The lady gets it. Good. The problem is that the Senate and the White House are controlled (for now) by a party which will choose to devote available funds to welfare, not defense. As our host said a few days back--if we don't change who is in charge nothing will change--except for the worse.
Here's the problem. Defense spending, especially adding production capability, doesn't add to the Great Boomer Cashout. That money would go to undeserving X-ers, Millennials, and Zoomers. Geezerfare (which is a bigger portion of the budget than most people can guess) will win out over anything else in the budget.
I don't believe it is a funding issue, how is approx. $900 billion not enough? It is not how much we spend but how we spend it. The Navy wasted $75 Billion (and counting ) on LCS, Zumwalts and Ford But lets look at the other services The Army spent $18 billion trying to replace the Bradley without buying a single vehicle. The M-1128 was at least another half billion dollars. Who knows the what he XM-10 total cost will be as for some stupid reason they want to add a 40 ton MBT (same weight as a Leopard I) to a "Light" Infantry division TO&E . IF the Stryker MGS was too heavy for the 82nd ABN (they acquired LAV-25s from the USMC) why would a heavier vehicle now be suitable? So right their we have around $20 billion how many thousand Harpoon anti-ship missiles or hundreds of JASSM -XRs would that have bought? Then we have the USMC which used to beknown for being able prudent financial managers. $3 billion on the failed EFV an I am still not convinced the MV-22 was a good buy for the Corps (Spec Ops and grey hound replacement yes but USMC no). The USAF wants to continue to fund and develop fixed target known as ICBMs . How are our less vulnerable SBLBM and Strategic bomber force not enough? Proposed replacement for the ICBM force would be approx. $90 billion on the low end. That would buy a lot of cruise missiles. Of course the are saving that could be made in personnel costs that would be politically unpopular like no first term enlistments w/dependents/getting married /committing parenthood.; cutting the number of GOFOs and turning more non-combat jobs over to civilian contractors.
"The USAF wants to continue to fund and develop fixed target known as ICBMs . How are our less vulnerable SBLBM and Strategic bomber force not enough?"
Actually the AF wants no part of that mission and would be happy to see it cancelled so they could waste more on fighters whose legs are too short to matter in a fight with China. Luckily STRATCOM is forcing them to still fulfill that vital mission.
ICBMs make our SLBMs more survivable by complicating adversary targeting and by providing a huge target sink that exponentially increases the number of targets an adversary has to nuke to fight the US. Without ICBMs an adversary could hit the US with 5 nukes and destroy all of our nuclear capability except for our at-sea SSBNs which would slowly wither and die without trained maintainers or spare parts.
You really want to put the president, any president regardless of party, in a position where their only choice is to watch the deterrent slowly wither away or just say "fuck it" and launch all of our surviving SLBMs in revenge for an adversary hitting 5 military bases with 5 nukes? I certainly don't want to put any president in that position. The investment in ICBMs is minimal for the deterrence impact they provide and the survivability they help to provide to our Nation and to our SSBNs.
You really think. any nuclear exchange woudl end with only 5 strikes? Those 5 bases are not isolated remote postings but also near population centers. Imagine a nuke strike at the sub base at Bangor, you don't think Seattle would be affected You don't think we would respond in turn? Of course it would escalate and after that everything else is moot. Survivors will be fighting over the ashes We lose nothing by taking our triad down from 3 to 2.
I think it would be pretty stupid to put the President in a situation where he would have to face that choice.
The bases actually are all quite isolated from major cities. You could easily hit Bangor with a 20 kiloton warhead and have little to no impact on Seattle or any other major population center.
It could certainly escalate after that... but the only thing the US would have left to escalate with is our few surviving SSBNs that were at sea at the time of the strike if we are dumb enough to get rid of our ICBMs.
IIRC Russia does not have had a have single ICBM armed with a warheads of less than 100kt and SLBM of less than 50kt and they are mostly MIRVs. and while the people of Seattle might be spared most of the effects the blast you can't say the same about radiation/fallout.
