Dollars are fungible (and see here). So what’s the better value? Space exploration or a 10 year military occupation? Believe it or not, the U.S. has been spending a similar amount on each, year after year. Come to think of it, does endless war have any value to anyone other than politicians and military contractors?
Listen carefully when Republicans talk about federal expenditures. When they talk about things they like to spend money on, such as military hardware, they use the term “investment” (e.g., “investment in defense”) and when they talk about all other federal expenditures they use the term “spending” (e.g., “spending on Medicare”). Their use of the terms bears no relationship whatsoever to the actual economic definitions of investment or spending (i.e., consumption) — to them, all expenditures for traditionally Republican causes are “investment” and all expenditures for typically Democrat causes are “spending.” Thus, to a Republican, buying bombs is “investment,” while healing our sick children is “spending”; building prisons is “investment,” building schools (or roads, bridges, hospitals, libraries, Internet backbone…) is “spending”; hiring soldiers is “investment,” hiring NASA scientists is “spending.” In this election year, they seem to be going one step further: whenever they use the term “spending” they add the prefix “wasteful government.” So, all expenditures they disagree with is termed “wasteful government spending.”
Grumpy. It’s a classic shell game.
Amazing how many people still fall for the shell game to this day.