Right, the death spiral. But I’m actually talking about the infuriatingly counter-intuitive headlines about buying tanks that the army says we don’t need, or ships that we know will never work as planned. There are only so many places that can build such things, and if we let them go to mothballs then we lose all the manufacturing experience to do it at all—which is a risk for national defense. So the Navy says “I need $40m for planes!” but Congress takes $100M from the plane budget line to keep open the shipyard in Sen. So-and-so’s district. Seems terrible, but that might be the only place on earth that employs the folks who can build such a ship and that keeps it alive. I’m not saying it’s worth it…just that it’s worth considering.
It’s not about make-work. It’s about the intersection of what the military says it needs, what congress folks can get away with, and what contractors lobby for to “maintain the industrial base”.
Building parks & hospitals doesn’t contribute to national defense, and it doesn’t develop or maintain the skills of welders who can join absurdly thick plates in the hull of a ship, or folks who can work with composites and thin aluminum, etc.
I’m not arguing that the system is working or that we have the right balance. But it’s not a simple “don’t build bombs, build hospitals” dichotomy.
