FYI Brian, the defense sector isn't actually bloated. It's consistently gone down as a share of GDP since Vietnam, and even the big wars like Iraq or the 80's nuke buildup were relatively small blips.
I wonder if Brian did any research before making that statement or if it’s one of those things people in his social milieu take on faith. It’s not impossible to see the next big move in US defense spending as % of GDP being up. Certainly relative to the 1990s the global threat environment seems significantly worse, and it was higher then. In the UK there’s a bipartisan commitment to increase spending (from a lower level than the US is at) even though the country can’t really afford it
I think for 2025 the budget Biden proposed is $850 billion. The graph I'm looking at right now is from 2021 when it was $801 billion, and the next smaller one was China at $293 billion. After that, India at $76.6 billion. So, yeah, it's bloated. Also, they never even get audited except one time and they completely blew it. There is no oversight and no accountability.
My comment was in GDP percentage terms. The absolute dollar amount is important, but not relevant to how “bloated” it is. GDP rules all when it comes to measuring nations against each other.
Oh I see. So it’s only 3.4% in 2023. Hm. So all those other things that we can’t have, according to certain factions, like free healthcare for everyone, except for those who want to keep their private insurance, and higher child tax credits, and time off to take care of family members, like children or elders, all those things for which this country is supposedly too broke, to which MY side of the aisle always blames the military budget - when you look at it in relation to the GDP, all those social safety net expenses I just outlined, how tiny they must be!
(A blast from the Past: In Trump’s first unfortunate year of the presidency he wanted to cut all kinds of programs because, they cost “so much money.” The dunce set out to cut Meals on Wheels.)
Uhhh not really. If it’s declining as a share of GDP, then that means we are structurally tending towards the “butter” side of the classic “guns vs butter” tradeoff.
Percentage of GDP is definitely one measure, but that percentage can also be impacted by total GDP increasing substantially over the past decades. Another solid measure is that the military budget is still 50% of discretionary government spending at 850-ish billion. That is both bloated and exorbitant. Seems to me we could be spending even more on “butter” and other day-to-day necessities for average citizens than continuing to overfund the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
Not exactly. Because I don’t think, with ALL the issues the U.S. has, and could be solving with a reallocation of funds and priorities, that 50% of our discretionary budget should go to the military. Especially with all the waste in that program. Again, GDP is only ONE measure. Focusing exclusively on that is short-sighted.
A weird post overall. "Libertarian economics" did not enjoy a "brief period of popularity" - liberal, free trade economics germinated in the 17th century, put down real roots in the 18th, and served the US & UK so well over the 19th that by the dawn of the 20th everyone forgot that "mercantilism" was ever a real thing.
What a helpful contribution. The author is clearly using "libertarian economics" to mean "opposition on principle to state intervention in the economy." That - as I said - is "liberal economics" when opposed to a monarch or other state institution engaging in heavy-handed economic intervention, as was once universal. That the combination of "free trade + low-as-possible taxes + little-as-possible disruption of natural internal commerce" would result in national advantage over time was the radical notion of liberal economics and is still -- as far as I know -- the economic position of the Libertarian Party -- and if it isn't, they've got their asses on backwards, which is not really my problem.
I'm pretty sure Brian isn't a historian, and wasn't thinking in world-historical terms but rather recent American politics.
He's free to chime in, but judging from his context, he likely meant the modern libertarian movement's brief stretch of fashionability as Americans dissatisfied with the post-Nixon two-party system looked to the LP as a potential third major party and its ideology as a potential third major pole.
All of which has vanishingly little to do with whatever the hell you're on about.
If "libertarian economics" means "the economic policy preferences of the "libertarian party" then "libertarian economics" means "liberal economics" as I said it did. If this author is that historically illiterate then I suggest he repeat high school before writing anything else.
Yeah, what seems "weird" to me is just normal to them. So that makes me (and us) weird.
I've been wondering why the charge of "weird" gets so deep under their very thin skins. Trump, yesterday, at his so-called press conference at Bedminster said something to the effect of "they call me weird, can you believe that?" And Vance has explicitly said he's not weird "they are weird".
As a gay man of a certain age it should have been obvious, but reading your comment things fell into place. When I was growing up I was constantly being called "strange" and "weird" — among other things. So, when they hear people calling them "weird" they probably think they're being called "gay" or a "sissy"— and the one thing the frail straight male ego cannot stand is having his "manhood" questioned. Those manchildren equate "gay" with "effeminate". And if there's anything that triggers them more than being called "gay" its the suggestion that they're just little "girls".
>>We could make legal immigration easier. In recognition of the significant costs of child-rearing, we could also bolster financial inducements to people who want to form families.
Say it with me Brian... "abundance agenda and supply-side progressivism".
