Well, it's kind of a trolley car-ish problem to me.
When there is no longer an option of zero people being harmed, we start naturally start thinking about which is the lesser amount of harm -- X people being harmed during a quick crash and burn of Trumpian rule, or Y people being harmed over a greater number of years of sustained Trumpian rule.
I do of course also hope that I am wrong about all of this.
Every government faces that with almost every decision. Every aircraft carrier represents something like 40 never-built schools or 15 never-built hospitals.
> I do of course also hope that I am wrong about all of this.
Every government faces that with almost every
decision. Every aircraft carrier represents
something like 40 never-built schools or 15
never-built hospitals.
Well, it's complicated, right? When the government spends money it doesn't really leave the economy. $10bil on an aircraft carrier is also tens of thousands of jobs... half of the money goes right back to the government in taxes... etc.
The USA has a workforce of something like 170 million. No matter how this is financed, no matter what form of government you have, their collective output is that of 170 million people.
You get some of them to build, maintain, and crew an aircraft carrier, then those specific people are not going to be available for building, maintaining, and staffing 40 or so schools.
That's not a realistic way of thinking about it. From multiple angles.
Back of the envelope math: there are about 26,000 sailors staffing the nation's aircraft carriers. Let's round it up to 50,000 to account for the folks who build them, admin, etc.
That's 0.03% of the available workforce. It's not a remotely significant reason why our school system isn't great.
Additionally, the demographic of people who build and serve on aircraft carriers likely does not overlap significantly with the people who would otherwise be staffing schools.
When there is no longer an option of zero people being harmed, we start naturally start thinking about which is the lesser amount of harm -- X people being harmed during a quick crash and burn of Trumpian rule, or Y people being harmed over a greater number of years of sustained Trumpian rule.
I do of course also hope that I am wrong about all of this.