How they arm and use their missiles today doesn't matter - the question is how they arm their missiles and how they use them in a future where we give up all of our ICBMs and make ourselves vulnerable to such a small attack.
Go ahead and look at the fallout cone for a 25 KT airburst on the Delta Pier in Bangor - Seattle is spared completely.
If it makes you feel any better, the bomber leg of the triad is pretty much a non-player, so it's pretty much taken out. We have 20 stealth bombers and 72 B-52s. The B-52s, which have a radar cross-section the size of downtown Chicago, aren't getting anywhere near Russia.
So cancel the B-21 Raider, a rare defense project that looks to be almost on time and budget? I would argue given the performance of Russian military to date you are underestimating the B-52 given the range of the up to 20 cruise missiles it carries. Plus there is your tactical nuke ability if you want it. The way you play the only thing we should just have is ICBMs which cannot be recalled. The two things the USAF does better than anyone else is Logistics and SEAD.. I would keep the bombers and Subs and get rid of the ICBMs. Not entirely true, I would keep some armed with conventional warheads (Maybe even deep penetrating warheads) for a global strike anyway almost anywhere in 30 minutes ability.
Where did I say anything about canceling the B-21? I'm all for building a couple thousand but there will be some leftist the chops the procurement. As for the B-52, that thing was obsolete in 1983.
I will also add that be it 5 missiles or 500, if they get launched our strategic nuclear force's whole rational for existing has failed- deterrence, mutually assured destruction did not work.
Simple math proves your wrong - hitting 450 hardened targets is far harder and more complicated than hitting 5 soft targets.
If someone launches just a few nuclear weapons that doesn't actually mean strategic deterrence failed. Strategic deterrence is about deterring an existential threat to America, not to trying to pretend that it deters every kind of nuclear attack. The fact that it has since 1945 is a nice bonus but no one should be dumb enough to think that a small nuclear war isn't possible. That kind of folly is what led us to getting rid of almost all of our tactical nuclear weapons after the cold war ended only to try to get back some of them now.
I am sure our European allies were thrilled with the idea of a tactical nuclear war since it would take place mainly on their soil. The countries with the most tac nukes woudl be spared most of the effects.
It is true that even with a nuclear umbrella you might get a little wet. But they didn't object strongly and even allowed for the basing of the weapons there --- including equipping their own plans to drop them.
They knew what the alternative was and accepted it.
Wow, so the USAF squandering a billion dollars on ECSS was a real bargain! (Problem is, there's a thousand programs that don't get much attention because they die without producing anything and waste "only" a billion dollars.) The only reason anybody heard of this one was because of he fanfare behind it. https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/air-forces-expeditionary-combat-support-system-ecss/
Like I said it is not a lack of funding issue but how we spend our funding: Cost of the 1 USS Ford and the 3 Zumwalt failures and the LCS program ~$70 Billion and counting-or instead we could of paid for approx. 28 Virginia class subs or 10 Nimitz Carriers or 34 Arleigh Burke Flight 3s. Or 70 Constellation class Frigates. Granted our shipyards lack the capacity but the point remains we don't have a lack of funding we have alack of smart spending. Imagine where we would be if just half that was devoted to developing a unmanned surface and sub-surface force? It would certainly help solve manning issues.
When the CNO answered the recruiting "problem" on 60 Minutes, he held "unmanned" out as the solution. When? 10 years from now? ...20? ...50? This is not a near term solution nor will is help us in the coming war predicted to be 2025.
Concur, this is another lost in the sauce boondoggle. We need to get back to basics and use what works. Add the "cutting edge" science fiction stuff slowly and with a robust testing and proving regimen.
Based on current allocation of resources maybe. We can't ignore our population demographics and the large chunk of it that is to fat and or stupid to serve. There was a time when real time satellites data and hypersonic missiles were cutting edge science fiction stuff. Prove it s feasibility yes, unlike what we did with LCS , EMALS etc, but don't back burner it because it is unfamiliar. Horse cavalry used to be back to basics and what worked till it didn't real fast.