Not to be *wierd* about it, but the non-wierd-pro-natalist-One-Billion-Americans-YIMBY-Georgist-Baumol-housing-theory-of-everything crowd (AKA Matt Yglesias Fans) could do a riff on the neo-Nazis' horrific "14 words": "I pledge not to contribute to the Cost Disease with misguided demand-side interventions".
Giving people "inducements" will only induce inflation and make costs worse. What we actually need to do is build absurd amounts of housing so that everyone can afford a humane and prosperous lifestyle.
In her speech today, AFAIK Kamala didn't even mention the rent control idea, but did pledge to get an additional 3M homes built, and work on getting localities to cut red tape.
I'm psyched. Especially since I've long felt that the failures of liberal governance around delivering abundance, the spiralling costs in key markets (housing, healthcare, childcare, education, eldercare) which Dems have repeatedly addressed only via "cost-disease socialism" or "checkism", are key to understanding the burn-it-all-down anger that got us to Trump.
(I have friends in the YIMBYs For Harris gang who are talking back-channel to folks in the campaign, and they're quite clear that the goal is 3M _additional_ homes, on top of the 6M the market would be projected to produce.)
I'm not sure why you'd make that, uhh, comparison there...but in any case, price controls on food (in the absence of some really particular set of justifying circumstances) are such an obviously bad idea that I'm rather shocked about this whole situation. This is her first Big Thing? Really?
It's so dumb there's no way it's a real plan. The real question is, will such brazen & insulting lying be the policy of both teams going forward?
This analysis, while good, doesn’t cover the leg of the stool represented by the opening Vance quote about the “postmenopausal female,” which aligns nicely with his “childless cat ladies.” In the eyes of the Rs, women are nothing more than breeders (the “pro-natalist” movement and anti-abortion movement are conjoined twin goals). When our breeding years are finished, our sole value is to take care of children, and to do so for free or abysmally low pay. So, maybe add a fourth leg to the stool?
Fantastic! Trump has always seemed to me the "end point" of Republican thought - anti-science, anti-fact, pro-income equality (pro caste-system, hyper rich vs everyone else), pro-societal chaos (more guns, please). This piece helps explain it.
>a largely unrelated set of ideologies: national defense hawkishness; Christian moralism, and libertarian contempt for the social safety net.
Lol? "Strong, self-reliant families + religious piety + defense of those things from outsiders" have been the pillars of conservatism since...uhh, Cato, and probably ever. "All tribe need is us self and us ancestor spirit! People over hill concerning! Maybe bash them!" has probably always been prominent as a set of notions - and often a correct one. Sometimes people over hill really were up to no good. Not, you know, always, but sometimes.
Missing from this post is any mention of the GOP’s absolutely retrograde stance on fossil fuels and the article of faith that is their climate change denial.
Perhaps because it doesn’t stand out that much because of so much soft denial (it can wait, it’s in the future) on the Democratic side.
I hope Harris/Walz will bust up these delaying tactics that emanate from the fossil fuel industry. In fact we must not delay, not only because of climate impacts but also because there are virtually immediate health gains to be seized by reducing fossil fuel use - among them are clean air, clean water, and redressing unjust distributions of exposure to air and water pollution. Also JOBS and economic growth. Climate action now is benefit producing and cost saving. Delay leaves all those benefits in the table. Dekay serves no one but the fossil fuel industry. I think most Dens will understand this and the delay tactics are more of a Republican ploy.
How would you characterize the historical stool legs of the Democrats' coalition - African Americans, Rust Belt union members and well educated coastal elites?
The fact that there will be hundreds of millions of climate change refugees over the last half of this century or even sooner will cause even bigger problems with this white supremacist mythology
Man, I really love your writing, Brian. It’s like all the things I’m thinking, just with a better vocabulary. Lol.
I'm here for the section titles. "CEAUŞ F*CKERS" ( https://www.offmessage.net/p/republicans-are-about-to-become-desperate ) bringing together the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu with the jokes about Vance, made me laugh out loud.
FYI Brian, the defense sector isn't actually bloated. It's consistently gone down as a share of GDP since Vietnam, and even the big wars like Iraq or the 80's nuke buildup were relatively small blips.
I wonder if Brian did any research before making that statement or if it’s one of those things people in his social milieu take on faith. It’s not impossible to see the next big move in US defense spending as % of GDP being up. Certainly relative to the 1990s the global threat environment seems significantly worse, and it was higher then. In the UK there’s a bipartisan commitment to increase spending (from a lower level than the US is at) even though the country can’t really afford it
I think for 2025 the budget Biden proposed is $850 billion. The graph I'm looking at right now is from 2021 when it was $801 billion, and the next smaller one was China at $293 billion. After that, India at $76.6 billion. So, yeah, it's bloated. Also, they never even get audited except one time and they completely blew it. There is no oversight and no accountability.
