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Mikey wrote:You're blurring an important line. The influx of money to the gub'mint is NOT luiquid in any important sense from the POV of a capitalist economy. That money means absolutely nothing until it gets into the economy - which is done by creating jobs and creating an environment of consumerism without too much inflation (while encouraging a little inflation.)

The money has to come from somewhere. The main ones I know of are taxes on people, debt from another country (which is financed by their taxpayers), or seling government bonds (which is another form of debt). If the government never gets that money, it is still available for people to buy items. The taxpayers can choose where to spend their money if you drop the taxes. This is another way to create jobs, by letting taxpayers have money to buy items.

Mikey wrote:You can't hire the same amount of people for the CoE as you can for the military at large. IIRC, the CoE didn't have the same public-works mission statement in the 40's and 50's as it does now; be that as it may, it must needs be a minute fraction of the size of the entire military. Further, the CoE requires capital investment which provides zero fiscal return. Sure, they do great things for the country, and provide necessary environmental services; but this discussion is an economic one, and (unless you're talking about generations-removed filter-down returns like beach tourism in the 90's from a beach-reclamation project in the 50's) then the ROI for Corps of Engineers project is practically zero.

That mission statement can be changed fairly quickly. The government's job is to consider the effects on all of its citizens. A project that has a decades-long payback is exactly what the government would be best for funding. Building hydroelectric dams is an economic benefit, both for providing electricity, and for providing drinking water.

Mikey wrote:You are correct in saying that this is the PC, humanitarian, philanthropic, and maybe "right" thing to do... but from a viewpoint of immediate economic impact, it is a loser by a large margin to defibrullating internal, private-sector industry. As far as "wasted effort" from a destroyed piece of materiel, that's nonsensical for the purposes of this discussion. This purview is that of economic impact; that bomber did its job in that particular respect as soon as it was ordered - whether it lasts long enough to even fly is immaterial, as long as it leaves the factory - and gets invoiced.

The bomber is a limited benefit. If the money for the bomber is used instead to build a hydroelectric dam (which requires large amounts of electrical equipment, wiring, etc) then you have more electricity available for industrial projects, or to reduce/prevent brownouts caused by air conditioning in the summer. That is a continuing benefit to the region, but a bomber is not.

As an example, the US Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for 3% of the United States' supply of electricity (from here).

By the logic above, I'd be better off getting rid of the rest of the government budget, and only buying military weaponry from now on. Parks will have to find another source of revenue (charging visitors), Medicare/Medicaid will no longer exist and people will have to rely on people saving enough money for their operations, ditto for Social Security, and spending our debt on more military equipment means that we can threaten any country that doesn't give us more money. This turns us into the schoolyrd bully of Earth.

Mikey wrote:I don't think that this is true. Government organizations, even non-departmental ones, can't by definition be incorporated as mutual companies. In other words, the government can't start a corporation, because a corporation is by definition owned privately, including (in whole or in at least a small part) by non-sitting holders. In addition, Governmental assetts are invariably part of a larger federal budget which can't be removed entirely from that larger picture just because a sale price balances with that particular assett's P&L sheet - this is magnified if you're talking about a mutual sale or PO, to the point at which it is impossible.

The government has a specific amount of money funded to create the facility (such as the munitions factories in WW2). Set up a way to sell the company for that amount, and you can spin them off. The government never loses any money, and it already has the research that went into making the facility. At the very least, you have a cost to build the building, the cost for buying the equipment, the cost for the land, etc. Sell off those items (auction?) and transfer the people to a new job center. Essentially an assets sale. If the purchasing person/company wants to hire the existing employees, they will have to set up separate deals.

Deepcrush wrote:Wrong, very wrong... once you build an civilian aircraft, thats about it. Job done and good day. When you build a combat aircraft you also have to constantly replace spent ammunition but also the aircraft itself as it will wear out far faster due to battle fatigue, thats if it isn't shot down first.

Considering also that in wartime you have to transport not just commercial goods but the materials to carry a war on top of the current commercial goods. You get a rather large boost to your economy as you have to pay people for all that work.

As to building ships, every ship lost means a new ship has to be built. Every successful supply run requires more supplies to fill the ship.

