It's really telling how they labelled some presidents and left others missing.
Here is my take on reading the data; from a Rothbardian perspective.
Specifically, Truman(D)was in command during the giant Korean spending surge, and the Eisenhower (R)admin saw that brought down.
Another surge under Kennedy(D)and even more so under Johnson (D) then brought under come control under Nixon (R).
So up until this point we see a trend of aggressive Democrats in a generally Wilsonian model. Reagan pend a metric shit-ton on the military, and while some praise this as the death knell of the USSR, it started a very bad trend of accepting foreign interventionism in the GOP that would not have been previously accepted.
This also signals the neocon takeover of the GOP, and thereafter we see military spending as a pet ideal of Republicans who should have recoiled at the notion.
Clintons motives for reducing the military are debatable, but he took up the mantle of interventionism easily enough when it suited his political needs, and there was an ideological backing for it in the DP, and little real resistance to the now Neocon-ized GOP.
GWB was of course a NeoCon's NeoCon, and spending predictably exploded.
Obama is Bush on steroids; I have no doubt that in a less war weary nation he would be merrily spending on military adventures. As it stands he has had to make contraction a selling point, and being no fool, he has. Sort of.
Disgusting. Just one of many reasons we have such a large deficit.
ReplyDeleteAt nearly $700 billion, it is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined.
ReplyDeleteHow in the world was that much spent on the Korean war?
ReplyDeletei really want to make a correlation with amazing financial success and reduced military spending during the clinton era....really badly.
ReplyDeleteIt's really telling how they labelled some presidents and left others missing.
ReplyDeleteHere is my take on reading the data; from a Rothbardian perspective.
Specifically, Truman(D)was in command during the giant Korean spending surge, and the Eisenhower (R)admin saw that brought down.
Another surge under Kennedy(D)and even more so under Johnson (D) then brought under come control under Nixon (R).
So up until this point we see a trend of aggressive Democrats in a generally Wilsonian model. Reagan pend a metric shit-ton on the military, and while some praise this as the death knell of the USSR, it started a very bad trend of accepting foreign interventionism in the GOP that would not have been previously accepted.
This also signals the neocon takeover of the GOP, and thereafter we see military spending as a pet ideal of Republicans who should have recoiled at the notion.
Clintons motives for reducing the military are debatable, but he took up the mantle of interventionism easily enough when it suited his political needs, and there was an ideological backing for it in the DP, and little real resistance to the now Neocon-ized GOP.
GWB was of course a NeoCon's NeoCon, and spending predictably exploded.
Obama is Bush on steroids; I have no doubt that in a less war weary nation he would be merrily spending on military adventures. As it stands he has had to make contraction a selling point, and being no fool, he has. Sort of.