When will Dollar collapse as the world reserve currency?

[sethnintendo]

starcraft said:

sethnintendo said:

Perhaps if USA could keep its military and medical spending in check then we would actually have a balanced budget or surplus. All these other programs Republicans and Democrats bicker over are nothing compared to military, medical and social security.  We need to balance the budget but not the Tea Party way...  They just want to cut programs that barely add anything to the budget yet keep military spending flying hugh...  If we could stay out of a war for a decade or two then maybe we could run a surplus.

Military spending is not overly large as a proportion of GDP.  It is also miniscule when compared to health and entitlement programs, and will become smaller and smaller relative to those programs over time.

You may argue that that is as it should be, but lets not pretend that the military is in anyway the source of the USA's budgetary woes.

Sure military spending isn't as high as all entitlement programs combined but it is still a big chunk (around 17-19% recently).  Just take a look at the ill fated F-35 Lightning program.  The program is project to cost trillions over the lifetime of the aircraft.  How many bad ass planes do we need?  If we canceled about a hundred of the total order you probably could feed all the homeless in USA for a decade or support other programs.  Soon it will be all drones flying.  There is plenty of waste in the military budget.  Hell, the pentagon lost track of billions (perhaps even trillions) in the Iraq war.  Don't even mention the no bid contracts to Halliburton, etc..  Pretty much USA needs to stop fucking "nation building" and focus on rebuilding its crumbling infrastructure.  All that money for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could have been better spent rebuilding the USA.  The wars in the middle east were nothing but a money flush down the toliet.