How to curb their enthusiasm for Forever Wars and other misadventures...

[Clark Griswold]

Had an idea and looking for discussion on it. 

So a draft of the "best and brightest" is a no go and would never return to the USA unless the barbarians were at the gates, even then I think many would shirk it so if not their kids then their money... instead of a draft used to pull all of the socio-economic strata of America together to cause the connected, priviledged, wealthy and powerful to be cautious on the use of military forces (really conventional boots on mainly what I'm saying but applicable to other uses of Military Force to some degree) why not by law state all military operations outside of the CONUS (routine and contingency) be assed on personal income taxes as a fee based on whichever highest marginal tax rate you paid or ideally applied to passive income taxation?

Funds collected in arrears but would pay for what we do and not pass on to generations who had no say in whether a 20+ year military operation on the other side of the planet was a good idea or not.

All military operations except for training are paid for and not put on the National Credit Card with the Bank of China / KSA / etc... and the financial costs are made apparent to all every year.  

Thoughts?

[jazzdude]

If a military operation is vital to our national interests, then it should be paid for.

Actually, scratch that. Any thing our nation wants to do should have a plan to fund the initiative

[AirGuardianC141747]

Passing a National Debt of of $27 Trillion now should curb some enthusiasm (doesn’t seem so does it) and a more realistic system of checks and balances reviewing the validity of National Interests internally and externally has been needed for decades.

5,600 page Relief Package makes me wonder how many copies were printed. Some sarcasm there, but 5,600 pages...really...

Can’t pay for everything or everyone with nothing. We are already on the losing side of this equation and as said before - Your grandkids kids will still be paying for this debacle of lack of oversight, common sense and National Treachery. 

[AirGuardianC141747]

Apologies Clark. It’s definitely a good idea to weigh in future ops/costs and how it will affect future generations. We are well beyond any recovery anytime soon or possibly a point of no return. Only time will tell.

[Clark Griswold]

1 hour ago, AirGuardianC141747 said:

Apologies Clark. It’s definitely a good idea to weigh in future ops/costs and how it will affect future generations. We are well beyond any recovery anytime soon or possibly a point of no return. Only time will tell.

No offense taken and I agree we are probably past V1 in terms of a reckoning with our national debt, likely the printing presses will be running overtime and I don't doubt "they" will inflate the dollar to mitigate the problem anyway...

In reference to the COVID / Pork Relief package of 6 hours to pass or we crash, this government by hostage taking can not last.

[Homestar]

I like the idea of funding the overseas contingency fund with income taxes. It would never pass our weak-ass Congress. 
 

I don’t study this stuff anymore to be anything close to an expert, but modern monetary theory believes that a country cannot default on debt held in its own national currency. As long as inflation is under control you can print as much money as you need. When inflation creeps up you raise taxes to restrict the money supply. It will be interesting to see if that’s true in the coming decades. 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Homestar
Autocorrect shenanigans

[nsplayr]

1 hour ago, Homestar said:

I like the idea of funding the overseas contingency fund with income taxes. It would never pass our weak-ass Congress.

I mean, we do this now, there's just not a direct pay-for. Very few programs have that. And at the end of the day money is fungible - if you have a dollar in the bank and you spend a dollar it doesn't particularly matter where that dollar came from or what you had planned on using it for, it'll spend either way.

I would rather see universal national service (mil + civ options) for all young people.

Re: "excessive adventures," in theory congress should be more responsible and take back warmaking powers from the executive, but it's very hard to get a group of 538 people to be collectively responsible when you can just shirk and let POTUS either sink or swim with the decisions.

IMHO if we want to remain a global superpower some level of adventurism and/or significant financial and mil power projection is going to be required, so let's just try to do it the best way we can. Take a look at the UK; TL;DR they for various reasons stopped spending blood and treasure in maintaining a far-flung empire and now no one really gives a shit what they think. Not convinced it's a worse deal for the average Brit, just a different experience than being the hegemon and "indispensable nation."

A 20+ year land war in Asia...I heard somewhere that was foolish...

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by nsplayr

[FLEA]

3 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I mean, we do this now, there's just not a direct pay-for. Very few programs have that. And at the end of the day money is fungible - if you have a dollar in the bank and you spend a dollar it doesn't particularly matter where that dollar came from or what you had planned on using it for, it'll spend either way.

