What exactly are the threats to sea lanes that require billion dollar aircraft carriers and nuclear subs? The Black Pearl and it’s crew?

Aircraft carriers and submarines are currently used to project force on land, not to handle enemy navies. There are limitations to this, of course. The target has to be near an ocean. It would suck big time to have to deal with a crisis in Zaire this way. We have long-range strategic options, but no real long range way to put forces on the ground.

I really don’t see the % of GDP as particularly relevant to the point I was trying to make, which is: how big is big enough?

You are, of course, largely right. I am always suspicious of any statistic that works from percent of GDP, since there is such a huge discrepancy in nations. Such statistics, for example, are used to make it look like Denmark gives more in aid to other nations than the U.S. does. I was just making a point that the fact that we spend much more than a Third World nation is not the only story.

Hey, Tom, I thought your view was that Government shouldn’t redistribute wealth? Don’t you think that the free market would come up with a hot-shot military if it was put up for bids? More seriously, why not spend the military budget on health care? High tech, lots of employees, and it’s in the business of saving lives instead of killing.

First, a clarification of terms: redistribution of wealth is taking tax money and giving it to someone simply because they exist*. This is not the same thing as paying someone Federal money for a service rendered. For example, paying a Federal worker may be wasteful if their function is not important or redundant, but it is NOT welfare or wealth redistribution. The worker is not a parasite. Paying a defense contractor to build something for the government is not wealth redistribution. Whether or not it's a ripoff is a separate question.

If our military disappeared, health care could become very difficult very quickly.

First of all, what evidence is there that more blood is being saved by spending all of that mountain of treasure? I’m all for high tech replacing bodies, but avoiding war would save a lot of both... then the smart bombs and stealth bombers wouldn't be needed. I know that, realistically, there will be war for the foreseeable future, but does the US military need to be so huge and hugely powerful as it is?

The high tech works. We beat and occupied the nation of Iraq, and have lost so far a couple of hundred troops to hostile action, and most of those in down and dirty ground work. General Patton would drop his jaw. World War Two averaged 221 combat deaths a day for four years.

If our objective had been to simply destroy Iraq, and not try to reconstruct it, we could have done it in hours with no U.S. casualties at all.

*This is by no means confined to lower income groups.