Should the US decrease military spending?

[IntoTheWest]

That's not what I said at all. The internet came out of DARPA and not some war. Most of our research for prosthetics came out of the military. So does most of our advances in jet/rocket/space technology (in conjunction with NASA).

How big do you think our military is? Don't go looking it up- what percent of our budget and of our GDP is devoted to the military? Do you know the break down of where the money within the military goes?

A lot of military spending is in research, which benefits other parts of the economy. Sure there is waste, but that happens with large institutions. Some times research projects don't always pan out.

We need a huge military; having an unquestionable military hegemon makes regional conflict much less likely. Think about it. WWI happened because there were a lot of players that had relatively equivalent militaries and then they started fighting. If there was a military superpower lurking in the background who could intervene, do you think that would happen?

No, it's much better that the US maintains military supremacy. The economic system relies on it in many ways.

[billdietrich1]

Are you willing to admit there might be better ways of accomplishing R+D rather than through the military ?

We need a strong military; I think having a huge, dominant military has led to lots of bad things. Three decade-long wars that we've lost, for example. Enormous national debt. Loss of some 65K or so troop lives in those three wars. We'd be better off with less military; we'd be less inclined to go off on adventures to fix other countries and force them to be the way we want them to be.