The USA military budget.
All democrats and some republicans (for example, senator Rand Paul) very often say that military budget of the USA is 10(?) times larger than next 14(?) countries of the world including Russia and China together. People, who say so, demonstrate complete lack of knowledge about what such socialist/communist countries as Russia and China can do to provide their propaganda machines worldwide with false information. Each socialist/communist country always claimed and claims that its military budget is much smaller, than military budget of capitalist countries, although at the end Soviet Union have collapsed and China had to introduce, albeit partially, a market economy, under weight of the military budget, which officially never exceeded 10% to 15% of the total budget, but in reality consumed more than 80% or even 90% of the total budget. Let us bring to our readers’ attention well known facts from the USSR 74 years history. For example, Soviet Union had relatively high cost of a steel and, when they started building tanks for the army, the military part of the budget started to grow very fast. GOSPLAN (The State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan, was the agency responsible for central economic planning in the Soviet Union) have gotten the order to find solution for the problem. Solution, as in many other cases, was very simple – publish official price of 1 ton of steel many times lower than its real cost. That move made cost of a tank and, respectively, military part of the budget, much smaller. However, it also made other non-military products, made of steel, much cheaper. But this negative side effect of the solution is usually easily cured by including steel in the list of “deficits”. It means that the Government cannot produce required quantity of a “deficit” product and it makes the product available only to whom it wishes. By the way, the absolute majority of all food, cloth and other consumer products in the USSR were “deficit”.
Communist China and all other communist countries, we know about, had and have exactly the same socio-economic system as the Soviet Union. So, it would be a good advice to majority of democrats and some republicans, who are trying, sincerely or not, to compare the USA military budget with Russian, Chinese and other socialist and communist countries budgets, spent more time studying the mankind history of XX century, since well-known quote "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it" does not promise good future to citizens of our country in case, if people with deficit of knowledge of mankind history will become leaders of our country.
B.V., November 2015
All democrats and some republicans (for example, senator Rand Paul) very often say that military budget of the USA is 10(?) times larger than next 14(?) countries of the world including Russia and China together. People, who say so, demonstrate complete lack of knowledge about what such socialist/communist countries as Russia and China can do to provide their propaganda machines worldwide with false information. Each socialist/communist country always claimed and claims that its military budget is much smaller, than military budget of capitalist countries, although at the end Soviet Union have collapsed and China had to introduce, albeit partially, a market economy, under weight of the military budget, which officially never exceeded 10% to 15% of the total budget, but in reality consumed more than 80% or even 90% of the total budget. Let us bring to our readers’ attention well known facts from the USSR 74 years history. For example, Soviet Union had relatively high cost of a steel and, when they started building tanks for the army, the military part of the budget started to grow very fast. GOSPLAN (The State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan, was the agency responsible for central economic planning in the Soviet Union) have gotten the order to find solution for the problem. Solution, as in many other cases, was very simple – publish official price of 1 ton of steel many times lower than its real cost. That move made cost of a tank and, respectively, military part of the budget, much smaller. However, it also made other non-military products, made of steel, much cheaper. But this negative side effect of the solution is usually easily cured by including steel in the list of “deficits”. It means that the Government cannot produce required quantity of a “deficit” product and it makes the product available only to whom it wishes. By the way, the absolute majority of all food, cloth and other consumer products in the USSR were “deficit”.
Communist China and all other communist countries, we know about, had and have exactly the same socio-economic system as the Soviet Union. So, it would be a good advice to majority of democrats and some republicans, who are trying, sincerely or not, to compare the USA military budget with Russian, Chinese and other socialist and communist countries budgets, spent more time studying the mankind history of XX century, since well-known quote "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it" does not promise good future to citizens of our country in case, if people with deficit of knowledge of mankind history will become leaders of our country.
B.V., November 2015