You can't tech your way out of a culture issue. Few are willing to sign up to defend the globohomo empire. Fix the culture, some of these demographic issues get solved.
Totally agree -- e.g. F-22, MV-22, and the various iterations of laser technology. The roll out always has its challenges; but the other stuff was a series of dreams and emanations and penumbras.
In reality, bureaucracy is in charge of the budget, not Congress. If you want to reign in the budget, you have to take on the bureaucracy and start eliminating programs.
Congress is like a club whose biggest interest is the status quo. Yeah sure, lots of political theater in public, but behind closed doors they're exchanging stock tips, etc...
Realistically, probably cut back on operations. Sorry, but we need to catch up on maintenance and training.
Repeal Goldwater-Nichols, and we might be able to convert a decent hunk of Active Army to Guard/Reserve for a small reduction in personnel costs, but that's a long shot.
Here's the other danger: the lag time between the replenishment orders being placed and actual delivery. Last summer, as we shipped more munitions to Ukraine (and our own inventories began to drop), DoD placed an order to replace Stingers, Javelins and other weapons shipped to the Ukrainians. Projected deliveries to backfill our depleted stocks will occur in about 30 months. You read that correctly.
“… term is relatively new in the sport. It stands for Face Off Get Off. It’s used to categorize a player whose job is extremely specific: win the face off, give the ball to a teammate, and then get off the field.”
I would like to support the first proposition (that any increase less than inflation is a de facto cut) with data. One of USAF's Mitchell Institute Aerospace Advantage podcasts this spring, reports that the cost of spares is inflating at rate of 10% across the board. Also that this number has been stable for several years.
Got to love the double speak and half truths. Also I work in factory field service on specialty machinery I'm seeing inflation about 15 to 20 % in the industrial space. My friends that do cnc machine repair and like trades are seeing see the same for inflation if not more. That also doesn't couldn't lead time for some machines that can be 6 to 18 months out these are for the machines that you need to make the parts to parts anything. We have got serval jobs not for being cheaper but the other guy was two years out on a new machine and we were only a year
There is a Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times." Our times are interesting indeed.
One factor driving inflation is that we are pretty close to full employment. When there is full employment, inflation results. Folks have money to spend, they drive up demand, which makes goods scarce and prices rise. The problem is, one cure is to put folks out of work. That seems great, for economists, but, what if you are the one put out of a job.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that one issue is causing a problem. It's not high employment OR expensive diesel causing inflation; it could be high employment AND expensive diesel. But, if you have tried to hire anybody lately, there are not a lot of qualified folks out there.
We failed to train anyone for a long time and treat those that had any interest in things like they trades like losers. I had to pay for most of my training all of my tools I used to warning my friends away from the trades now I can practically name my price
I wonder how it was calculated then. It seems that was likely nearer to 100% participation in an economy where an average working class family could support parents and 2-3 kids on a single wage earner's labor.
Consumer prices rose 4 percent in the year through May, the slowest pace in more than two years and an encouraging sign, but, keep spinning your Putinesque propaganda.
It is not the "greed" of employees which makes inflation rise in periods of full employment. It is that the employees have money to spend, and they want to spend it. Too many dollars chasing too few goods leads inexorably to a rise in prices.
Comrade Putin, like the comrades before him, and DJT, think that proper planning can outwit the market. They couldn't, and he can't. Western systems are superior to the centrally planned economies of China and Russia when we embrace confusion, unleash economic liberty, and let lose the "animal spirits" onto the free market.
So quantitative easing has nothing to do with inflation?
"centrally planned economies of China and Russia" that was last century, not as much today.
And if you think Western systems have let lose the "animal spirits" onto a "free market" you really haven't been paying attention the last thirty years.
It's a joke. A bottomless pit in which we throw treasure and get back empty promises of transformational wunderwaffen that fail to deliver. Can't even get an audit of the budget.
