Debate about Gun Control

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-24-2017, 03:25 AM)Galen Wrote:

(05-23-2017, 07:11 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The government is fiscally bankrupt due to an too heavy play of the low taxes unraveling memes.

More like the government has a spending problem and won't scale back until circumstances force them to.  Declining empire scenarios range from Great Britain to Rome.

(This doesn't really belong in the gun policy thread.  If you want to take it elsewhere, do so and I'll follow.)

What do you see as the cause behind declining entire syndrome?

For me, each superpower in the Industrial Age has had different causes for having their dominant time followed by fading from having extraordinary status.  Spain had an influx of New World gold that made her an economic and thus military superpower for a time, but that faded with the supply of gold.  France united a large amount of territory to get a large economic and military position, but overused this military strength to the point that force Germany to unite and for alliances to form against her.  She faded and became a strong but not super dominant country.  Britain built a naval strength alongside a strong number of colonies, but at the end of World War II the United States forgave lend lease loans if the debtor would open colonial ports to trade.  This was financially too big an economic advantage to deny, but colonial imperialism and empires based on it faded.  For a time the United States had the only industrial infrastructure intact after World War II, but this is gone.

Most of these countries continued to spend money on their military after the economic advantage that made them a superpower went away.  It’s tempting, when one was a genuine superpower, to keep spending on the military and meddling internationally as if one still is a superpower.  There is a common symptom of superpowers continuing to spend on the military after they can no longer afford to do so, resulting in massive debt.  That seems consistent, but why they can no longer do so varies highly.

Today’s US is spending a lot more on the military than anyone else.  Still, they are cutting back from Cold War expenditures.  They should be able to maintain Cold War levels.  There hasn’t been that much a cause of economic upheaval.

I tend to blame the unraveling memes, often identified with Reagan but coming from other sources as well.  Cutting taxes has been a constant.  Allowing debt to accumulate is persistent.  There has been a partisan push to spend more on guns and less on butter.  A large part of the country favors this Republican unraveling pattern.  Trump’s popularity comes in part by pushing the unraveling memes in a blatant extreme way.

Now, I’d be broadly in favor of becoming a major power but not pretending to be the sole superpower.  With ten carrier groups and task groups intended to put marines ashore, we are maintaining an ability to meddle anywhere in the world with a seacoast.  That’s expensive, but ego satisfying.  We are still able to interfere most everywhere while serving the needs of our people ever more poorly.  Land wars in Asia, though, remain problematic.  The debt remains problematic.

Anyway, can one grumble about the declining empire pattern while sticking with the unraveling memes?