*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[OngBonga]

You're making it more complicated than it is. A million dollars worth of bombs that are dropped on some foreign countries is not the same as a million dollars worth of road improvements or schools or tech investment. There's no return on the bombs, they don't make your country richer. There's return on the other investments.

USA already has adequate roads and world class schools, they already lead the world when it comes to innovation.

I don't think I'm making it complicated enough, Geopolitics is complex as fuck. What I can say with reasonable confidence is that those in power in the USA, and I'm not talking about presidents, are not stupid. They are intelligent sociopaths or maybe even psychopaths that understand the complexities a great deal better than I do. With that said, why do they prefer to invest in war than roads and tech? Corruption and personal greed? Maybe. Or economic self preservation? Also maybe. What I do know is that lots of countries have large reserves of dollars, which means that if the dollar crashes, so do lots of economies around the world. That's no accident. USA have created this situation to ensure that any attack on the dollar is mutually disadvantageous.

I'm not an expert either but I know enough about history that countries' relative power is not a static thing. I think that's pretty obvious. Its also a historical pattern that the most powerful country overspends and overextends itself militarily until it's no longer the most powerful country. That's going to happen to the US eventually (at least the way it's going now). And the most likely country that's on a trajectory to replace it at the top is China.

I'm probably in agreement with most of this. I just don't see China replacing them, not the way they're going. Their ambitions seem very short term. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, maybe these ghost cities are a well considered plan for the future, but it seems to me that it's just creating growth for the sake of it.

[Poopadoop]

With that said, why do they prefer to invest in war than roads and tech? Corruption and personal greed? Maybe. Or economic self preservation? Also maybe.

I think it's pretty common knowledge that contractors and interest groups who make profits selling arms to the government are pulling a lot of the strings here. It's not because the US needs to overspend on military to protect itself. There's no country even within spitting distance of being able to hurt America. What, is Canada going to invade Montana?

Eisenhower warned about the growing military-industrial complex and how it was becoming too influential back in 1960. That was 60 years ago. All you have to do is look at a graph showing how the US spends more on military than the next ten biggest spenders combined to get an idea of how out of control it's gotten.

What I do know is that lots of countries have large reserves of dollars, which means that if the dollar crashes, so do lots of economies around the world. That's no accident. USA have created this situation to ensure that any attack on the dollar is mutually disadvantageous.

Not sure what this has to do with the conversation. No country is anywhere near capable of sinking the dollar, and military spending is not what's keeping it up.

I'm probably in agreement with most of this. I just don't see China replacing them, not the way they're going. Their ambitions seem very short term. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, maybe these ghost cities are a well considered plan for the future, but it seems to me that it's just creating growth for the sake of it.

I've read historians on this topic. According to them, military power comes from economic power, not the other way around. This year China will overtake the US in GDP. By 2030 India will overtake them too. That's doesn't mean they'll automatically be able to kick the US' ass in a war, but it does mean they'll be getting relatively more powerful as the decades go on.

Historically, there is a pattern of being the strongest country on the planet and the response to the inevitability of losing that status (someday) is to spend more and more on military to try to protect that status with the effect being that the status gets lost faster than it naturally would.

The UK, France, and Spain have all been in the US' position in the last few centuries. They've all overspent and overextended themselves militarily on wars in far off places they didn't need to be involved in, and this hastened their losing their status as superpowers (so the argument goes). For the US, this problem is multiplied by the corruption that leads it to not just overspend, but overspend to an absurd degree.