As Russia has discovered first hand we get far more back then just empty promises. US defense gear may be expensive but (for the most part) it actually works in combat conditions. The thousands of tanks and other Russian vehicles and aircraft destroyed in Ukraine are proof of that.
LOL, oh sure sweetie. It's definitely been destroyed just like the Russians have announced. Just like their destruction of 1,900 HIMARs batteries, 258 abrams tanks, and all the other nonsense.
We squandered our opportunities to fix this problem 15-20 years ago and exacerbated it with legislative and acquisition systems that reward bad behavior led by a political party that is destroying the educational base of the country.
This argument will have to be repeated many times during the battle that is about to be waged over the FY24 budget. Increasing defense spending to keep pace with inflation in a shrinking budgetary environment will be hard for a party which instinctively wants to cut defense spending. This may explain why the Biden Administration is tripping over itself to try and get the PRC to the negotiating table now. If they can craft some paper-thin deal, they can declare the crisis over and pass through real dollar defense cuts.
People said similar things about, steam power, aviation etc. when all that was introduced. Thing is to, is to make sure they work are affordable before deciding to build a fleet around them. Unlike what they did with the LCS, EMALS, AWE and the advanced Gun System,
Based on their recent record, the billions the Navy has spent on unmanned systems would be better used doing something like bringing the Philly shipyard back online.
The Army. Sorry guys, after twenty-years of a conveyor belt of funding, you're gonna have to take a haircut. Half your GO's had no idea about COIN resulting in zero progress in the AO's. Bigger fight is on the horizon and invading a country isn't one of the aspects we're looking to do.
Why did we establish a Space Force? What sort of idiot would create an entirely new set of senior civilian staff, the general officers, and all the folderol associated with an army to do a job the US Army is already fully capable of doing? (Oh, I forgot, that fellow universally recognized for his administrative ability, DJT.)
My life today is vastly superior to thirty years ago. I live in a quiet, safe community. I swim in a sea of instantaneous media content. We American have it great, no civilization has had so many folks live so well.
As a kid, my football coach was mailed cassette tapes of English TV where we could see clips of the team we were following, The Arsenal. A big tube tv on a stand playing streaky, blurred, images. Now, I have a TV the size of a high school blackboard, with The Arsenal in glorious high definition. Live. From London.
The lady gets it. Good. The problem is that the Senate and the White House are controlled (for now) by a party which will choose to devote available funds to welfare, not defense. As our host said a few days back--if we don't change who is in charge nothing will change--except for the worse.
Here's the problem. Defense spending, especially adding production capability, doesn't add to the Great Boomer Cashout. That money would go to undeserving X-ers, Millennials, and Zoomers. Geezerfare (which is a bigger portion of the budget than most people can guess) will win out over anything else in the budget.
Geezer-Fair Alt-View:
https://www.altamontfair.com/geezer
I don't believe it is a funding issue, how is approx. $900 billion not enough? It is not how much we spend but how we spend it. The Navy wasted $75 Billion (and counting ) on LCS, Zumwalts and Ford But lets look at the other services The Army spent $18 billion trying to replace the Bradley without buying a single vehicle. The M-1128 was at least another half billion dollars. Who knows the what he XM-10 total cost will be as for some stupid reason they want to add a 40 ton MBT (same weight as a Leopard I) to a "Light" Infantry division TO&E . IF the Stryker MGS was too heavy for the 82nd ABN (they acquired LAV-25s from the USMC) why would a heavier vehicle now be suitable? So right their we have around $20 billion how many thousand Harpoon anti-ship missiles or hundreds of JASSM -XRs would that have bought? Then we have the USMC which used to beknown for being able prudent financial managers. $3 billion on the failed EFV an I am still not convinced the MV-22 was a good buy for the Corps (Spec Ops and grey hound replacement yes but USMC no). The USAF wants to continue to fund and develop fixed target known as ICBMs . How are our less vulnerable SBLBM and Strategic bomber force not enough? Proposed replacement for the ICBM force would be approx. $90 billion on the low end. That would buy a lot of cruise missiles. Of course the are saving that could be made in personnel costs that would be politically unpopular like no first term enlistments w/dependents/getting married /committing parenthood.; cutting the number of GOFOs and turning more non-combat jobs over to civilian contractors.
