America spends so much money on their military, they should put them to good use. Invade all the countries, take their money, then NASA could be funded for like a jillion years.

I defer to the more economic-minded types with this sincere question...

What would happen if the military significantly downsized? Seems like an awful lot of service men and women, and American military suppliers would be out of work, which feels like it would have some pretty dramatic effects on the US across the board?

Could you pull back militarily without causing some unintended consequence like ...idk... a depression OS?

use poors as rocket fuel. it's in the bibel

We're (USA#1) is still not at full capacity from 2008. Since the FED still has interest rates very low they would have a hard (impossible) time offsetting the reduction in GDP that would result from in a reduction in government fiscal expenditures like the military. So, yes now is not a good time for reduction in military spending. A couple caveats:

a) If fiscal expenditures in the military were to be transitioned to expenditures in another area seamlessly; then reduction in military expenditures would not cause reduction in net output. This would of course be a practical impossibility due to labor market rigidity.

b) A good time to reduce military spending would be on or near the peak of expansionary period. Of course this is also the time when it would be good to reduce national debt/deficit which also seems incredibly unlikely to happen for political reasons.

ETA: Suppliers might be OK in the near term because of foreign sales & long term contracts with DoD. The near term danger for suppliers (and the US Economy in general) I would suspect is Republican intransigence wrt the debt ceiling.

wat

Intransigence is a sexy word

Taking away their water would be good enough.

Hey, that's what we did in Michigan!

STOP STEALING OUR IDEAS

Good ideas though

+1


Thanks for the answer aiott, I promise to devote a portion of every day to understanding what you said and will get back to you in the distant future.

Current question that probably demonstrate my dums.

Re: a)

In the example of less military for moar nasa, net output will still yield a pretty dramatic price tag for the economy, right? Employing Uber-educated nerd types and their toys at very high cost vs. Military people and the people who supply their basic needs...seems like trickle down v. up, iyam, imo?

How do you think that would really play out?

In case it was not yet clear:
Today is Tuesday
Happy birthday, wifey.


Bump

It's not my birthday, and I sure as **** am not your wife.

The main problem with substituting spending on the military with spending on NASA is that the uber educated NASAers are likely to currently have more options for employment in the absence of NASA than military personnel are in the absence of the military. The difference in employment and the relative outputs from those two scenarios are what I was talking about.

What you're hinting at in your question however, I think, is the relative propensity to consume. I think you're saying that if the US is spending $X on both the military and NASA that nerds @ NASA will only spend $X(.85) while military families will spend $X(.95) or something like that. I have no idea if that's true or not. I graduated with some people who went on to work for NASA - being recently graduated these people spent all or nearly all of their income on stuff like household formation. Initial guess is that I think it would be close to a wash and in any regard a minor effect relative to the employment effect.

^

going to see William Shatner tonight in a stage show. not sure how good it's going to be...

in before luke is drunk and has to bump the day drinking thread

Gross

Bartolo!!!

Pololitarding it up in here! Sure I'll give it a go.

The benefit you could have from switching the objective of the military to "protecting one nation" to "ensuring man kinds existence past earth d-day" which is primarily nasa's mission as far as I'm concerned. I mean learning to travel millennia on a space ship and have generations of humans capable of reproducing in space is obv our God given purpose. Why stop at destroying a planet when you could destroy while universeye. Then we can whistle for a cab and when it comes near, there's a pair of die on his mirror...

Okay back to true detective.

Mets need to get their poop in a damned group

Bro won Royals tics for tomorrow in a raffle at his new jorb.

Ill be in the hizouse tomorrow

RIP Royals

reported

Sweet!

http://mashable.com/2015/10/13/emili.../#Yr1zV0h3qGqH

That's a stretch

twss