We’ve read that we in the U.S. spend on our military, roughly the same amount as what all other countries in the world combined spend on theirs. (Even if that stat is a little off, there is no doubt we spend fantastically more than any other country.) We have the world’s most awesome military.
We may not have the world’s most awesome infrastructure though. Do we have the best educational standards? Roads, bridges, and building maintenance? Mass transit? Electrical grid?
I remember the refrain from an old economics textbook. Guns or butter. You get to choose how to spend your money. Sometimes you have to choose between the two. So I wonder. If we didn’t spend all that money on the military, would it really be available to spend on making our lives better? Could we have the most advanced roads, bridges, buildings, communications, education, and mass transit on the planet? Or if we stopped spending on guns, would there be no butter; is military spending such a powerful economic engine, that we can’t afford to stop? If we didn’t spend any more money on the military, would we just fall into recession and collapse?
We’ve moved. We’re in Centralia, WA.
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