Maybe some things (batteries I’m sure is a good example) are like this, Timex, but not everything isn’t going to be “corrupted” by where the funding is coming from.
I did research under a DARPA grant (which switched to an ARDA/DTO grant midstream). The grad students take directions from the professors, who are working with somebody a little higher up (either a well-known professor or someone at some organization, for us it was someone at NIST of all places, but that was just where he got a job anyways). Those boss people every year or so get to go justify their funding to a group/person from the funding agency (DARPA) and you better believe they are talking military applications. Eventually it all filters down, and every decision is made with the thought in the back of your head that it needs to apply to whatever use the brass are discussing. We literally had discussions of “what military applications does this fit?” at the grad student level on a regular basis.
A good professor or liaison can abstract this so that you aren’t directly thinking about it this way, but someone up the chain is. It’s simple cause and effect. They aren’t funding stuff that doesn’t help soldiers or the mission in some way. Defense spending != general research spending.
We had a grad student working on a special project quit when he learned what it was being used for, by the by. There are also political reasons why it’s different too. It’s a fun story about a gnarly thing but I’m pretty sure I can’t talk about it, lol.
I’ve read .85 is the multiplier, but there’s broad disagreement among economists. CBO has a paper on multipliers but they don’t segregate military spending:
Before we pile on @Timex too badly, we should remember that without defense spending we wouldn’t be able to pile on because this medium of communication would not exist. =)
That said, more money is the last thing we need in defense right now. The solution to increased funding for defense is the same as it is for nearly every other problem plaguing Washington right now…REFORM. Reform is very unpopular though, especially in an area like defense spending where fortunes are made daily on the waste that exists. We’ve all read articles about $5000 toilets and $200 hammers. We’ve all seen the news stories about contracts to build 1000 tanks/planes/vehicles when only 500 were needed, leaving the rest to sit unused in depots until they go obsolete and we pay all over again to retro-fit or scrap them. This sort of thing is rampant in the defense budget, and has been for decades. Congress should pass a resolution that calls for the Defense Department to show $500 million in waste elimination for every $1 billion in additional funding it requests. It will never happen.
Far too much of government budgeting is reactionary. Need $1 billion for X, cut $500 million from Y & Z (where Y & Z are usually public benefiting programs like Education or Social Services). What America really needs is oversight, control and reform. Ban all political lobbyists from Washington altogether. Expel members of senate committees who have taken campaign contributions from companies that directly benefit from said committees’ decisions. Stop wasting so much money and govern smarter, not bigger.
Ironically, that is fiscal conservatism, a historical mainstay of the Republican Party. Guess they sold out the party values along with their souls.
Ya, so based on this, the DoD spending fits into the highest multiplier there is, in that it’s a purchase of goods and services, and this is in line with everything I’ve ever read on the subject. Buying goods and services is better than just giving money to individuals.[quote=“arrendek, post:2534, topic:126885”]
Eventually it all filters down, and every decision is made with the thought in the back of your head that it needs to apply to whatever use the brass are discussing. We literally had discussions of “what military applications does this fit?” at the grad student level on a regular basis.
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But again, those military applications are super generic when talking about the research conducted by the specific research arms of the military.
I’m talking about the low TRL’s, where they’re basically doing a lot of science stuff. I’ve worked on a ton of it over the years. It’s science, and very early technology development, which inherently means that it’s broadly applicable stuff.
Certainly from a justification perspective, it tends to address specific issues that the military has… but those issues are often issues that everyone has. Hell, even if you look at something with super specific military applications like GPS… turns out, that was a huge boon to EVERYONE. Because while the military needs to be able to know where they are, so does everyone else. And development of that technology created whole industries of commercial goods and services.
And the thing is, it’s also a great example of stuff that government funded research is good for… stuff that’s kind of too weird or too far from current tech to get private industry to invest. Private industry wasn’t gonna develop GPS satellites and then shoot them into space. But once the government did it, private industry was then able to carry it forward and do all kinds of awesome stuff.
