Political Leanings QuizFollow

Guess I should have read farther first. Um... That falls under the heading of opposing something the Dems are trying to do. Doesn't count. Find a social outcome the GOP wants to achieve for which they attempt to pass laws in order to create said outcome.

It's a semantic point here, but I think it's one worth making. That's still the minimum number. Whatever the minimum amount is required to achieve a reasonable level of safety--however you choose to define a "reasonable level"--is the minimum amount. Tautologically, the minimum amount required to defend ourselves must provide defense, and if it doesn't then it was never the minimum amount.

I'm disappointed I haven't received a response from from Kaolian or any of the conservative leaning posters. I think the tpyical conservative or perhaps even independent view on liberals is that that are soft when it comes to the military for moral or ethical reasons, when my argument is that completely from the perspective of maximizing military strength (in a "present value" sense).

Yep, but defense isn't necessarily a binary, you don't have to win for defense to have been sufficient, nor must you lose for it to have failed you.

I don't know how other Democrats feel, but I see military allocation as a question of sustainability and growth. The concept is demonstrated fairly well in most RTS games. Pumping too many resources early on into your military strength slows down your economy, which in turn reduces your future military might. Typically you want to have the minimum number of units required to defend yourself so that you can pump the rest of your resources into growth. I see the goal as to maintain a minimum level of defense while building up the most fundamental force responsible for your growth. Building fighters now make you stronger in the present, but it takes resources away from conducting fighter research, which will give you strong fighters later on. Pumping funds into fighter research gives you stronger fighters in a few years, but it takes away from pumping money into infrastructure to increase the strength of your economy and thus increase the amount of money you can pump into fighter research, which increase the strength of your fighters later on. However pumping money into purely infrastructure projects takes away from resources into education, which slows the growth of your economy, which slows the growth of your fighter research, which detracts from the quality and number of fighters you can field.

I wouldn't want the U.S. to be stronger now when it means that ultimately it will be weaker in the next decades.

The benefits of being aggressive and proactive with your military also decrease as the number of opponents increase. In Risk it's a bad idea to spend all of your armies taking out a rival while another one sits there building up troops waiting for you to weaken yourself. Soft power is real power, because you want other people to spend their resources fighting your enemies for you.

The current U.S. military strategy is awful. We make absolute gains, but suffer comparative losses. We weaken ourselves to weaken one enemy, while other enemies stay the same or grow stronger. Nation building makes us weaker. Having too large of an army makes us weaker.

That's a pretty level-headed score in my opinion.

Sure why not, what's the problem?

The telling people how to live their lives part. Also, whether the tax part is a problem or not really depends on how much you think taxes should be raised, are we talking small single digit percentages here, or are we talking extravagant unnecessary tax hikes?

He wasn't even middle left, so I'm guessing small tax hikes, when adequately justified.

Hmm, I can sort of see your point there, though you could be a little more clear about the last sentence.

Assuming that you're saying that that's why we need the minimum wage laws, then I agree completely. The big question is, what constitutes a fair minimum wage? Personally, I think that it should rise with inflation, and the prices of the basic necessities and cost of utilities.

True enough, the problem is that it tends to move slower than it needs to. I'll point out British Columbia and Alberta as examples of this. Things cost more there, but they pay the smallest minimum wage at $8.75 and $8.80 respectively. For comparison, here in Ontario, the minimum wage is $10.25.