I would rather see universal national service (mil + civ options) for all young people.

Re: "excessive adventures," in theory congress should be more responsible and take back warmaking powers from the executive, but it's very hard to get a group of 538 people to be collectively responsible when you can just shirk and let POTUS either sink or swim with the decisions.

IMHO if we want to remain a global superpower some level of adventurism and/or significant financial and mil power projection is going to be required, so let's just try to do it the best way we can. Take a look at the UK; TL;DR they for various reasons stopped spending blood and treasure in maintaining a far-flung empire and now no one really gives a shit what they think. Not convinced it's a worse deal for the average Brit, just a different experience than being the hegemon and "indispensable nation."

A 20+ year land war in Asia...I heard somewhere that was foolish...

 

You can be a global superpower without an enormous conventional military though. I would argue that China is already there. There are 4 instruments of power and China is already globally leveraging 3 with extraordinary success. Further that with their non-conventional military capes (read Cyber and InfoOps) and they are slowly reprogramming the world to adhere to their narrative. 

Something interesting happened post Cold War. The worlds 2 largest super powers began using assassination (and still do) to accomplish political objectives. Why is this noteworthy? The taboo against assassination began in after the 16th century Peace at Westphalia. Sovereignty had been established as a political concept and big states realized they could easily exert power over small states with enormous standing armies. The problem with this model though, was a King Slayer could take your billion dollar army and make it worthless by removing the reigns of power overtop it. Because of this, the European Great Powers (as in UN 0.1 alpha) began advocating that assassination was morally evil, that heads of state were inherently civilian, that they only acted in the states interest, and therefore should be protected from the belligerence of war. 

The point to all of that is, all of that was upended in the Cold War. Nuclear war, by nature, is not conventional. Special Operations Forces, became a thing. Cyber is now a thing. Information Warfare is now a thing. The power paradigm that existed  between 1575 to 1945 is shifting. The large, professional, standing army, is losing its appeal as the means of projection. I think China has this figured out. I think Russia is figuring it out now. I think we are REALLY slow to the plate with this. Largely because we have the largest, most impressive standing army in history. We've invested too much in this strategy to began thinking differently now.

[Clark Griswold]

3 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I mean, we do this now, there's just not a direct pay-for. Very few programs have that. And at the end of the day money is fungible - if you have a dollar in the bank and you spend a dollar it doesn't particularly matter where that dollar came from or what you had planned on using it for, it'll spend either way.

I would rather see universal national service (mil + civ options) for all young people.

Re: "excessive adventures," in theory congress should be more responsible and take back warmaking powers from the executive, but it's very hard to get a group of 538 people to be collectively responsible when you can just shirk and let POTUS either sink or swim with the decisions.

IMHO if we want to remain a global superpower some level of adventurism and/or significant financial and mil power projection is going to be required, so let's just try to do it the best way we can. Take a look at the UK; TL;DR they for various reasons stopped spending blood and treasure in maintaining a far-flung empire and now no one really gives a shit what they think. Not convinced it's a worse deal for the average Brit, just a different experience than being the hegemon and "indispensable nation."

True, I'm ok with shifting money as required or appropriate but I want at least the cost of this laid bare and the positive appetite suppression effect of actually seeing the monetary cost in what this costs you to pay for what was done.  That IMO would bring this back to the national political conversation as it seems to have been swept away of late.

Possibly but as @FLEA said very well, the other IOPs appear to be better at getting what you want for your national interests.  I guess part of what animates me on this is the Excessive Adventures / Forever Wars are not really done for the interests of the United States but for the nebulous "Free World" / "International Community" / etc... 

If the burden was shared equally by all those who seemingly comprise and benefit from being in those, the need for a dissuading financial feedback mechanism in the US tax code would probably not be necessary but it is not so here I am ranting for it on BO.

42 minutes ago, FLEA said:

I think we are REALLY slow to the plate with this. Largely because we have the largest, most impressive standing army in history. We've invested too much in this strategy to began thinking differently now.

Delta Hotel - we have to get smart with this but unfortunately I think the scourge of Intersectionalism / Woke / White Guilt is going to prevent us from using some of the other IOPs of the DIME model.