brandenberg@star.dec.com (Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.) (09/19/86)
[ken perlow replies to Milo Medin's support of WFBJr] > >It's hard to come down on a guy who's both a harpsichordist and a >sailor (and good at them), but perhaps he should stick to those >things. Our political and economic health are intimately inter- >twined, so WFB has it exactly backwards. Funding armaments to >the exclusion of all else for long enough will so cripple our >democracy (social and economic) as to render said major war irrelevant. >There is a good case for that defense spending which will clearly >help stabilize our very tenuous international situation, but SDI >R&D is as destabilizing as it is unworkable. I couldn't agree more with the symbiosis of political and economic health so let's see where federal spending is concentrated. From National Review (recent issue) (yes, WFBJr) based on information from the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending from 1960 to 1985 increased 425 per cent. From 1960 to 1985, non-defense spending increased 1400 per cent plus a bit more. NR then states that given the current taxation scheme, that if non-defense spending had increased at only the rate of defense spending, the federal budget in 1985 would have resulted in a surplus of a quarter trillion dollars. Imagine the economic and political condition of the country in the past 25 years if "promote the general welfare" hadn't been interpreted as requiring federal establishment and supervision of microeconomic transfer payments. (On the other hand, "stagflation" would never have occurred and the Keynesians could still pretend that they are right.) Monty Brandenberg ------ "Money isn't everything, but it's enough."