"The USAF wants to continue to fund and develop fixed target known as ICBMs . How are our less vulnerable SBLBM and Strategic bomber force not enough?"
Actually the AF wants no part of that mission and would be happy to see it cancelled so they could waste more on fighters whose legs are too short to matter in a fight with China. Luckily STRATCOM is forcing them to still fulfill that vital mission.
ICBMs make our SLBMs more survivable by complicating adversary targeting and by providing a huge target sink that exponentially increases the number of targets an adversary has to nuke to fight the US. Without ICBMs an adversary could hit the US with 5 nukes and destroy all of our nuclear capability except for our at-sea SSBNs which would slowly wither and die without trained maintainers or spare parts.
You really want to put the president, any president regardless of party, in a position where their only choice is to watch the deterrent slowly wither away or just say "fuck it" and launch all of our surviving SLBMs in revenge for an adversary hitting 5 military bases with 5 nukes? I certainly don't want to put any president in that position. The investment in ICBMs is minimal for the deterrence impact they provide and the survivability they help to provide to our Nation and to our SSBNs.
You really think. any nuclear exchange woudl end with only 5 strikes? Those 5 bases are not isolated remote postings but also near population centers. Imagine a nuke strike at the sub base at Bangor, you don't think Seattle would be affected You don't think we would respond in turn? Of course it would escalate and after that everything else is moot. Survivors will be fighting over the ashes We lose nothing by taking our triad down from 3 to 2.
I think it would be pretty stupid to put the President in a situation where he would have to face that choice.
The bases actually are all quite isolated from major cities. You could easily hit Bangor with a 20 kiloton warhead and have little to no impact on Seattle or any other major population center.
It could certainly escalate after that... but the only thing the US would have left to escalate with is our few surviving SSBNs that were at sea at the time of the strike if we are dumb enough to get rid of our ICBMs.
IIRC Russia does not have had a have single ICBM armed with a warheads of less than 100kt and SLBM of less than 50kt and they are mostly MIRVs. and while the people of Seattle might be spared most of the effects the blast you can't say the same about radiation/fallout.
How they arm and use their missiles today doesn't matter - the question is how they arm their missiles and how they use them in a future where we give up all of our ICBMs and make ourselves vulnerable to such a small attack.
Go ahead and look at the fallout cone for a 25 KT airburst on the Delta Pier in Bangor - Seattle is spared completely.
If it makes you feel any better, the bomber leg of the triad is pretty much a non-player, so it's pretty much taken out. We have 20 stealth bombers and 72 B-52s. The B-52s, which have a radar cross-section the size of downtown Chicago, aren't getting anywhere near Russia.
So cancel the B-21 Raider, a rare defense project that looks to be almost on time and budget? I would argue given the performance of Russian military to date you are underestimating the B-52 given the range of the up to 20 cruise missiles it carries. Plus there is your tactical nuke ability if you want it. The way you play the only thing we should just have is ICBMs which cannot be recalled. The two things the USAF does better than anyone else is Logistics and SEAD.. I would keep the bombers and Subs and get rid of the ICBMs. Not entirely true, I would keep some armed with conventional warheads (Maybe even deep penetrating warheads) for a global strike anyway almost anywhere in 30 minutes ability.
Where did I say anything about canceling the B-21? I'm all for building a couple thousand but there will be some leftist the chops the procurement. As for the B-52, that thing was obsolete in 1983.
I would argue that ICBMs do not complicate an adversarie's targeting because Russia has enough that they don't have to worry too much about prioritizing and China is well on its way to getting there: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/03/china-increasing-nuclear-arsenal-much-faster-than-was-thought-pentagon-says
I will also add that be it 5 missiles or 500, if they get launched our strategic nuclear force's whole rational for existing has failed- deterrence, mutually assured destruction did not work.
