On my phone at the moment, so I’ll have to come back with an in depth Excel spreadsheet later (and I need to do additional research on Illinois pension debt; numbers available show it somewhere between $130-250 billion).

Cliff notes are military spending is ~$550 billion a year. Halving that gives us ~$275 billion a year ($2.75T over ten years) to direct towards unfunded municipal pensions that need bailing out and student loan debt forgiveness (along with other policies such as reducing the interest on student loans to zero in the interim to give borrowers relief). I also assume that social security tax thresholds are removed, preventing the need for general fund transfers to top up Social Security.

My apologies if I made it sound like we could write a single check and this is all fixed. It’s more the thought that we have ample resources to resolve both issues in a controlled, orderly fashion if orchestrated by competent government representation (a guy can dream).

Edit: we spent $2.4 trillion on Middle East wars

What repercussions do you think a 50% reduction in military spending would have on national security?

A reduction in readiness and force projection, but not sufficient enough of a reduction to put American soil in danger.

Other countries spend orders of magnitude less than the US on their military, and remain conflict free.

Our current path is unsustainable structurally, and we must switch course.

> A reduction in readiness and force projection, but not sufficient enough of a reduction to put American soil in danger.

And your qualifications for making that assessment would be?

> Other countries spend orders of magnitude less than the US on their military, and remain conflict free.

Those "other countries" are, in almost every case, under the defense umbrella of a country that does have an adequate military.

Unless you have countervailing qualifications —- in which case you should talk more about them so we can ask good questions of you —- it’s unhelpful to bring qualifications into the argument.

Nope, it doesn't work that way.

The military budget is set by those who actually do have expertise in the area, not me. I don't need to show expertise to accept the judgment of experts. The OP is disputing those experts, and thus does need to show expertise.

I admit I am not qualified to make my statement with authority, it’s simply my opinion. I’d be most appreciative if someone with significant military management experience weighs in.

So you think we should gamble the national security of the entire nation based on your (unqualified) opinion?

Do you seriously not see the problem with that?

I don’t see the problem with having the discussion. The US military is a disgustingly wasteful (pallets of cash in the desert “go missing”! [1]) organization that has squandered trillions of dollars. Dollars that could’ve been spent on something useful. It’s time for accountability and responsibility.

Do you seriously not see the problem with not questioning that? We can’t afford universal education and healthcare, but we can afford aircraft carriers that are obsolete for force projection (inexpensive surface cruise missiles from China) and F35s that can’t fly, kill their pilots, and are generally speaking not fit for purpose? [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/military-admits-billion-dollar...

>We can’t afford universal education and healthcare

Countries can exist without universal education and health care.

They cannot exist without national defense (whether provided on their own or through an ally). Sorry, that is simply a fact.

Also, national defense is a clearly enumerated function of the federal government per the Constitution. Neither of the other two is.

I never said no military. I said a reduction in spending. We overspend and egregiously waste on ours. That’s my point. Good chat.

Gotcha. How many people would a 50% military cut put out of work?

That’s a great question, but out of scope for modeling a financial solution to student loan and pension obligations.

We’ll need a way to retask redundant military employees and defense contractors, otherwise we’re trading one inefficiency for the other.

If halving military spending is a hill too far, less reduction can occur and still accomplish a student loan and pension obligation debt “wipe” (~$1.5T in total is needed).

Somewhat unrelated: rolling VA spending into Medicare and implementing universal healthcare would extract enormous cost savings, further reducing DoD spending.

Appreciate you asking me to show my work. I think I’m going to run for office now.