I’m sure I saw a Michael Hudson video where he said the US domestic books are completely balanced. The entire deficit is due to the military budget. Things could have changed since he said that. Or I could’ve misheard.
But I don’t think so, because ‘money’ is nothing if not ‘balanced’. Always. The only question is who holds the balance of debits (the workers) and who the credits (the rich). Maybe I’m mixing my categories of ‘balance’ here?
Good news for US citizens is that vassall states are the ones who pay the monthly payments and provide an insurance for that military debt.
In this case balanced is just an accounting term. All it means is that debits equal credits, ie. you spend what you receive.
With a quick look at this year’s expected US federal deficit ($1.15T), what you paraphrase Hudson on is roughly correct, depending on what you count as military. The DoD budget itself is $817B, plus there’s the Department of Energy nuclear programs, and any number of intelligence agencies and black budgets which you could lump in together as military spending.
This has basically always been the case too. The treasury bill standard came into being precisely because the US wanted more and more military activity, but they had exhausted the ability to pay for it by the beginning of the invasion of Vietnam.
I’m sure I saw a Michael Hudson video where he said the US domestic books are completely balanced. The entire deficit is due to the military budget. Things could have changed since he said that. Or I could’ve misheard.
But I don’t think so, because ‘money’ is nothing if not ‘balanced’. Always. The only question is who holds the balance of debits (the workers) and who the credits (the rich). Maybe I’m mixing my categories of ‘balance’ here?
Good news for US citizens is that vassall states are the ones who pay the monthly payments and provide an insurance for that military debt.
In this case balanced is just an accounting term. All it means is that debits equal credits, ie. you spend what you receive.
With a quick look at this year’s expected US federal deficit ($1.15T), what you paraphrase Hudson on is roughly correct, depending on what you count as military. The DoD budget itself is $817B, plus there’s the Department of Energy nuclear programs, and any number of intelligence agencies and black budgets which you could lump in together as military spending.
This has basically always been the case too. The treasury bill standard came into being precisely because the US wanted more and more military activity, but they had exhausted the ability to pay for it by the beginning of the invasion of Vietnam.