Very possibly you don't want the US to be an empire and to spend money on the "security" of Israel (eg preventing us from developing fighter jets - for our own security, no doubt) or eg Germany which can't even give asylum to Snowden who broke the news that your intel agencies eavesdrop on their Chancellor's phone. Just don't blame the vassals. Raise this point with the imperial government. You're a voting subject, maybe you can pull it off.

(It could be that for the US taxpayer the empire is a good deal. eg could you print all those dollars and get the entire world to hold them without the empire? You get a nice windfall from this. But again it's between you and your government. Maybe if you called yourself an empire, it would enable more open and productive discussions wrt cost/benefit analysis per vassal state.)

Since Israel has to spend the money on US hardware, that money actually goes to maintain Jobs in the US military industry.

> Since Israel has to spend the money on US hardware, that money actually goes to maintain Jobs in the US military industry.

What a shitty cycle.

Yes, a shitty cycle in a shitty world. If not for the threat of China, I don't think the U.S. military industrial complex would have as much merit, but, under that (growing) threat, I think anyone who values freedom, democracy, and progressive ideals should see merit in the U.S. maintaining and growing capability.

To do that, it seems like the defense industry needs "stuff to do". Like a muscle, that sector atrophies if left unused. It's counterintuitive, though -- why spend so much money on a glorified Skunk Works project like the F35? Why double down and start producing hundreds of them despite their issues? Because it generates/maintains experience and lessons and keeps the metabolic pathways that turn material into materiel active. If you skipped the extra steps and had the government just sustain the defense industry on welfare while it does nothing right up until we have a massive conflict, things are going to go much more poorly for you.

> If not for the threat of China...

The military industrial complex will always have a bogeyman ready.

Well, some of them like Hitler and present day CCP are more wrll suited than others.

We can spend that money directly on our military.

There's no need to funnel it through Israel, which gains more of the benefit than we do.

Maybe giving away killing machines isn't the best way to stimulate the economy.

> Since Israel has to spend the money on US hardware, that money actually goes to maintain Jobs in the US military industry

Israel is also a gem of technological innovation. We probably get the public spending back in NYSE listing fees and trading profits alone.

How much of those jobs in the US military industry is going to people who need food, water, and/or shelter?

> US military industry.

What a completely depressing world

It's also the security of the only enclave of gay rights and feminism in one of the most barbarously anti-progressive regions in the world. Whether or not that adds incentive is subjective, but framing it like paying for just "a nation's security" sounds like propping up Luxembourg's independence from France and Germany.

American problems at home are bad though. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

Israel is not unique in this regard. Lots of US allies live with hostile neighbors and poor human rights records.

Besides, Israel's support for gay rights and feminism is hardly universal. Spend some time in an orthodox neighborhood if you don't believe me.

> Besides, Israel's support for gay rights and feminism is hardly universal. Spend some time in an orthodox neighborhood if you don't believe me.

I think you are kicking in open doors here.

But unlike a few kilometers away it won't get you kicked from a rooftop, it will only get you angry looks.