Simple math proves your wrong - hitting 450 hardened targets is far harder and more complicated than hitting 5 soft targets.
If someone launches just a few nuclear weapons that doesn't actually mean strategic deterrence failed. Strategic deterrence is about deterring an existential threat to America, not to trying to pretend that it deters every kind of nuclear attack. The fact that it has since 1945 is a nice bonus but no one should be dumb enough to think that a small nuclear war isn't possible. That kind of folly is what led us to getting rid of almost all of our tactical nuclear weapons after the cold war ended only to try to get back some of them now.
I am sure our European allies were thrilled with the idea of a tactical nuclear war since it would take place mainly on their soil. The countries with the most tac nukes woudl be spared most of the effects.
It is true that even with a nuclear umbrella you might get a little wet. But they didn't object strongly and even allowed for the basing of the weapons there --- including equipping their own plans to drop them.
They knew what the alternative was and accepted it.
Wow, so the USAF squandering a billion dollars on ECSS was a real bargain! (Problem is, there's a thousand programs that don't get much attention because they die without producing anything and waste "only" a billion dollars.) The only reason anybody heard of this one was because of he fanfare behind it. https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/air-forces-expeditionary-combat-support-system-ecss/
Like I said it is not a lack of funding issue but how we spend our funding: Cost of the 1 USS Ford and the 3 Zumwalt failures and the LCS program ~$70 Billion and counting-or instead we could of paid for approx. 28 Virginia class subs or 10 Nimitz Carriers or 34 Arleigh Burke Flight 3s. Or 70 Constellation class Frigates. Granted our shipyards lack the capacity but the point remains we don't have a lack of funding we have alack of smart spending. Imagine where we would be if just half that was devoted to developing a unmanned surface and sub-surface force? It would certainly help solve manning issues.
$70B+ huh? In the FY1943 appropriations the Navy Department, including Marines and CG, was $5.9B (https://budgetcounsel.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/the-budget-of-the-united-states-government-fiscal-year-1943.pdf) or, if I believe the historical dollar value calculator, about $112.9B of purchasing power in 2023 dollars.
Unmanned is another dead end wunderwaffen money pit.
When the CNO answered the recruiting "problem" on 60 Minutes, he held "unmanned" out as the solution. When? 10 years from now? ...20? ...50? This is not a near term solution nor will is help us in the coming war predicted to be 2025.
Concur, this is another lost in the sauce boondoggle. We need to get back to basics and use what works. Add the "cutting edge" science fiction stuff slowly and with a robust testing and proving regimen.
Based on current allocation of resources maybe. We can't ignore our population demographics and the large chunk of it that is to fat and or stupid to serve. There was a time when real time satellites data and hypersonic missiles were cutting edge science fiction stuff. Prove it s feasibility yes, unlike what we did with LCS , EMALS etc, but don't back burner it because it is unfamiliar. Horse cavalry used to be back to basics and what worked till it didn't real fast.
You can't tech your way out of a culture issue. Few are willing to sign up to defend the globohomo empire. Fix the culture, some of these demographic issues get solved.
Totally agree -- e.g. F-22, MV-22, and the various iterations of laser technology. The roll out always has its challenges; but the other stuff was a series of dreams and emanations and penumbras.
In reality, bureaucracy is in charge of the budget, not Congress. If you want to reign in the budget, you have to take on the bureaucracy and start eliminating programs.
Hm. No bureaucracy that I know of has ever reformed itself. Executive and Congress have the power to do so. The will? Not so much, I fear.
Congress is like a club whose biggest interest is the status quo. Yeah sure, lots of political theater in public, but behind closed doors they're exchanging stock tips, etc...
Realistically, probably cut back on operations. Sorry, but we need to catch up on maintenance and training.
Repeal Goldwater-Nichols, and we might be able to convert a decent hunk of Active Army to Guard/Reserve for a small reduction in personnel costs, but that's a long shot.
