You guys are weird...

This sh!t has been going on since right after WWII. Our economy is driven by the defense industry, for better or worse.

Yes, it wastes a LOT of taxpayer money, and a lot of unnecessary money goes to a few big players, BUT...

It also allows us to do sh!t like that bombing run Saturday night that nobody else in the world could pull off...and keeps us from speaking Chinese or Arabic.

Is it corrupt? Absolutely. Would I rather have it than not, given the other possibilities? Yep.

Some folks don't get it.

They'd have been the dummies in 1940 screamimg to stay out of Europe...Germans didn't have a beef with us. Lol

(06-26-2025 12:57 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Some folks don't get it.

They'd have been the dummies in 1940 screamimg to stay out of Europe...Germans didn't have a beef with us. Lol

FFS. Back to that



But muh Hilter.

Exhausting

(06-26-2025 12:57 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Some folks don't get it.

They'd have been the dummies in 1940 screamimg to stay out of Europe...Germans didn't have a beef with us. Lol

but but but it took the gooks to begin with our version of engagement plus beating the Krauts to conquering the atom ... it's the irony of our lives...

this is tiddlywinks bs ... but act like it really matters other than a drain on our main vein...

wtfe...

(06-26-2025 09:47 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  

(06-26-2025 09:24 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(06-26-2025 08:48 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  It's economic evil genius to get around appropriations bills and cash pumping the economy. Get the country polarized in the media so they don't see what is going on.

Send over billions of equipment that was aging out. We then buy new from domestic industry to replace. EU does the same...they can't keep up with production now due to them sending so much to Ukraine so the EU are now replacing depleted stock from US built industry at unheard of rates. Then a lot of the cash that is "sent" comes straight back since it was actually earmarked to go straight to the producers from the start anyways.

It's the modern Adam Smith Invisible Hand in action. The geopolitical stuff is secondary.

You aren't wrong.

But you nor I are getting any of that.

I'm just a realist (or jaded).

The US defense industry is currently at around $330 billion annually (and growing quickly).

That number doesn't even capture the subcontractors and supply and material manufacturing feeds into the industry market cap since due to the size and complexity nobody is able to adequately quantify them. The numbers turn into Bistromathics.

I'm just saying you want to stabilize an economy after something like Covid, there is one industry input that creates an immediate, tangible yet largely unseen result...if you can do it quietly while moving ahead some geopolitical goal, all the better.

that's XACLY! correct from the #RPPP side of economics...

# = rob peter pay paul