re: #179 Hecuba’s daughter

My question: Our allies spend significantly less money for health care but have better outcomes than we do. Is it possible that the percentage we are spending on defense really reflects paying defense contractors significantly more than they should actually be receiving? That the cost problem reflects the “socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor” economy that we have been running since Reagan.

If you look at the balance sheets of publicly traded defense contractors, the profit margin is surprisingly small in general. It’s a low-margin, low-risk business whose finances look more like a supermarket chain than something like Apple.

Now, if you’re asking whether we’re buying the right stuff in the right way, the answer there is fuck no. We have tanks piling up in Texas that the DoD doesn’t want but keep a bunch of people in key districts employed. The F-35 should have been three different planes but turned into a Swiss army knife by internal DoD and Congressional politics. Money is handed out evenly to each military Service whether they need it or not. The Air Force hates drones, even though they are in high demand in operations, because Air Force leadership is full of fighter pilots. And so on.