congress that is underfunding (or overprovisioning, or some combination of the two) -- could be fixed in two seconds with a bill cutting benefits and/or increasing taxes without any real change for SSA. Also, when it "goes bankrupt" as people misleadingly call it, they'll still be able to pay about 4/5 of the benefits currently promised. In effect, congress by doing nothing has already implicitly reduced future benefits to 4/5 of the current statutory amounts. If you just assume you'll get 4/5 of what is being promised, then it's in no way bankrupt and is self sustaining forever. 4/5 is not chump change.

I've started to realize this whole "social security is a failure" talk may be FUD being spread to get people to accept further raiding of social security because "whatever, it's already broken"

Similarly, the IRS is hugely "profitable", because its administrative costs are a tiny fraction of the money it brings in.

The accidental president, Harry Truman, bought this notion. Although Truman campaigned in 1948 as an heir to Roosevelt’s New Deal, he had a “continuing plan”. Henry Wallace was onto it, as early as: “Yesterday, March 12, 1947, marked a turning point in American history … Yesterday, President Truman proposed, in effect, America police Russia’s every border. There is no regime too reactionary for us provided it stands in Russia’s expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve as the scene of contest which may widen until it become a world war.” But how to impose this? The Republican leadership did not like the state to be the master of the country’s economic life while, of the Democrats, only a few geopoliticians, like Dean Acheson, found thrilling the prospect of a military state, to be justified in the name of a holy war against something called communism in general and Russia in particular. The fact that the Soviet Union was no military or economic threat to us was immaterial. It must be made to appear threatening so the continuing plan could be set in motion in order to create the National Security State in which we have been living for the last forty years.

What is the National Security State? Well, it began, officially, with the National Security Act of 1947; it was implemented in January 1950 when the National Security Council produced a blueprint for a new kind of country, unlike anything the United States had ever known before. This document, known as the NSC-68 for short, and declassified only in 1975, committed–and still, fitfully, commits–us to the following program: First, never negotiate, ever, with Russia. This could not continue forever; but the obligatory bad faith of US-USSR meetings still serves the continuing plan. Second, develop the hydrogen bomb so that when the Russians finally develop an atomic bomb we will still not have to deal with the enemy without which the National Security State cannot exist. Third, rapidly build up conventional forces. Fourth, put through a large increase in taxes to pay for all this. Fifth, mobilize the entire American society to fight the terrible specter of communism. Sixth, set up a strong alliance system, directed by the United States (this became NATO). Seventh, make the people of Russia our allies, through propaganda and CIA derring-do, in this holy adventure–hence the justification for all sorts of secret services that are in no way responsible to the Congress that funds them, and so in violation of the old Constitution.

Needless to say, the blueprint, the continuing plan, was not only openly discussed at the time. But, one by one, the major political players of the two parties came around. Senator Arthur Vandenburg, Republican, told Truman that if he really wanted all those weapons and all those high taxes to pay for them, he had better “scare hell out of the American people.” Truman obliged, with a series of speeches beginning October 23, 1947, about the Red Menace endangering France and Italy; he also instituted loyalty oaths for federal employees; and his attorney general (December 4, 1947) published a list of dissident organizations. The climate of fear has been maintained, more or less zealously, by Truman’s successors, with the brief exception of Dwight Eisenhower, who in a belated fit of conscience at the end of his presidency warned us against the military-industrial complex that had, by then, established permanent control over the state."

- Gore Vidal, "National Security State"

The entire essay, along with many of Vidal's other writings is highly recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/United-States-1952-1992-Gore-Vidal/dp...