"Probably cut back on operations." Is a lot easier to say than to do. Especially when you are trying to DETER the PRC from invading Taiwan.
We really will have to "Pivot to the Pacific". Fewer patrols for the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the same or more for the Indo-Pacific.
Here's the other danger: the lag time between the replenishment orders being placed and actual delivery. Last summer, as we shipped more munitions to Ukraine (and our own inventories began to drop), DoD placed an order to replace Stingers, Javelins and other weapons shipped to the Ukrainians. Projected deliveries to backfill our depleted stocks will occur in about 30 months. You read that correctly.
Stop all of the wasteful spending on
DEI /CRT indoctrination and get rid of
DEI Admin (Divide Exclude Indoctrinate)
has no place in our military . Redirect those billions in replenishing ourweapons
And every penny spent renaming two ships and military posts should be recaptured by docking every active duty FOGO.
FOGO ???
“… term is relatively new in the sport. It stands for Face Off Get Off. It’s used to categorize a player whose job is extremely specific: win the face off, give the ball to a teammate, and then get off the field.”
Flag Officer General Officer in DoD
I agree, but this is hardly more than a rounding error. You need structural change.
Amen! Preach!
I would like to support the first proposition (that any increase less than inflation is a de facto cut) with data. One of USAF's Mitchell Institute Aerospace Advantage podcasts this spring, reports that the cost of spares is inflating at rate of 10% across the board. Also that this number has been stable for several years.
Got to love the double speak and half truths. Also I work in factory field service on specialty machinery I'm seeing inflation about 15 to 20 % in the industrial space. My friends that do cnc machine repair and like trades are seeing see the same for inflation if not more. That also doesn't couldn't lead time for some machines that can be 6 to 18 months out these are for the machines that you need to make the parts to parts anything. We have got serval jobs not for being cheaper but the other guy was two years out on a new machine and we were only a year
There is a Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times." Our times are interesting indeed.
One factor driving inflation is that we are pretty close to full employment. When there is full employment, inflation results. Folks have money to spend, they drive up demand, which makes goods scarce and prices rise. The problem is, one cure is to put folks out of work. That seems great, for economists, but, what if you are the one put out of a job.
United States Labor Force Participation Rate dropped to 62.4 % in Apr 2023, compared with 62.6 % in the previous month.
US Labor Force Participation Rate is updated monthly, available from Jan 1948 to Apr 2023, with an average rate of 62.9 % .
The data reached the an all-time high of 68.1 % in Jul 1997 and a record low of 57.2 % in Jan 1948.
US Labour Force Participation Rate is reported by reported by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the latest reports, US Population reached 334.3 million people in Dec 2022.
Unemployment Rate of US dropped to 3.4 % in Apr 2023.
The country's Monthly Earnings stood at 4,590.3 USD in Apr 2023.
My bet is the actual unemployment numbers are much higher, and actual participation numbers are lower because of people working two jobs.
My bet? Failed Chinese supply chain coupled with expensive diesel and middle distillates.
We are still a petroleum economy.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that one issue is causing a problem. It's not high employment OR expensive diesel causing inflation; it could be high employment AND expensive diesel. But, if you have tried to hire anybody lately, there are not a lot of qualified folks out there.
"My bet? Failed Chinese supply chain coupled with expensive diesel and middle distillates."
The hiring issues are sufficient to make one wonder what the actual participation/unemployment rates are.
We failed to train anyone for a long time and treat those that had any interest in things like they trades like losers. I had to pay for most of my training all of my tools I used to warning my friends away from the trades now I can practically name my price
Trade schools/technical colleges don't give nice dinners to guidance counselors who send students their way.
"a record low of 57.2 % in Jan 1948."
I wonder how it was calculated then. It seems that was likely nearer to 100% participation in an economy where an average working class family could support parents and 2-3 kids on a single wage earner's labor.
The Fed printing trillions in the last ~15 years (plus reverse repo over $2T for the last year) has nothing to do with it.
