Thursday, October 17, 2013

Neocon Brags That The U.S. Is A Well-Armed Deadbeat

By, Chris Rossini

You're about to see what a case of debt addiction mixed with thuggish bravado looks like.

Here's how neocon Max Boot assesses the creditor/debtor relationship between China and the U.S.:
Thankfully the U.S. armed forces are still strong enough—for the time being anyway—to prevent the Chinese military from showing up on our shores to collect the trillions we owe them.
Before you get worried...China is not "showing up on our shores," nor do I believe they'll show up after the U.S. can no longer avoid officially defaulting.

But looking beyond the obvious, how about the pomposity displayed by Boot?

In essence, he's saying 'Lend us your money, but don't you dare think about collecting.' It's ironic that with all the anti-bullying propaganda that the government spews, Boot is doing nothing but describing the biggest bully of them all: the deadbeat government that has a "strong enough" military to keep the zombie scenario alive.

Boot keeps going:
But for how much longer? Given the increases in Chinese military spending and our own across-the-board cuts as a result of the mindless sequestration process, the trends are not favorable when it comes to the shifting balance of power in the Pacific.
Ok...Here is a chart that shows U.S. military spending versus the next 10 biggest spenders combined:


Kinda makes Max Boot's statement look foolish, doesn't it?

Neocons have no shame.

I don't think we have to worry about China invading and plundering our retail stores and paper-pushing "service" industries. The bigger (and much more realistic) fear is that the U.S. government continues to whoosh us even further down the slopes of crap mountain.


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8 comments:

  1. What about conquest by simply coming over here with dollars and buying stuff up? Like what's left of our productive private sector corporations?

    A couple of trillion can buy quite a bit. They could buy up stuff here and win a land war without firing a shot.

    lol

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  2. Why would the Chinese military need to invade the US? All that China has to do, and is doing, is quietly by up real US assets (farmland, companies, natural resources, etc.). Then when there economy is no long wholly dependent on the US consumer, complete the dumping of US treasuries (they're already unloading them).
    The US could be destroyed within a day and without firing a single shot. This government has doled out more than enough rope to hang itself. Not a bad deal, destroy an empire at the cost of roughly $1T US. Cheaper than Iraq or Afghanistan.

    Just check out this video for one of many possible endgames: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrNl1Lkho0c&list=PL1821F6DCE322C0DF

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  3. Remember that ICBM that was fired from a submarine just off the coast of CA a few years ago (Nov 2010). Think it might have been the Chinese that did that? I wonder if the message was, "I think you'd better pay attention to what we recommend." Yeah, we might spend more than they do, but perhaps they delivered an important message.

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  4. Max makes the mistake of comparing the military now (such as it is) to one at some point in the future and assumes there will always be inner city kids and farm boys interested in defending DC's fat pasty arse.

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  5. I wonder if that graph of military expenditures takes into account purchasing power parity.

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    1. That's a really good question. I had someone bring that up to me in a discussion a few months ago, claiming the Chinese could get much more "bang for the buck/Yuan/Renminbi" for their military expenditure.

      It's an interesting claim, I never really looked into it beyond the discussion because it's more of a statist concern...but it may be legitimate argument among statists none the less.

      Hard to tell.

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  6. I think in some sense, the US Gov't is the world's officially sanctioned police force. Other governments pay the US Gov't (through direct loans, bond-buying, accepting FRNs as the reserve currency, importing US inflation, etc.) to police the world. They finance the US Govt's military indirectly so that they don't need to maintain one. Their populations are subdued by our military. Their enemies are brought to bare. It's a symbiotic relationship.

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  7. I'm opposed to military spending but I would like to someday see a chart that normalizes for wages of soldiers. I doubt a Chinese soldier is paid anywhere near what a US soldier is paid. If we take those differences out, how much of a difference is there?

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