500 Billion A Year For Defense?

I'm not rightwing.

So if I can show that the Barbary Wars resulted in an increase to the national debt at the time, that would counter your argument about the commerce clause, then yes?

 

A strong national defense (military) protects the general welfare of the country.

 

letters of marque and reprisal were available.

 

muster the militia. we have a Second Amendment and should have no security problems in our free States.

 

California is no longer a free state, it's a totalitarian state.

The Democrats pretty much disarmed the unorganized militia in California.

Even the organized militia (California National Guard) have been ordered to turn in their M-16 rifles in exchange for shovels.

 

You misunderstand the point. We should have no security problems in our free State.

 

You are going to have to explain this post in great detail for me to understand it.

 

the bottom line is that we don't have a general malfare clause, nor a general badfare clause nor even a general warfare clause.

what we have is a general welfare clause.

 

What was the meaning and definition of the word "welfare" when our founding fathers used the word in the Constitution ?

What is the definition today, was it amended to include free stuff ???

 

And? Once again why should we put so much stock in a vaguely written document back in the day when they thought counting blacks as 2/3rds a person was a reasonable compromise. When "cavalry" was riders on horseback and people were still being "bled" as a medical treatment?

 

lol. I am a federalist. There is No Thing ambiguous about the federal doctrine. We can not do a better job today.

 

Sure we could. There is no reason to believe that the efforts of well educated and experienced experts today couldn't put together just as good or better document than the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents.

 

no evidence of it so far.

our Founding Fathers virtually "invented object orientation" for modern times.

 

No one has tried IIRC.

 

Oh hell, beating the Chinese is easy.

Simply never get into a land war with them.

All you have to do is destroy their projection power, which they actually have very little of.

For all those that claim to be "experts", China is in most ways a "paper dragon". They probably have the most powerful land warfare branch on the planet, but it is decades out of date. Most of their equipment is mid Cold War era, with a few newer items thrown in. And lots and lots of prototypes and small run items that ultimately will matter about as much as the Tiger II did in WWII. Yes, it was an impressive tank and unquestionably one of the finest in the era. But with less than 500 made, it is little more than a footnote in the war itself.

The one thing that both Russia and China have in common, is their inability to really project their military in any meaningful ways. And since most potential conflicts with China involve a battle where they are trying to force themselves forward (say towards the Philippines), all we have to do to "win" is to defeat those forces in that area.

It is not like China has the equivalent of 150 C-5 Galaxies, 60 C-135 Stratolifters, and over 2,500 C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft.

Yea, that is the US inventory of our main cargo aircraft. What is the Chinese equivalent of cargo aircraft?

Well, it totals around 343 aircraft. Yea, that's it. The largest single number of one is the Y-8 (60), basically a copy of the An-12. Essentially a Chinese built version of a Soviet clone of the Hercules. They also have 22 Il-76 and 8 prototypes of the Y-20. Most of them are equivalent in size to the twin prop puddle jumpers that fly out of regional airports.

But China also does not connect directly by land to any nations that we are in critical self-defense treaties with. Which means any conflict with them would be away from their main land forces. Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, etc. In every conflict like those the odds would be highly in the favor of the US. China would be playing it's weakest asset against what is unquestionably our strongest asset.

Russia is a different matter. And they have been smart, refusing to get into any conflicts with NATO members. So at this time, so long as they continue that strategy they will have free reign to gobble up most of their region. And notice that although they posture and puff themselves up, they have not dared to do more than make ugly faces at Poland and other nations that have joined NATO.

Because if that line was crossed, it would not just be the US against Russia, but all of NATO against Russia. And in most ways, Russia is largely alone since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

 

Currently we can beat the Chinese, but if their GDP is double ours, they can put twice as much money into military research and the military itself. Coupled with help from the Russians, there is just no way we will be able to win.

 

And do you know why that is?

Well, essentially because the countries with the largest militaries in the world basically treat them like slaves.

Want an idea? A Lieutenant in the Chinese Army makes a whopping 3,000 yuan. That is at current rates under $450 a month. Even the lowest Private still going through boot camp in the US makes $1,680 per month. A 2nd Lieutenant in the US military makes $3,188 per month.

