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Is Trump embracing aggressive withdrawal?
#74
Warren Dew Wrote:What's your idea about when to start worrying about someone bent on world conquest?  After they're done?  I'd prefer to nip it in the bud, thanks.

Huh?  World conquest in the nuclear age = the grand prize of a Fukishama zone writ large.  Sorry dude, out of date reasoning.

Quote:<snip stuff>
Oh yes, the Cold War was characterized by comparatively limited engagements like Korea, Vietnam, and an enormous build-up of conventional forces on either side of the Iron Curtain.

Yup, nobody wanted that grand prize, man.

Quote:  Nothing like the mass carnage of Iraq or the rest of the GWOT.



The GWOT is stupid.  The Mideast is a clusterfuck and we need to exit completely.  

Quote:There were a lot more people killed in wars we participated in in the decade after 1990 than in the decade before 1990.  Millions of people were killed in the two Iraq wars and by the intervening sanctions.  I grant that most of those killed were not Americans, but that was, if anything, because we devoted more military power to fighting, not less.

I know. The US first got duped into WMD's owned by Saddam, then the US and I'm gonna point a finger right now:  The US meddling led to the rise of IS, yup, it's our  fault.  The deBaathification of Iraq is part of the puzzle.  When it comes to understanding tribal interactions, again, the US is a moron.  It's the reverse Midas touch. Everything the NeoCONS's came up with turned to shit. Afghanistan,Libya,Syria,and Iraq, all gone to shit.

Quote:I grant that there was more combat earlier in the Cold War.  I'd argue that was part of the learning process, before we learned how to do it right under Reagan.  Still, averaging the Korean War and the Vietnam war over the 45 years of the Cold War gives a death rate in the 100,000 per year range, no higher and possibly lower than in Iraq alone after the end of the Cold War.

Yeah, that's because the number of hot wars was lower.   



Quote:As a tangent, I would also like to note something not generally acknowledged.  We won the Cold War, just as much as we won WWII.  Total military and civilian deaths on all sides were an order of magnitude lower in the Cold War than in WWII, despite the existence of far greater destructive power.  From a cost benefit perspective, we did a much better job on the Cold War than we did in WWII, or in the wars we've had since the end of the Cold War.

Yeah, the US spent a ton on arms and the USSR  cratered trying to keep up.

<more snippage>
Quote:Yes, seriously, that's absolutely when that started.  At the beginning of the 1990s, the US navy was only on a par with the Soviet navy, so obviously we didn't meet the requirements for being the maritime hegemon.  After the end of the cold war, the US navy rapidly got to the point where it was four times larger than the Russian navy, which was the next largest navy.  A buildup is not the only way to gain hegemonic power; defeating rivals works too.  Cool infographic here for other readers (not you, you'll consider it a flawed source):

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military...fographic/

Rolleyes Why the hell should hegemony  even be a goal?

Quote:Being a hegemon requires both absolute and relative power.  During the Cold War, we had the absolute power, but not the relative power.  It was only with the end of the Cold War that we got the relative power as well.  We didn't build more ships, but our navy became four times as strong relative to the closest rival, and twice as strong relative to the rest of the world combined.

I don't think that's a proper spending goal, given the US is collapsing from within.  Lessee, Flint Michigan, I-35 in Minnesota, and now the OreVille dam in California.


Quote:So why should we give up when we're ahead?  Why not enjoy the hard won benefits for a few centuries before the decline sets in, rather than volunteering for immediate degredation to a second rate power?

Because we are a 3rd rate nation when it comes to infrastructure. Tongue

Quote:As you already agreed, we get substantial payment for our services in the form of an inflation tax on dollar reserves, that defrays related costs.

Yeah, but us peons pay that exact same tax.

Quote:If by supplemental wars you mean Iraq, I don't agree that was required for our role as global maritime hegemon.  That whole fiasco started with an elderly Bush wanting to relive the glory days of his WWII youth by warring against dictators with moustaches.  Then the sins of the father were visited on the son in the form of the moral bankruptcy of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of children, and W had to finish what his dad started.

Dunno who wrote the above, but I agree with that.