My comment was in GDP percentage terms. The absolute dollar amount is important, but not relevant to how “bloated” it is. GDP rules all when it comes to measuring nations against each other.
Oh I see. So it’s only 3.4% in 2023. Hm. So all those other things that we can’t have, according to certain factions, like free healthcare for everyone, except for those who want to keep their private insurance, and higher child tax credits, and time off to take care of family members, like children or elders, all those things for which this country is supposedly too broke, to which MY side of the aisle always blames the military budget - when you look at it in relation to the GDP, all those social safety net expenses I just outlined, how tiny they must be!
(A blast from the Past: In Trump’s first unfortunate year of the presidency he wanted to cut all kinds of programs because, they cost “so much money.” The dunce set out to cut Meals on Wheels.)
Actually yes, those other things ARE more expensive than 3.4%. Even Bernie acknowledges that fact lol.
AFAICT he didn't call it "bloated", he said it was "exorbitant". Which can be true, even if it's decreasing as a share of GDP!
Uhhh not really. If it’s declining as a share of GDP, then that means we are structurally tending towards the “butter” side of the classic “guns vs butter” tradeoff.
Percentage of GDP is definitely one measure, but that percentage can also be impacted by total GDP increasing substantially over the past decades. Another solid measure is that the military budget is still 50% of discretionary government spending at 850-ish billion. That is both bloated and exorbitant. Seems to me we could be spending even more on “butter” and other day-to-day necessities for average citizens than continuing to overfund the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
If total GDP is outpacing military spending then we literally ARE spending more money on butter than guns.
You are ALREADY getting what you are asking for.
Not exactly. Because I don’t think, with ALL the issues the U.S. has, and could be solving with a reallocation of funds and priorities, that 50% of our discretionary budget should go to the military. Especially with all the waste in that program. Again, GDP is only ONE measure. Focusing exclusively on that is short-sighted.
That’s not how any of this works. Have a nice evening.
Sure but “trending towards” is not the same as “at”.
A weird post overall. "Libertarian economics" did not enjoy a "brief period of popularity" - liberal, free trade economics germinated in the 17th century, put down real roots in the 18th, and served the US & UK so well over the 19th that by the dawn of the 20th everyone forgot that "mercantilism" was ever a real thing.
Libertarianism is a specific flavor of classical liberalism. Classical liberals would not have recognized the modern movement
What a helpful contribution. The author is clearly using "libertarian economics" to mean "opposition on principle to state intervention in the economy." That - as I said - is "liberal economics" when opposed to a monarch or other state institution engaging in heavy-handed economic intervention, as was once universal. That the combination of "free trade + low-as-possible taxes + little-as-possible disruption of natural internal commerce" would result in national advantage over time was the radical notion of liberal economics and is still -- as far as I know -- the economic position of the Libertarian Party -- and if it isn't, they've got their asses on backwards, which is not really my problem.
I'm pretty sure Brian isn't a historian, and wasn't thinking in world-historical terms but rather recent American politics.
He's free to chime in, but judging from his context, he likely meant the modern libertarian movement's brief stretch of fashionability as Americans dissatisfied with the post-Nixon two-party system looked to the LP as a potential third major party and its ideology as a potential third major pole.
All of which has vanishingly little to do with whatever the hell you're on about.
If "libertarian economics" means "the economic policy preferences of the "libertarian party" then "libertarian economics" means "liberal economics" as I said it did. If this author is that historically illiterate then I suggest he repeat high school before writing anything else.
Ain't you a pip! Libertarian eco nowadays means no safety net. And no enviro regs, no minimum wage, no ban on child labor. All that good stuff.
Pedantic, arrogantly insulting hostility is not a great way to make friends and influence people. Especially a gracious host wielding a banhammer.
"Stool" is a good word to describe current GOP politics. Only it's one-legged (Trump), and will not stand.
Yeah, what seems "weird" to me is just normal to them. So that makes me (and us) weird.
I've been wondering why the charge of "weird" gets so deep under their very thin skins. Trump, yesterday, at his so-called press conference at Bedminster said something to the effect of "they call me weird, can you believe that?" And Vance has explicitly said he's not weird "they are weird".
As a gay man of a certain age it should have been obvious, but reading your comment things fell into place. When I was growing up I was constantly being called "strange" and "weird" — among other things. So, when they hear people calling them "weird" they probably think they're being called "gay" or a "sissy"— and the one thing the frail straight male ego cannot stand is having his "manhood" questioned. Those manchildren equate "gay" with "effeminate". And if there's anything that triggers them more than being called "gay" its the suggestion that they're just little "girls".