The sunk supplies are a loss. The sunk ship is a loss. If you destroy a city, you have to spend resources afterwards to rebuild the city, then more resources to improve it. These resources could have been used instead to build a new city. The supplies could have been used for disaster relief, instead of feeding fish (after the container degrades). Locomotives that could be used to pull supplies along railways (and the rails themselves) are instead serving as fish hiding spots. While I am sure they are doing a good job in that fashion, it would be cheaper to build actual fish shelters for that purpose instead, meaning you can build more of them.

This starts making as much sense as taking all your money, buying gold powder, and dumping it into the Atlantic ocean. You need more money afterwards to survive, so that means you have to go work harder, or die/get on welfare or other social support network. The money used to buy the gold could have been saved to give yourself a vacation, an emergency fund, or if you are determined to get rid of it, you could have donated the money to a charity where it could be used to help others. By effectively dumping the money into the ocean, you hurt yourself, and did not help anyone else.

It also makes as much sense as claiming that the destruction of the towers on September 11 was a benefit because it stimulated the economy (to repair/replace, assist, etc); so obviously we should knock down more buildings to get a bigger benefit. You can see this doesn't make sense.


If it is a case where the government has excess resources and needs something to do with them, that is known as a good thing. If a government found itself in that situation, I'd like to think it would do the following:
1) pay down its debt until the debt is gone
2) set up an emergency fund (either saving the money, or buying items that will produce long-term income, and can be sold for cash if necessary)
3) lowering taxes on its taxpayers, and/or setting up long-term research projects that will provide a benefit eventually

The first is an obvious item. The second is common sense to set up an emergency fund, either money in the Federal bank, or owning income-bearing properties. The third means there is more cash to go around in its economy (either from lower taxes, or more people with high paychecks being hired), maning more people can buy things, leading to more items made, leading to more jobs. Off-hand, I'd recommend more lower-paying jobs, as trickle-down doesn't.

Sorry kid, its pretty clear this is just over your head. Don't worry about it so much.

Coalition wrote:The money has to come from somewhere. The main ones I know of are taxes on people, debt from another country (which is financed by their taxpayers), or seling government bonds (which is another form of debt). If the government never gets that money, it is still available for people to buy items. The taxpayers can choose where to spend their money if you drop the taxes. This is another way to create jobs, by letting taxpayers have money to buy items.

You're switching tacks faster than a sloop in a hurricane. YOU said something about the influx of money to the government, and then why it shouldn't have been used for production of materiel in wartime/why production of materiel wouldn't help economically. My comment was in response to that. The above is a completely different conversation. If you want to take about completely revamping the way our country works, then fine - but it's got no bearing on a discussion of how wartime was, in the past, a boon to economy.

(BTW - dropping taxes and allowing the money to remain in the private sector sounds like a great idea - but then there is no mechanism for inflation control; no way to implement infrastructure improvements; no social services, disaster relief, FHA, CoE like you mentioned, federal education assistance, NEA, NRC, etc., etc., as nauseam; no way for the government to benefit from inflation (like there is now with T-bills, zero-coupon bonds, etc.; and in the final analysis, it's a self-defeating system. When there is that much more money available to the consumer, inflation will catch up... when that happens, savings outpace spending (historical fact)... and less money goes into the economy.)

Coalition wrote:That mission statement can be changed fairly quickly. The government's job is to consider the effects on all of its citizens. A project that has a decades-long payback is exactly what the government would be best for funding. Building hydroelectric dams is an economic benefit, both for providing electricity, and for providing drinking water.

Completely tangential. It doesn't matter how the CoE's mission can be changed - what matters is what it was in the 40's and 50's. You said that in that time we could have been better served funding them than the military at large, and the fact is that funding them further at that point in time would have had zero economic impact.

As far as your dam example: you can't catch lightning twice. There is a finite maximum on the number of them one can build, and they will never have the stimulus effect on the economy like wartime materiel production had at the time. Yes, I think hydroelectric dams are better in the long run for the country than bombers, for many reasons; but none of those reasons are what we are discussing.

Coalition wrote:The bomber is a limited benefit. If the money for the bomber is used instead to build a hydroelectric dam (which requires large amounts of electrical equipment, wiring, etc) then you have more electricity available for industrial projects, or to reduce/prevent brownouts caused by air conditioning in the summer. That is a continuing benefit to the region, but a bomber is not.

As an example, the US Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for 3% of the United States' supply of electricity (from here).

See above. Yes, the dam will provide electricity, a reservoir, a tourist stop, and may very well destroy a current ecosystem; but it will not have the same stimulatory effect on economy as private-sector industry will on a wartime-production footing. It can't, simply because the public-works projects you mention: a) take a great amount of time tto realize a benefit, and b) do not provide a fiscally-realizable ROI - that is, you can't build a dam, wait a year, and pop the results into a P&L. It is impossible.

Coalition wrote:The government has a specific amount of money funded to create the facility (such as the munitions factories in WW2). Set up a way to sell the company for that amount, and you can spin them off. The government never loses any money, and it already has the research that went into making the facility. At the very least, you have a cost to build the building, the cost for buying the equipment, the cost for the land, etc. Sell off those items (auction?) and transfer the people to a new job center. Essentially an assets sale. If the purchasing person/company wants to hire the existing employees, they will have to set up separate deals.

The government didn't create the munitions facotries in WWII!!! You may want to consider moving, because I think you never got the memo that the U.S.A. is a capitalist economy. I hate to be the one to tell you, but there it is. The government, rather, helped all that private industry by simply being a dedicated, needy, and well-funded customer.

And I will repeat, since you didn't get it last time: the government can't just make an IPO and sell off government-held corporate assets. A federal government cannot operate by investing money in founding a company, then truning around and selling it... but waiting for the margins to clear to recoup a fraction of the sale price, then waiting for the SPDR's and other index funds to wash out for another fraction, and then have the rest be just paper transfers between individuals and (wait for it) NOT RETURN ANYTHING LIQUID TO THE SELLER (i.e., the gub'mint which is first out all the start-up money and now doesn't get it back by selling.) Corporation means a mutual company; and if you're talking about non-incorporated assets, then where the hell are you going to find enough buyers who can pay cash for a company, and will agree to always buy based on an inflated version of the start-up money rather than market conditions?

Coalition wrote:Each of those bridges required a different research and design system. That is multiple personnel, each requiring high paychecks, and a dedicated work force. Once that work force is gathered, it can be moved to new locations.

We're not talking multiple as in dozens when it comes to designing and aircraft like these. We're talking multiple as in hundreds directly and thousands indirectly. The design workforce on a new military system is larger than a bridge's design workforce by an order of magnitude, two orders of magnitude if you want to include all the people required for all the sub-component design as well. The bridges are impressive but the technical effort to get one built pales in comparison to the technical effort required to produce a new major piece of military hardware.

If you reach the end of the road where there is nothing else to upgrade, you have gotten thousands of people with engineering degrees graduated, and hundreds of thousands of people who have a 4-yr long resume where they showed they were reliable and hard-working. There will always be a need for a highly trained and motivated workforce, and projects that can be completed. Better rail transport, maybe a high-speed cross-country setup so you don't have to worry about airlines, or getting stuck in traffic with semis (they'd still be useful, to provide overnight or in-cuty delivery), but shipping would be cheaper by rail. This would need tunnels for higher speed, meaning lots of explosives, trained personnel (and training the personnel from the available workforce).

Yes, but the bulk of the people you've employed in the course of doing all this are not highly skilled or highly trained. The bulk of the people you're employing aren't going to be moving on to other projects. Why? They're replaceable. Why would you pay a lot of money to move around a guy who's only job is holding up a "Slow" sign, or floating concrete, or any one of those types of jobs? You don't. When your project is finished and you move on when you get to the next one you hire more local guys to fill out the bulk of your workforce.

There's nothing wrong with building up infrastructure. I'm all for it in fact. However from an economic standpoint it's makework at best. You're not really improving the economy you're just giving people something to do.

If you want high-paying jobs that don't require the military, try NASA, or long-term research projects (fusion power, or a government version of the IBM Research division). Research for the military is useful because it can have alternate applications (the internet). The uses for a tank are few, compared to the same amount of money available to consumers for buying what they want.