Also, bear in mind that what I’mt talking about (although not the GPS thing) is focused on the SBIR program specifically, which specifically does NOT feed money to big DoD contractors. It’s solely funding small businesses doing innovative research, and it’s one of the best programs in government, in my opinion.
Odds are we wont spend it on any of that though. We’ll buy more tanks that the Army doesn’t need or want.
One would think if he’s going this route just dumping it all into the VA and Veteran care would be the way to go. $54 billion could make a massive difference there, but it wont happen without something like privitization because it’s more about making people money than anything.
But not always and there are a lot of research topics the military will never be interested in as well.
Military research != general research is my only point. It really sounds like you’re saying they’re the same. They aren’t always, though they can be sometimes. If I pegged your argument wrong then I apologize.
If your point is that some of this increased spending will be on research that will benefit people, then yes, probably. I would agree. But if your argument is that it’s the same as just spending it on research more broadly, then no, I think you’re easily disproven.
DoD spending COULD be done well, and in the past, some portion of it has been really cool (autonomous cars, internet, etc.).
But they’ll probably end up spending it all on some piece of crap that the military doesn’t even want, just because some politically connected guy owns stock in a company that makes it.
Well, I think maybe there’s a bigger overlap than you’re giving them credit for, but certainly there are sections of pure scientific research which aren’t of particular interest to the DoD. Things like astrophysics, I guess. But hell, even in terms of stuff that would normally be considered “hippy-esque”, like environmental research? The DoD does that stuff too, through orgs like SERDP which works in conjunction with the DoE and EPA. Trump will probably kill that too, but it at least serves as an example of the kind of thing that is technically “DoD funding” but doesn’t fit under the umbrella of stuff folks would normally expect.
The flip side to this is that such research wouldn’t NEED to be conducted by the DoD… If that money was put out through other government orgs, then the researchers would just work through those orgs.
I’ve heard the claim that in terms of preventing terrorism, a dollar towards foreign aid does a whole lot more than a dollar towards the military. Both because seeing Americans helping out in other countries does wonders for how we are viewed around the world, and the practical fact that other countries being stable and not descending in chaos and misery makes for less terrorism, refugees, etc.
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that a ton of foreign aid is delivered by… the US military.
When you think about it, it makes sense. The US military is highly trained at delivering materials and assistance to remote locations. An aircraft carrier can be anywhere in the world quickly, and deliver, literally, a city’s worth of food, medical supplies, whatever you could need. And thousands of personnel trained to get it to where it needs to be.
The Tsunami relief in 2004 is a good example of the kind of capabilities that the US Navy can bring to the table, which really no one else can.
Things like hospital ships that can support 1000 patient beds, are just an amazing thing which are infeasible to setup in some of these places quickly.
While I agree DoD spending can be used to fund something other than shiny new guns… this is Trump. He’s going to want shiny new guns. And if you cut from programs that keep our rivers from catching on fire, then it won’t matter if we have a plane that takes us from A to B in half the time it takes now… we’ll all be dead from lack of clean water to drink.
I know we need to compromise more in this country, so how about we agree on the purchase of new missile launchers as long as there’s a clause that we get to strap Donald to the inaugural ICBM and launch him into orbit?
The terrible thing about this isn’t that government spending on defense is an inefficient way to boost the GDP (it is)-- it’s that there’s no reason for it.
Trump had a typically thoughtless campaign promise to increase defense spending, and picked an arbitrary target amount to “fulfill” the promise.
While this is true, you need to bear in mind that the US does more than those other countries.
Specifically, we use our military to project power globally. No other country does that. And that is why we spend so much more.
If you were to reduce spending to levels similar to other nations, that would mean that you would be constrained to only projecting power into the area immediately around the US.
Which would mean most of the world would descend into chaos.
This is not to defend Trump’s plan to increase attending, just pointing out that the relative expenditures often miss this really key aspect of our military’s mission.
Honestly, we’d be able to get a lot more out of our military spending just by allowing the military to better control what they spend their existing funding on. As it is, they are forced by Congress to spend it on stuff they do not want.
