The United States spends money (by way of issuing government bonds) for American companies to produce military equipment, the product of which is essentially unproductive, and the military value of which is immediately lost by way of transfer to Ukraine.

Are some jobs created by means of the government spending money? Of course, that's why government spending is included as part of GDP. On the other hand, there's an opportunity cost to reallocating cash (obtained from the private market by way of government issued treasuries) towards military spending, it means less overall spending in every other area of the economy. Because the military is a carrying cost, and not a net economic producer, the average American is likely to be left worse off financially.

If producing non-economic goods was inherently productive, we might as well write a check to shovel manufacturers and produce a trillion dollars in shovels. After all, it's a trillion dollars that will flow to American shovel producers, and in turn flow through the rest of the economy. Or even better, we might as well just print a trillion dollars directly and distribute it to the citizenry. After all, why waste the resources of producing the shovel at all? The reason that doesn't work is because it's inherently unproductive. There's no need for a trillion dollars in shovels, and reallocating resources is very different from creating them.

Could you expand on what you refered to as "some jobs"?

Like how many jobs, ballpark.

You do understand that newly manufactured products are usually not transferred to Ukraine or any other partner? With the exception of certain items of course.
But Patriot batteries are not rolling off assembly lines straight into Kiev. In basic terms old stockpile goes abroad.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Mar 10 2024 06:09pm

Does it matter though? If it’s 10k or 50k it’s still a net negative, because unlike other expenditures they aren’t value adding. It would be a lot different if for example Ukraine was purchasing these goods and you had billions flowing to US companies not from US debt issuance

The issue to me is, it’s not small negligible expenditures but literally course changing expenditures that have a material impact on our inflation and on our future growth because of the debt size it adds. When we spend trillions on entitlements to feed the poor or provide for the disabled, maybe I wish those were a bit less cushy, but at the end of the day, I understand it and it is what it is. But when we spend 10 trillion on foreign wars, accounting for 1/3 of our aggregate debt, the ‘benefit’ in jobs or stockholders getting dividends is negligible to the negative impact it has. Drop in the bucket in benefits while saddling my kids and grandkids with an unsustainable debt burden.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 10 2024 06:23pm

I don't know, it's not relevant. The work is not economically productive, ergo, the marginal product of labor is negative. The more jobs, the worse the financial picture.

Its 4 million jobs.

So, while I agree with alot of what your saying and I definitely don't think the miltary industrial complex is great. I actually think it's a huge wealth redistribution and a self serving slush fund.

Your point that spending on foreign military aid does not benefit any American is false. Entirely false.

If what you mean is spending a billion dollars on renewable energy infrastructure for example, is more beneficial than spending a billion on "defence" then yes I would agree.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Mar 10 2024 06:26pm

4 million.

That's relevant

Of which vast majority would still exist even if we didn’t give away billions in gift packages.

You’re conflating with all those jobs existing and us having to get into foreign wars or give away weapons as having to both be true. We can have vast majority of former without the latter.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 10 2024 06:31pm

Not at all, your strawmming. Again, I might add.

You wrote,
"Very expensive and for very little to no quantifiable benefit to the US"

The majority of pledged foreign military aid is spent within the US defence industry. That industry employs around 4 million people.
Say half of those people are married. Say half of those people have on average 2 children. That's 8 million people right there.

How is that not quantifiable?

So your saying the issue is not with the MID which appeared initially to be your issue. But its with "giving away billions"

Again, you do realise how those billions are spent IN the United States?

And who is paying for all of this? Do you realize that government printing dollars to pay these corporations impacts future growth, inflation? Our debt servicing is already on par with our military spending and growing rapidly. I don’t think you understand what happens next. 4 million jobs is going to be irrelevant when we have to issue more and more debt just to cover just the interest due.

??

This post was edited by ownyaah on Mar 10 2024 06:57pm