Oh, and in China, somebody in their first enlistment can not be married, can not have kids. Both are forbidden. This eliminates a large segment of the DoD budget that relates to dependent care, dependent housing, dependent schooling, etc.

The US military budget is over half payroll. Both to those in the military, and those that work in the military (roughly 1 in 3 that work in the Department of Defense are civilians). In comparison, almost half of the Chinese military budget is dedicated only towards acquiring new equipment.

And yea, Russia is even worse. The pay for a Private in the Russian Army?

5,000 rubles. At the exchange rate on 6 April 2019 that amounts to $76.65.

So yea, even though those nations both have militaries much larger than the US, they keep the costs low because they are essentially using slavery. But if it makes you happy, maybe we should do the same thing here in the US. If we forbid all under the rank of Corporal from having any dependents, and then paid them around $400 a month our military budget would be cut probably in half.

Of course, then we would simply be shifting a lot of that away from the DoD and into welfare. But hey, not the military problem any more, right?

 

What?

What are you smoking?

OK, if you take from all of that and can only respond with some nonsense about GDP and research, either you care not taking this seriously at all, or do not have a clue what is involved and are just spouting off the first thing that comes to your mind.

Please let me know if you want to discuss this seriously, or just vomit up random 2 sentence blurbs about things that have nothing to do with anything being discussed.

 

lol. any lack of faithful execution of our federal doctrine is more evidence of failure not success.

 

China's GDP is growing at 5-9% and the US grows at 1.5-3%. They also have 4 times as many people as we do and are still developing with a lot of room to grow. By some measures they have already catched up to us GDP wise, and they will definitely surpass us.

 

We spend billions a year enforcing UN sanctions and Security Council resolutions.

As for NATO, not only would it be good for the US, govt and business, to stop subsidizing Europes defense, it would be good for Europe to not need to rely completely on the US. I recently saw an article that stated the German army was under 30% readiness and their Navy was even worse off. Do you believe thats sustainable?

 

And what does all of that nonsense have to do with anything?

As an FYI, China is way behind technologically and industrially compared to the US. They achieve their GDP economically much like their military numbers, by slave labor. When you pay your workers almost nothing, of course the profits are larger. But it is a house of cards.

A large chunk of their exports are not even their own products. They make things for Apple, for Dell, for Samsung, and a thousand other companies. But here is the kicker, they do not originate those things. They simply make them for others.

Check out what a true "Chinese made and designed" product is like. Check out a Chinese iPhone or Android clone. Check out some Chinese made and designed tablets. Try buying a few Chinese game consoles. Guess what, everything I just listed that actually originates in China is pure crap, and nobody wants them.

The same with their military equipment. Most of their stuff is literally Cold War era stuff they bought or copied from the Soviets. Their "Aircraft Carrier" is an old Russian missile cruiser, which uses Russian made jets. Half of their tanks are literally Korean War era stuff. And the other half is a mixed bag of stuff mostly dating to the 1970's.

You go into such detail, which literally means nothing.

 

Yes, today their technology is definitely behind us. But when their GDP is much larger than ours, that is definitely going to change. The reason their GDP is growing so fast is that stable developing nations just have much larger GDP growth. Their population is much larger than ours and its just a matter of time before we are completely surpassed. A nation with 300 million people can't keep ahead of a country with 1.4 billion people that consistently keeps growing fast. If their GDP doubles ours, they can easily spend 2 trillion on the military per year, no problem.

 

Uh-huh.

Of course, we could also crush their economy at a whim if we decide to do so. Then they will be right back at where they were 40 years ago. Or their entire house of cards system could collapse, that is something that has been building since 1989.

But since you have made absolutely no connection between GDP and the military, I can only assume you really have no idea what you are talking about other than mindless speculation.

 

We aren't going to crush them militarily because we are trading partners. We are going to watch as their economy grows past ours. Their GDP is set to officially pass ours by 2030 and grow to 26 trillion. If you take Purchasing Power Parity into account when measuring GDP, they already surpassed us in 2014.

GDP has a big connection to the military because the larger the GDP, the more you are able to contribute to the military. They are going to be the primary military power in Asia and be the dominant power there. A large economy is the key to a powerful military. They