- Joined
- May 24, 2007
- Messages
- 73,114
- Likes
- 10,945
- Points
- 113
back atcha! you're the poll worshiper around here....I've read about and studied the Reagan era quite a bit...he escalated our military beyond any president ever in history......he changed the way we conduct diplomacy around the globe from peace to military intimidation. Trump now wants to make the military even bigger.....BIG mistake from my view. I'm not a hawk....
FDR escalated our military beyond any president ever in history. He ran up enormous debts to pay for it. The highest debts in our history, as a % of GDP. FDR turned our peacetime factories (auto makers, airplanes, etc.) into war materiel factories. He had 300,000+ military airplanes alone.
As a % of GDP, Reagan's military was on the smaller side. Much less than the 6% of GDP that JFK urged congress to authorize. The spending was needed because Carter gutted the military, making it embarrassingly ineffective (see the rescue of the Iranian hostages that failed).
Reagan changed the way we conduct diplomacy, alright. Made peace with the USSR and made its collapse imminent. The intimidation thing was always there. We beat up on nations in our hemisphere and put missiles in Europe to threaten the USSR. JFK made a deal to end the cuban missile crisis by agreeing to remove some of those missiles. Kinda before Reagan's time. Reagan didn't start the cold war, he ended it. The massive decrease in nukes was started on his watch.
I don't think that growing the military is good or bad. It depends on if it gets used. Reagan didn't use it.
During the 80s, with all that military spending, spinoffs like the Internet, the microprocessor and PC, were developed. And the economic growth kicked ass for main street and the middle class. 24M+ jobs.
For those who don't want to go to college, or want a way to pay for it, joining the military is a fine way to go. It's as honorable, if not more so, profession than teaching or any other government job.
Whether you liked it or not, the $11B (peak yearly spending) on Star Wars did bring the Russians to the bargaining table and was a defensive idea. Not a sword but a shield. Too bad the science community were so defeatist about it, when they went all out given a similar challenge to land a man on the moon at a time we had near zero concept how to do it or the technology.
Finally, your spin chart isn't a poll. It's deliberately misleading.
If he had increased spending not at all, he would have spent $3T x 8 years = $24T. Since he increased it to $3.8T year 1, he spent at least $30.4T even if he increased the budget by $0 each year. If we're going to measure spending, the $30.4T and $6.4T increase are the true measure.

and you claim to be non-partisan. Wolf in sheep's clothing to the extreme.