Those greedy employees wanting more pay is the problem, bring in more immigrants who will work for lower pay.
Consumer prices rose 4 percent in the year through May, the slowest pace in more than two years and an encouraging sign, but, keep spinning your Putinesque propaganda.
"Putinesque propaganda", LOL, that's what you call facts you don't like?
It is not the "greed" of employees which makes inflation rise in periods of full employment. It is that the employees have money to spend, and they want to spend it. Too many dollars chasing too few goods leads inexorably to a rise in prices.
Comrade Putin, like the comrades before him, and DJT, think that proper planning can outwit the market. They couldn't, and he can't. Western systems are superior to the centrally planned economies of China and Russia when we embrace confusion, unleash economic liberty, and let lose the "animal spirits" onto the free market.
You missed the sarcasm in the "greed" comment.
So quantitative easing has nothing to do with inflation?
"centrally planned economies of China and Russia" that was last century, not as much today.
And if you think Western systems have let lose the "animal spirits" onto a "free market" you really haven't been paying attention the last thirty years.
It's a joke. A bottomless pit in which we throw treasure and get back empty promises of transformational wunderwaffen that fail to deliver. Can't even get an audit of the budget.
LOL sorry billy but the real joke is you.
As Russia has discovered first hand we get far more back then just empty promises. US defense gear may be expensive but (for the most part) it actually works in combat conditions. The thousands of tanks and other Russian vehicles and aircraft destroyed in Ukraine are proof of that.
How are those Patriots working out?
Shooting down Russian trash left and right.
LOL, does that explain the smoking hole near the Havansky bridge? Haven't heard from Budanov in a few weeks.
LOL, oh sure sweetie. It's definitely been destroyed just like the Russians have announced. Just like their destruction of 1,900 HIMARs batteries, 258 abrams tanks, and all the other nonsense.
Oh, look there goes another Ukrainian ammo dump, those secondary explosions are something else.
We squandered our opportunities to fix this problem 15-20 years ago and exacerbated it with legislative and acquisition systems that reward bad behavior led by a political party that is destroying the educational base of the country.
Learn to speak Chinese.
This argument will have to be repeated many times during the battle that is about to be waged over the FY24 budget. Increasing defense spending to keep pace with inflation in a shrinking budgetary environment will be hard for a party which instinctively wants to cut defense spending. This may explain why the Biden Administration is tripping over itself to try and get the PRC to the negotiating table now. If they can craft some paper-thin deal, they can declare the crisis over and pass through real dollar defense cuts.
People said similar things about, steam power, aviation etc. when all that was introduced. Thing is to, is to make sure they work are affordable before deciding to build a fleet around them. Unlike what they did with the LCS, EMALS, AWE and the advanced Gun System,
Based on their recent record, the billions the Navy has spent on unmanned systems would be better used doing something like bringing the Philly shipyard back online.
"If we must cut, where do you cut?"
The Army. Sorry guys, after twenty-years of a conveyor belt of funding, you're gonna have to take a haircut. Half your GO's had no idea about COIN resulting in zero progress in the AO's. Bigger fight is on the horizon and invading a country isn't one of the aspects we're looking to do.
Why did we establish a Space Force? What sort of idiot would create an entirely new set of senior civilian staff, the general officers, and all the folderol associated with an army to do a job the US Army is already fully capable of doing? (Oh, I forgot, that fellow universally recognized for his administrative ability, DJT.)
Bureaucratic imperative. Bureaucracies exist for their own benefit, this helps grow bureaucracy.
My life today is vastly superior to thirty years ago. I live in a quiet, safe community. I swim in a sea of instantaneous media content. We American have it great, no civilization has had so many folks live so well.
As a kid, my football coach was mailed cassette tapes of English TV where we could see clips of the team we were following, The Arsenal. A big tube tv on a stand playing streaky, blurred, images. Now, I have a TV the size of a high school blackboard, with The Arsenal in glorious high definition. Live. From London.
Life here is great, and it's only getting better.