Defense
I totaled up the last 16 years Defense Budget the total came to “$9,580,000,000,000.00”. That’s 9 as in Trillion so what does that tell me? It’s obvious you can not buy a winning military. If you could the Middle East would be as safe as your grandmother's living room.
What does it tell you about the politics in America? First in the nineties the Republicans bought a good economy by reducing the Military Budget to about “$350,000,000,000.00” 350 billion a year which is about one half of the average now. The Military Budget was much lower than in the 90’s than in the 80’s. That gave the opportunity to have a booming economy in the 90’s. Why would they do that? In my opinion it was to buy the opportunity to change a the laws like Glass Steagall, trade as in NAFTA, in general the deregulation of everything you can think of. What ever extra money working people benefited by this was put in their 401K for retirement. They put it away in the nineties, and they just took away when Bush was President with recessions that followed.
The second thing that it tells me is that the politician learn the real power of money in politics. So now the only one they want to satisfy is the guy with billions in his pocket. We know that they must have this planned this capitalistic fiasco. The second fiasco was 2007; but that’s a story for a different day.
Third the real power in the military lies in the reason you are fighting. The bigger the serious threat the better you fight, and the more ready you become. As far as military readiness everyone in the country should take part in the military. If you are 18 you go in the army for two years men and woman. If you do that more people will have an understanding of what’s at stake here, and the very best readiness possible. This will lead to a more understanding of what we should be spending our money on, and hopefully better control of the military budget. It also give a two year break in expansion of workforce. That would help with the unemployment problem.