Quote:I would hope that in the future we can use subtler but more effective balance of power methods to achieve our goals.  For example, we have a nice three way balance in the middle east between Turkey, Iran, and the arabs, but Iran has been getting too strong for a while now.  Supporting Turkey in the Islamic State is the perfect solution, and the Trump administration seems to have figured that out.  We'll have to invest some treasure in the form of air support, but substantially less than we would with boots on the ground, and Turkey can supply the bulk of the blood.

Path not taken, DO NOTHING.

Quote:The falloff in workforce participation is largely due to ill considered overgenerosity in welfare programs.  For example, food stamp benefits were already more than adequate and were inflation adjusted, but Obama pushed through an additional increase anyway.

No. It's outsourcing and globalization that did that stuff.  Like I tell Eric,  no more illegal immigration , institute a VAT tax, and crack down on  H1-B's.


Quote:  He also expanded eligibility so that a family of 5 making $90k per year living in a million dollar house could collect food stamps.

I refer you to your inflation tax.  Oklahoma must have low inflation since that doesn't apply here.


Quote:He made it really easy to get onto SSDI and in general made it more profitable for many Americans to get on the government dole instead of working.  That problem is easily fixed by saying, "okay, you're right, Democrats, we've recovered from the recession, so we can return to prerecession welfare policies now."

Oklahoma doesn't have nice policies like this.  Where do you live?   I want to sponge off of Warren.
http://www.okdhs.org/services/snap/pages...gible.aspx

Quote:There's a smaller component from the baby boom cohort entering retirement.  The best way to fix that is likely to increase the retirement age gradually to 70.  Hey, if Trump can work at a tough private sector job until age 70 before retiring to a cushy life on the government dime, the rest of us can too, right?
Count me out man. I deserve to retire at 65 because I'm a special flower-child.  That's the same age my all of my aunts/uncles/parents retired. Trump's a  fat cat so stuff that applies to him does not apply to myself, a wage serf.

Quote:As I've discussed in other posts, the stagnation in median incomes dates to about 1970 and is pretty clearly traceable to easy immigration policies.  Slam the door on immigration and labor regains its bargaining  position relative to management, and wages will start going up with productivity again.

Yes, I agree with the above.  Also add other cheap assed labor pools like H1-B's.  Then slap a huge assed fine on employers who exploit cheap labor pools.  That's an even better way to fix this than tracking down every single illegal alien.  There are far fewer employers than illegal aliens. I'm thinking a $100,000 fine per infraction.

Quote:Overall the economy is doing fine; the problem is that all the benefit is going to billionaires and not workers.  Stop letting the billionaires import cheap labor and that problem is fixed.


I think billionaires need to be paying a higher tax rate than myself.  Look for loopholes and chuck them.  No special capital gains rates either.

Quote:The surge in debt is largely due to massive increases in the deficit in the early Obama years; the deficit has been declining ever since the Republicans took control of the House and should soon be down to sustainable levels.


The debt can go away by just printing debt free money.
Quote:
Quote:Abandoning the world is not the solution.  Doing a better job of making sure more of the benefits of global free market commerce flow to us and not just to the rest of the world is.

Yup, there are no intermediate states between what we are doing and total autarchy.  We're either invading Iraq and moving naval forces into the Western Pacific or we are enabling Hitler and sticking our heads in the sand.  Got it.  Wink

Actually, I am advocating an intermediate state.  Geographical realities dictate that we can be a global maritime hegemon, but not a complete global hegemon.  We don't need to invade Iraq but we should patrol the western Pacific.  We shouldn't enable Hitler but we can contain him without resorting to all out war.


I have to go to work now.  I'll just snip this and continue on later.
---Value Added Cool
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Is Trump embracing aggressive withdrawal? - by Ragnarök_62 - 02-27-2017, 02:00 PM
MIC spending is way too high - by Ragnarök_62 - 04-01-2017, 07:52 PM
RE: MIC spending is way too high - by Warren Dew - 04-02-2017, 01:09 AM
RE: MIC spending is way too high - by pbrower2a - 04-02-2017, 02:46 PM
RE: MIC spending is way too high - by Warren Dew - 04-02-2017, 06:15 PM
RE: MIC spending is way too high - by pbrower2a - 04-02-2017, 07:16 PM
RE: MIC spending is way too high - by Warren Dew - 04-16-2017, 02:09 PM

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