And you're just wrong. Research is all well and good, but it's a drop in the bucket on the scale of something like the US economy. You can't bulk up research or NASA and have the impact on the economy that the military has because they literally cannot spend that kind of money. In NASA's case if they were given everything they want on their wish list, ALL of it, the US military would still spend more per year fighting corrosion. They would literally have no idea what to spend that kind of money on. It's a very good idea to do this kind of research, fund NASA, etc. but on the scale of the US economy they are completely and utterly insignificant.

Lower-paying transient jobs are another way to describe the military. They move from location to location, and the enlisted personnel are paid ~23k (E-3 at 3 years). This is using the same people and money to accomplish tasks that will steadily benefit the country.

Except that the military isn't going anywhere. They're not transient. Those people in the military often learn trades and marketable job skills for after their enlistment is up or at the very least can now get a college education. There is an incredible amount of difference between a guy who spent three years shoveling concrete while a bridge was built an a guy who did a stint in the military and learned how to be a mechanic, or repair telecomm systems, or because it could go to college. The guy who shoveled concrete can... go find another job shoveling concrete or some other unskilled manual labor.

The aircraft is already bought (by the government). Private sectors would be able to purchase usage on it, similar to current air freight companies. The aircraft existing means you get smaller companies that can spring up to provide repair and maintenance services to the aircraft, airport manufacturing to provide access, etc. The government is effectively creating markets in an area, rather than worrying about profit and loss. A similar example would be the start of the internet, compared to today. The original internet setup was government sponsored, and the civilian network added on to it later.

Do you have any idea what you just did to the private sector? You just nationalized aircraft production. The fact that the government doesn't have to worry about profit and loss just drove Boeing and everyone else out of business. They have to make a profit. The government doesn't want to have airplanes sitting around unused, so they drop the lease price to get them moving. The problem? Why buy a brand new aircraft from Boeing when you can just lease a government made one? The government doesn't have to care about profits, so they can just keep dropping the lease price as far as it takes to move the aircraft where as Boeing has to make a profit at some point. The government will always be able to undercut them. So now that you've nationalized the aircraft industry what happens?

Well being the government they'll never charge what the aircraft are actually worth. People will lobby for lowcost airfare, the government will be too chickenshit to jack up prices, so in the long run they will just lose money on their aircraft. So now, rather than aircraft manufacturing being a profitable private business its a government run money sink. Instead of making money the country is now losing money.

Don't think it'll go that way? Take a look at pretty much any government run disaster insurace. South Florida with Hurricane, Mid-West flood, all of them are running in the red because they will not raise premiums to the point where they can actually pay for their claims. So what happens when a disaster hits? What the government always does, borrow money. Same thing will happen whereever the government takes over because they don't have to concern themselves with profits and they can whore the system out for more votes.

If the government never buys the bomber, that can also lead to lower/no debt, building up a surplus, or even lowering taxes, allowing consumers more money to buy civilian goods with. The money to buy the bomber came from somewhere. The main sources that I know of are debt to another country (which is taxes on their people), taxes on your people, or selling government bonds (which are another form of debt for the government to deal with).

Except that the government is going to buy the bomber. The military isn't a luxury or something that's nice to have. It's a necessity. How much they buy might be debatable but not that they are going to buy things. Lots of expensive things. Things that have to be maintained, repaired, and sometimes replaced. The military is a consumer, the biggest single consumer in the US economy. That means that the fastest way to get money into the economy is for the military to buy more stuff. In fact it's the perfect consumer because it buys goods that by and large most people will never buy (no matter how much I might want my own M1 Abrams the bastards will never let me sign a lease) meaning it can buy as much as it wants without effecting civilian markets too much. It also buys almost exclusively products with shelf lives of twenty years or less before replacement or upgrade. All this means that its always there, buying, and the government can buy as much as they want all WITHOUT fucking up the market too much. The price of milk or a Ford, or a Dell isn't going to go crazy because the military just dropped an order for 1,000 new tanks or 10 bombers so you can pump money into the economy without creating bubbles or troughs or unrealistic expectations in the market.

