

The Cost of Empire - tonystubblebine
http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/the-cost-of-empire/

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biohacker42
Let me attempt to respond to the points in the article in order:

1\. As someone born and raised behind the iron curtain, let me tell you the SU
would have absolutely expanded if the US hadn't checked it. It then _still_
would have collapsed. But that doesn't mean that holding off the SU was not
worth it. Now the way it was done is some specific instances like Vietnam,
sure that execution was bad in more ways then one. But the general idea, not
all bad.

2\. There is room in the market for both durable durables, and disposable
durables. When I was a poor student I could only afford the planned
obsolescence stuff. Now that I'm a well paid C++ developer, I just spend $50+
on a kitchen knife. The damn thing better last :)

3\. The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation didn't turn
me into a Libertarian, growing up behind the iron curtain did.

4\. Planned obsolescence is not the only thing to be blamed for the US trade
deficit. Europe and Japan rebuilt their industries from scratch. The US still
had the _burden_ of un-bombed factories.

5\. Have you ever tried to join a union? It's a serious question. Not start a
union, but join an existing one. Unions are not for immigrants, can you think
of why?

6\. "... the wholesale deindustrialization of America" Uhm, the US
manufacturing is doing pretty well right now, with the cheap $. Could it be
that antiquated companies were simply out competed and went bust.

7\. It is worth noting that opening trade _did_ dump a HUGE cheap labor force
on the global market. That absolutely did cost some high paying jobs in the
first world. But wages in China are already rising. Besides, what right do YOU
have to a high paying job that someone in India does not?

8\. As someone here pointed out, SUVs were very profitable for US car
manufactures. One airline, I think SouthWest, saw where oil is going and
hedged well. I think they are hedged for the next 10 years of something like
that. As I mentioned before, the US car manufacturers should have seen the
same trend in oil, but they didn't.

9\. It was Gorbachev. Trust me, it was. What he _didn't_ do was crush the
protest in the Baltic states, and Poland, and East Germany right quick, _not_
sending in the tanks sealed the SU's faith.

10\. Yeah, Russia bounced back in 10 short years after a crushing fall in
living standards. Don't worry, the US can do the same. We should hope it does
better, but it can surely do at least as good.

11\. US inflation hurts the holders of US dept and currency, guess who.

12\. I have to agree with you on the neocons, those are some crazy fuckers.

13\. Pressure to keep feeding the military machine doesn't just come from
generals. Little towns where a military contractor is the biggest employers
put a lot more pressure on.

14\. Yeah NATO expands, what's a huge international bureaucracy to do, shrink?
As if. Also with Russia and its sabre rattling us ex-satellite really did want
to join.

15\. I agree again, neocons are not only scary, they're dumb too.

16\. The Fed lowered rates because of 9/11. True, should they have allowed a
terrorist attack to sound the start of a recession? I would say yes, but it is
not a black and white issue.

17\. The US currency collapses, imports become prohibitively expensive. The
standard of living drops, and then the recovery starts. Life goes on.

~~~
startingup
I am a libertarian, and we are in agreement on most of your economic points.
Having said that, I have to say that libertarians don't support the imperial
thinking that has permeated Washington in the last 20-30 years.

Take the current wars. Both Osama and Saddam were on US payroll (literally so
in Osama's case) for a long time. Osama was a US ally because the US needed
him to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Same way, US bankrolls the failed Saudi state. The Saudi state buys off peace
with Islamists. And guess who the Islamists are targeting?

Empires don't work.

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gruseom
_The roots of American Empire began with President Woodrow Wilson’s decision
to enter World War I "to make the world itself at last free", which set in
motion a kind of messianic foreign policy of American Exceptionalism_

This is bunk. American Exceptionalism is obviously a 19th century construct
(even the term itself was coined by de Tocqueville, as ten seconds on
Wikipedia would have informed the author). And if you're going to talk about
American Empire, saying that its "roots" began with World War I is like saying
the roots of rock and roll began with Bon Jovi. What about the Mexican war?
The Spanish war?

If you're going to write a historical article, it might be a good idea not to
be historically illiterate.

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johntabet
I sure hope the next president and those in power have a chance to read
articles like this. It might not be incontrovertible truth, but I do think
that our current military industrial complex is mostly irrational and
detrimental. How much progress would $2 trillion dollars have bought if we had
spent it on creating and researching, instead of decimating and killing?

~~~
gaius
Fighting wars directly destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's
not true that military spending is bad for progress. Jet engines, satellite
communications, radar, etc - any one of those alone has probably repaid the
defence budget many times over.

~~~
ojbyrne
You are assuming those things would not have been invented without the
military (and with all that money freed up). That's a pretty shaky assumption.

~~~
gaius
No, I'm just saying that that's what did happen. You can always say "if
someone didn't invent something someone else would have eventually".

~~~
ojbyrne
_destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's not true that
military spending is bad for progress_. I don't see how you can say the first
part, and still agree with the second part. The logical conclusion is, not
only that someone would have invented everything that was invented, but in
fact they would have invented more.

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tdavis
There was a lot of green on that pie chart... let me be first to tell you not
much of that is going into our (soldiers') pockets ;)

Although, if Civilization has taught me anything it's that being in a constant
state of war really hurts your ability to keep up with the Jones's...

A great article.

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tyn
Shouldn't we examine military spending as a percentage of GDP? The author only
shows absolute numbers, which I think is misleading.

~~~
gibsonf1
Exactly my thought. What percentage of GDP is taken by entitlement programs,
also "new" ideas in the last century, such as medicare, social security, etc.
etc. etc.

~~~
dominik
Interesting charts on these very points at <http://perotcharts.com/> (Yes,
that Ross Perot).

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ChaitanyaSai
That was a superb read. Thanks. Given my lack of more-than-basic economic
knowledge, I find most economic analysis of the current predicament rather
impenetrable. This one paints a rather distressing picture of a long-term
slide that had its roots long before this housing bubble. Those of you who may
file this under toread on del.icio.us, you really should take the time out to
read it now.

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tonystubblebine
Forgetting for a moment the enormous political and moral implications of
whether America does or doesn't use it's military in a way that directly
leades to many thousands of deaths or whether it's right or important to push
freedom throughout the world, this article alarmed me as a business owner.
Taxes and a declining economy here definitely aren't positives for doing
business here. Although I have found one bright spot: our US prices are now
extremely cheap for European customers and that's lead to increased European
sales for us.

~~~
daniel-cussen
True...exports are countercyclical. A falling dollar means that, if you can
sell to, say, Latin America, you're in good shape.

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hugh
Uhhh, politics?

