There's also massive benefits which are hard to directly measure.

Doing advanced, completely unprofitable basic research, for one thing. These are the sorts of projects that spawned GPS, the Internet, and IC manufacturing. Wasn't super profitable at the time of conception, but the military doesn't care. They need capability, irrespective of price. All of these technologies are now keystones of numerous gigantic American companies with billion dollar plus valuations.

Building up US based scientific and manufacturing know-how, for another. Plenty of people take the skills they learn at Raytheon or an FFRDC and use them to start profitable small businesses, which in turn employ more people and generate more tax revenue.

Not that I expect many people reading this to care about that. "Military spending bad" is too easy and convenient a slogan.

It doesn't solve every problem - there are a shitload of people in America receiving inadequate education, nutrition, and healthcare, for example. But it certainly helps keep a lot of Americans employed and paying their mortgages, which is a non-trivial benefit.

The US is at risk of being out-competed by nominal communists and practical authoritarians. They've already been knocked down to 2nd biggest economy adjusted for PPP and US government spending appears to be in a death-debt spiral where it pays for itself with donations from foreigners. The real burden of that is probably going to land on the middle class sometime soon and cause political hiccups that go beyond mere Trumpism.

Spending $50k on a trash can is unlikely to lead to the sort of benefits that are required. Better than unemployment benefits for nothing, maybe. The opportunity costs and time wasted on bureaucracy put even that optimistic spin in doubt. Basic research doesn't need 3% of GDP spent on overinflated contracts. It can't be helping the situation.

>death-debt spiral where it pays for itself with donations from foreigners.

That's not how it works. As long as the trade deficit exists, and the reserve currency is the dollar, there will be huge demand for treasuries.

It can be good! That said, as someone who has spent time in the five sided puzzle palace I would argue the time has long passed for a harder look at how the dollars are spent and how procurements are happening so we improve the process, open to more domestic competition and open ourselves up less to single points of failure for our key defense elements (see F35 program).

“Do more with less” during the Obama administration / Afghan war was a test of this and the things that got cut were the innovative programs while inefficient tent poles remained.

We should reform now while we have the budget so we get more good public innovation and can actually cut effectively and have that muscle memory in leaner years.

I am sorry but this is a ridiculous argument.

What is hard to measure is what could have been done with the money to make the US military stronger but was wasted instead.

The worst part is all these inefficiencies are going to add up over the coming decades when we have to keep up with the PLA/China.

A PLA colonel makes less than a private first class marine and manufacturing anything is an order of magnitude difference.

I think the point is that you could fund all those things without putting it directly into the pockets of defence contractors, or physically/psychologically traumatising the people who feel the need to sign up.

Just think what the private sector could have accomplished if the military didn't waste its time developing ARPANET and early internet standards. Lot of good those ever did us.

The US spends $800 billion per year on their military. The fact that some high value tech has come out of the military doesn’t justify it. Should we never question the spending?

Sure, the spending should be subject to question, but even a seemingly staggering sum like $800 billion is only a few percentage points of GDP. I don’t want to call it a rounding error, because it isn’t, but it’s a pretty small burden on the US economy.