>>We could make legal immigration easier. In recognition of the significant costs of child-rearing, we could also bolster financial inducements to people who want to form families.
Say it with me Brian... "abundance agenda and supply-side progressivism".
Not to be *wierd* about it, but the non-wierd-pro-natalist-One-Billion-Americans-YIMBY-Georgist-Baumol-housing-theory-of-everything crowd (AKA Matt Yglesias Fans) could do a riff on the neo-Nazis' horrific "14 words": "I pledge not to contribute to the Cost Disease with misguided demand-side interventions".
Giving people "inducements" will only induce inflation and make costs worse. What we actually need to do is build absurd amounts of housing so that everyone can afford a humane and prosperous lifestyle.
In her speech today, AFAIK Kamala didn't even mention the rent control idea, but did pledge to get an additional 3M homes built, and work on getting localities to cut red tape.
https://www.threads.net/@aurosharman/post/C-vjM3Bp4RB
I'm psyched. Especially since I've long felt that the failures of liberal governance around delivering abundance, the spiralling costs in key markets (housing, healthcare, childcare, education, eldercare) which Dems have repeatedly addressed only via "cost-disease socialism" or "checkism", are key to understanding the burn-it-all-down anger that got us to Trump.
(I have friends in the YIMBYs For Harris gang who are talking back-channel to folks in the campaign, and they're quite clear that the goal is 3M _additional_ homes, on top of the 6M the market would be projected to produce.)
I'm not sure why you'd make that, uhh, comparison there...but in any case, price controls on food (in the absence of some really particular set of justifying circumstances) are such an obviously bad idea that I'm rather shocked about this whole situation. This is her first Big Thing? Really?
It's so dumb there's no way it's a real plan. The real question is, will such brazen & insulting lying be the policy of both teams going forward?
“A party that supported humanitarian border security, skilled immigration, and a safety net for families would be hard for liberals to defeat.”
Not quite: a party that supported those things would, in fact, BE a liberal party.
Each leg of the Republicans’ 3-legged stool is infested by termites & rot. As each leg crumbles away all that is left is stool.
8 min
Hillbilly, meet shovel - dig hole..and keep on digging.
This analysis, while good, doesn’t cover the leg of the stool represented by the opening Vance quote about the “postmenopausal female,” which aligns nicely with his “childless cat ladies.” In the eyes of the Rs, women are nothing more than breeders (the “pro-natalist” movement and anti-abortion movement are conjoined twin goals). When our breeding years are finished, our sole value is to take care of children, and to do so for free or abysmally low pay. So, maybe add a fourth leg to the stool?
Very well thought-out and communicated piece. Hard to find something to argue with; so I won't! ;-)
Fantastic! Trump has always seemed to me the "end point" of Republican thought - anti-science, anti-fact, pro-income equality (pro caste-system, hyper rich vs everyone else), pro-societal chaos (more guns, please). This piece helps explain it.
>a largely unrelated set of ideologies: national defense hawkishness; Christian moralism, and libertarian contempt for the social safety net.
Lol? "Strong, self-reliant families + religious piety + defense of those things from outsiders" have been the pillars of conservatism since...uhh, Cato, and probably ever. "All tribe need is us self and us ancestor spirit! People over hill concerning! Maybe bash them!" has probably always been prominent as a set of notions - and often a correct one. Sometimes people over hill really were up to no good. Not, you know, always, but sometimes.
Missing from this post is any mention of the GOP’s absolutely retrograde stance on fossil fuels and the article of faith that is their climate change denial.
Perhaps because it doesn’t stand out that much because of so much soft denial (it can wait, it’s in the future) on the Democratic side.
I hope Harris/Walz will bust up these delaying tactics that emanate from the fossil fuel industry. In fact we must not delay, not only because of climate impacts but also because there are virtually immediate health gains to be seized by reducing fossil fuel use - among them are clean air, clean water, and redressing unjust distributions of exposure to air and water pollution. Also JOBS and economic growth. Climate action now is benefit producing and cost saving. Delay leaves all those benefits in the table. Dekay serves no one but the fossil fuel industry. I think most Dens will understand this and the delay tactics are more of a Republican ploy.
Please excuse typos/spelling errors. My phone did that, not me. 😊
Tap the 3 dots to the right. You will get an edit option.
I think some substack app versions lack an edit option.
Thanks! It’s odd but the only options I see are like ‘Hide’ or ‘Delete’ but not ‘Edit’.
How would you characterize the historical stool legs of the Democrats' coalition - African Americans, Rust Belt union members and well educated coastal elites?
He will forever be living alone on his couch. Forever
The fact that there will be hundreds of millions of climate change refugees over the last half of this century or even sooner will cause even bigger problems with this white supremacist mythology