speech bit

[Sir_Die_alot]

These are the statements you made, yes?

Yes.

They are false, yes? They are contradicted by other statements you have made, which you have now asked me to consider, so clearly they must be.

No.

Keep in mind where the original topic was at.

Your original argument was in counter to the notion that the US spends too much money on its military. You said it was a low figure *in proportion to GDP*. That is a precise figure. You weren't talking about "value" as vaguely defined.

Baloney. Remember this line? "The more valueable your country is, the more modivation there is for another to take it away." Maybe you don't because you cut it out when you first quoted it in your reply, but you should since this is the second time I've quoted it back to you. If I'm going to validate a number for spending, I'm going to need a number that both shows what we have to protect and how much we can use to that effect. Hey I know, how about GDP!

Your whole argument is based on the nuance that it's not just GDP, you're right and I haven't tried to state otherwise. I'm sure I could have worded "I would argue a country's "need" is based precisely on it's GDP." better. Putting an "almost" beside "precisely" may have solved that, but then we would be in the same discussion about "Oh yeah! What what do you mean by 'almost' then?" <_< The fact I did qualify in the same paragraph and next sentance "value", should have given you the idea I wasn't trying to make the point it's all just GDP.

When it comes to figuring how much should be spent in realitive peacetime, either by that nation or an ally, I still say GDP plays the key role. I see the military as a kind of tax for having a country. Well what do you tax a country on, maybe a percentage of it's GDP? ;) An average "tax rate" isn't something I think people should get excited about.

All you said was that spending as a portion of GDP was not high, and that this justifies further spending (or counters arguments against spending so much).

I said that justifies the money we do spend, not adding to that. What justifies adding to that is we have deployed our troops which takes more money. I also stated this point.

You further went on to make two qualifications to your statement, both of which I take issue with. First, is that GDP was not roughly correlated, but that it was precisely correlated. I would disagree even with the weaker version, but the strong version is simply absurd. Clearly, you knew that, because you've contradicted it since. Second, you made clear your point was obvious from thousands of years of history. Invoking that kind of authority, to me, means you're pretty friggin' sure of your point.

I'm not even sure what you are talking about here. I made one post that was to qualify the GDP thing. Unless you are referring to the rebuttal post that got you started as the qualification, in which case you are ignoring my second post. If I'm right, you are getting all hung up on single lines and ignoring the rest of the paragraph that qualifies those lines. (Hell, it's probably just the one line I pointed out above)

So, yeah. I read the earlier posts. You were defending spending relative to productivity. I said spending should be relative to threat (accepting Occhi's criticism that this might not be just a direct or immediate threat). Now, what are you saying to that? Do you still accept your original argument that a "low" (relative to China and North Korea...) defense budget relative to GDP is a good reason not to cut back on military spending?

We don't even compair to North Korea percent wise. China isn't particularly fair because we have responsibilities in the UN and NATO. To my knowledge China has little military involvement with the former and (obviously) none with the latter.

Or does one actually need to consider what one's enemies are spending, not merely what percentage of their budgets go towards the army? I wouldn't, for instance, be very threatened by Andorra, even if they spend 100% of their GDP on the army. I would, however, be quite threatened by the US, even if they only spent half a percent of their GDP.

That's because you are paranoid. You and I live in the countries with the longest peaceful border in the world and history. If you forsee any future where the US is invading Canada, it's going to be so long after our grandchildren are dead that any spending done now won't matter. Unless you know of secret Canadian plans that I don't. :ph34r: :P

As for small countries building up militarys I am threatend by them. Not because I think they can conqure the US, or any other 1st world nation, but because they often have anti-US and/or anti-western sentiments. Look at those countries that have overly high GDP defense spending, how many have high populations of people who would like nothing better than to see a big chunk taken out of America or the western world in general? I want countries like that to think the hammer will drop if they "accidentally" lose a bomb that ends up on a boat headed for the US.

The way I see it, you've contradicted yourself. I think it's because those statements above reach much farther, and are far more precise than you intended. Unfortunately, they were also the justification for your earlier argument. So I'm not even sure which you mean. That's what I'm arguing about.

Aside from the magic taken out of context now doubly explained line, I don't see where you think I have contradicted myself. The %GDP was the measuring stick for how much is a "reasonable" amount to take out of an economy and spend. The goodies one country has can modivate another country take them. The attacking country may be modivated to use a third country as a means to get to the first. Troops in combat cost more. I don't see the contradiction.

I pick apart individual phrases because I presume you mean them. Is that a presumption I should stop making?

How about presuming I mean them, the paragraph, the whole post they are contained in, and any corrections/clarifications I subsequently might make? You don't seem to be very fond of the "sound bite" campaigns that come out of most politicians, but here you are doing it yourself. :rolleyes: