Originally Posted by
OCDshaver
I understand what you are saying. And national defense IS necessary. But when I say that it's a lost opportunity, it's simply that it doesn't directly bring us goods and services at better prices. We need it because we have to have a secure nation to enjoy what we have. Bit it's investment in the other areas that make our lives better. Those people that were put back to work would have served us better if they were making clothes, appliances, building factories, working in R&D, etc. it's those efficiencies in the economy that make it possible for average people to sit down to dinner and have what would have been considered an absolute feast by yesterday's standards. It's the reason I'm typing this on an iPad and we're able to communicate in this way. While tanks and ships may be necessary, the best we can hope for is some spin off technology as a byproduct of the defense industry. It's valuable and needed but in a perfect world we would be directing those resources to things that make direct contributions to the quality of our lives. Unfortunately the world is not inherently as peaceful as we would like so we employ people to build stealth bombers. And when we make changes to the number of bombers we make, it has an impact on that group of people. The demand for those products are determined by politics and world events instead of the market.