Its likely both welfare and warfare can be nicely framed in game theory. For example, I suspect welfare largely benefits women and children. But what results is Government becomes surrogate husband. This decreases the a woman’s motivation to tolerate a real husband / monogomy (women aren’t naturally monogomous if given a choice). Consquently, single mom’s proliferate. Men recognized they are no longer needed as husbands, so they drift, idle, and/or gang-bang. This creates a negative feedback loop of social decline, that increases need for more & more (government) welfare.

The case can also be made for warfare. The Europeans have a bad track record of living peacefully with each other. Western history books are stuffed full of petty but brutal European Wars. Also, Russian hopes and dreams for centuries involved securing warm water ports for its navy, so if left unchecked, they would have easily pushed south, and occupied much of what is today the oil rich middle east. I haven’t read the followoing book, but the title tells me alot about global geo-politic: Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard.

As for the armed services, as Bryan elaborates on, I think this is an interesting issue but not necessarily mutually exclusive. We could reform healthcare independently. But yes, I wonder about how countries can spend money on wars without taking care of its own people. Of course domestic aid is hard to implement–I took a course on welfare policy and many studies suggest higher social supports decrease the incentive to work. It is the billion dollar question how to structure welfare correctly.

Great one Glenn–this is exactly the kind of article that has become so “in style” right now.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

Perhaps America should downsize it’s Army, Air Force and Navy, as it can no longer afford to wage war around the world. Divert that money into healthcare and look after its own tax payers.

America’s influence in the world is decreasing anyway, so why throw money at external problems.