Watching the events over the past several years and thinking we need to reduce military spending is a wild take.

Even the EU and Japan have massive increased amount of additional spend into military.

The free world is under WW2 levels of threat. Hundreds of millions of people are going to perish unless deterence works.

Wanting to reduce spending does not automatically mean reduced force capability, nor reduced deterrence.

The challenge is that the next war wont look like the last one or the one before that. So you might decide that instead of sinking a gazillion dollars on a 25-year project to build some fighter jets or littoral ships, you spend half a gazillion dollars on cyber and drones.

Problem is that states and their leaders (politicians, business, resident voices) find it emotionally and politically hard to pivot from building X in state A to building Y in state B.

Right now, everyone is studying the lessons of the Ukraine war. That certainly should be looked at and learned from (build drones at mass scale, say) but it would also be possible to draw entirely incorrect conclusions for the next war. As a land war in Europe, Ukraine shows us the importance of essentially 1900s-style tools: shells and ordnance by the million. Tanks. Etc. If (god forbid) someone got into a hot war with China, the needs would be entirely different.

It’s always tempting to look at the Russian assault on Ukraine and “learn lessons” but you also have to remember that NATO countries aren’t Ukraine and Russia isn’t China.

The use of drones by both sides is in part because neither side could get air superiority, Ukraine because it barely had an air force and Russia because..well decades of corruption.

If the US had invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have lost in under a month, the insurgency would be horrific and make Iraq look mild but militarily Russia was a complete basket case.

The lesson we should take is that ammunition stockpiles evaporate faster than you expect always in a full scale war, this has been true all the way back to the invention of the bow though.

I don't disagree but clearly not what the op was trying to say.

To your points.

Isreal just leveled iran without a single plane shot down, tech still dominates. The F35 is a terrifying weapon and Irans drone and missle attacks were ineffective. Ukraine shows us what two poor and land locked countries fight like.

Part of that is because they can't trust the US, which outspends China 3x over and outspends Russia 7x over, and outspends dozens of other countries combined. The US is the biggest military threat the world has ever known, and our government is acting crazy right now. Nobody should trust the US, a single country with 37% of the world's entire military budget with only 4% of the people, that is ridiculous and dangerous.

The only reason for the US to continue its military spending is to enforce its will upon the world by force or going on conquests for land, neither of which is a good or righteous cause that nobody should be supporting.

That's a little harsh.

Many countries that in actuality do not have nukes would have obtained nukes if the US hadn't made security guarantees to them. Those guarantees would not have been as persuasive (in getting countries to forgo getting nukes) if the US military wasn't as strong as it actually was. And the world is a safer place because only 9 countries have nukes.

Also, before now there's never has been an 80-year-long period without a major war between European powers. If the US military had been less strong, then the major powers of Europe would have felt the need to spend more on their militaries (at first to deter the Soviets / Russia, but then also to deter each other) which would have increased the probability of a war between European powers.

If I was in a country without nukes im not sure I would consider myself safer and would likely be an advocate for my government to gain nukes if there was any threat at all of someone attacking or invading in order to prevent it, especially if the US could be a potential enemy as only nukes would be an actual deterrent from meddling or invading.

It's not an unfair argument to say the US is a global superpower with questionable intent.

But it's not hard to prefer Pax Americana to WW3.

Super power gonna super power. Wether it is Romans/Arabs/British/US or maybe future China.

None of them play nice and there's generally always one. I'd prefer to live in the peak power of these countries over the total chaos in between their collapse. The entire world has gotten insanely rich and healthy under US dominance I don't think wanting that to continue is an immoral desire.

History will remember the US as the empire to bring about the modern era much like the british brought about industrialization and global trade.

The free world is under WW2 levels of threat? Listen to yourself. You’re brainwashed. Is China slaughtering Jews like the holocaust? Is China trying to wage war against the world and build an empire? Nobody actually wants war. In fact if war happens it will be the US getting into the whole Taiwan and China conflict that is none of its fucking business in the first place.

The world is building military defense against a threat that will never materialize. That’s one half the story. The other half of the story is a big economic dick measuring contest where the country with the most military might (that they will never use) is the better country.

China is rapidly building an army at a pace larger than germany or the US in WW2.

They actively threaten their neighbor and openly say force is being considered while also designing specialized equipment to enable this.

China actively is trying to expand territory and have plans to expand to the different island chains by certain years.

US military analyst have been warning for nearly a decade that china is planning for war between 2025-2030. All recent US actions under Biden and Trump both correlate with senior US officials taking this seriously.

Even JAPAN a openly pacifist country is increasing military spending. Europe just made a plan for like 800B$ of military spend.

Even a conservative viewer should see this as pretty clear sign that the world is preparing for war no?

I'm all for cutting the military spending to less than half... that said, it's still much smaller than entitlement spending at this point... there needs to be a lot of effort to reduce fraud and increase competition in medical/pharma space. Why there aren't licensing and dual sourcing requirements for medications is beyond me. Let alone allowing commercials that nowhere else in the world allows.

Pharma companies already aren't very profitable and it's getting worse and worse every year (called "Eroom's Law" for the reverse of Moore's).

The US's uniquely fucked healthcare situation is thanks to 1) administrative overhead of tons of competitive and extremely complex distinct health plans, and 2) the labor cost of doctors, much of which gets captured by the extremely consolidated health systems that employ them.

The US needs to dump money into training a lot more doctors. Not by subsidizing student loans, but by directly creating public medical schools that train doctors on the cheap and let them escape with no student debt.

I'd settle for not capping residency slots and in return allowing doctors to own hospitals.

Residency slots are not capped. Common misconception.

Private parties are welcome to create and fund residency slots if they want. They typically don’t because it’s a totally nonsense investment — perfect example of a problem that private investment markets would fail to solve.

The “cap” refers to the fact that CMS doesn’t fund an infinite number of residency slots.

So you and I are saying similar things, which is that the government needs to fund more MD training.

> But even Elon couldn’t do that.

Why should he? Who pays for Starlink? Who pays for rocket launches with satellite cargo? Who pays for advanced vehicle research?

Musk is benefiting of that by a lot. Where he cuts is oversight over his business and areas where one can provide commercial products.

>Even Elon

I think that is the wrong framing. I'd be more surprised if someone with no real government experience has much success with that venture.

I'd rather have someone with years and years of experience with DoD budgets and the expertise to prioritize the right cuts.

Of course a guy with zero knowledge of how things work, but a lot of confidence and ideaologically fueeled ressentment could not cut spending.

Then again, goal was to destroy and harm and that was achieved.