And it works, take a look at America post WWII. Germany pre WWII. The America in the late 1980s. All periods of tremendous economic growth spurred on by massive military spending. On the other hand you've got the Great Depression and the New Deal. They did exactly what you are suggesting. Big investment in infrastructure and... nothing. The economy flattened out at best. No explosive growth, no huge recovery. They employed people but it did jack for the economy as a whole. It was make work. You kept people busy but the economy didn't do anything.

We're not discussing whether or not it's a good idea. Infrastructure investment, research, NASA, all these are great goals and things we should be spending money on. What we're talking about is what moves the economy, stimulates it. Give that question to a historian and they'll tell you its military spending that has the fastest biggest impact on the economy and public works simply don't. As a economist which is going to move the economy more building bridges or building bombers. Bombers will get the unanimous nod.

Tyyr wrote:(no matter how much I might want my own M1 Abrams the bastards will never let me sign a lease)

Had the same problem, I see.

Bastards.

Tsukiyumi wrote:

Tyyr wrote:(no matter how much I might want my own M1 Abrams the bastards will never let me sign a lease)

Had the same problem, I see.

Bastards.

Somebody told me the UK military's version of the MBT can actually resist HEAT rounds, because of super-hot electric current going through two layers of heave armor.

I might go for that instead of the Abrams.

How the hell did we afford that

Electric reactive armor? Last I heard that was still in development with two big problems, efficient enough capacitors and a way for the tank to charge it itself. I am pretty sure it's not operational.

Tyyr wrote:Electric reactive armor? Last I heard that was still in development with two big problems, efficient enough capacitors and a way for the tank to charge it itself. I am pretty sure it's not operational.

I'm not sure how they do it, but the Challenger definitely has better all-round protection than the Abrams - it doesn't have the same vulnerability to short-range RPG attacks into the side or rear.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Tyyr wrote:Electric reactive armor? Last I heard that was still in development with two big problems, efficient enough capacitors and a way for the tank to charge it itself. I am pretty sure it's not operational.

I'm not sure how they do it, but the Challenger definitely has better all-round protection than the Abrams - it doesn't have the same vulnerability to short-range RPG attacks into the side or rear.

Wait, an RPG can destroy/seriously damage a Main Battle Tank? I though those things could handle a lot of punishment. TvTropes even say that a Neutron Bomb's purpose is to be an anti-tank tactical bomb, since even a nuke can't destroy a tank after a ridiculously short distance.

(I have a hard time believing it.. If that's true, a MBT is just incredibly, scarily strong)

SolkaTruesilver wrote:Wait, an RPG can destroy/seriously damage a Main Battle Tank?

Yep. The side and rear armour is a lot weaker than the frontal armour, so it can be breached from close enough range. It will then fill the inside of the tank with shrapnel and wreck the electronics and crew.

TvTropes even say that a Neutron Bomb's purpose is to be an anti-tank tactical bomb, since even a nuke can't destroy a tank after a ridiculously short distance.

Not surprising - the biggest threat a nuke would pose at any decent distance would be if it dropped a building on the vehicle, as the shockwave would simply blow over it. An MBT is designed to have a very low profile and that, combined with the fact that they weigh 60-70 tons, makes it unlikely that they'd be tipped over at any distance.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Tyyr wrote:Electric reactive armor? Last I heard that was still in development with two big problems, efficient enough capacitors and a way for the tank to charge it itself. I am pretty sure it's not operational.

I'm not sure how they do it, but the Challenger definitely has better all-round protection than the Abrams - it doesn't have the same vulnerability to short-range RPG attacks into the side or rear.

The Challenger is definitely the best-protected MBT around (though not necessarily affording the best crew protection, but that's a different story,) but I don't believe that's due to any new wiz tech. Probably due to a better distribution than the M1 series and greater use of reactive tiling.

Have to be honest, I've never seen or even heard of an M1A1 Abrams being knocked out by RPGs. Front, side, rear or anywhere for that matter.

That's probably because the only RPGs they've been going up against for the last couple of decades are thirty year old Soviet exports. I'd wager that a well-placed modern RPG could punch through a weak point.

Regarding the Challenger and the M1A1, I've heard that the reason for the Challenger's superior protection to infantry-portable arms is due to different design philosophies. The M1A1 was designed with the aim of combating Soviet tanks, while the Challenger (and other European tank designs) are designed around urban warfare. Is there any truth to that?