That's a weak reply. 

Was the military statement as efficient with their R+D budget as a private corporation or privately held institute of research would be? Or to put it in a different way: would a privately managed entity have yielded more scientific and technologic breakthroughs with that budget?

Military projects are often veiled in secrecy, covered in red tape, managed by peers with a common military background and overseed over closed-door sessions of a very small number of democrately elected civilians. Traditionally those are the breeding grounds of inefficiency and corruption.

Said groups would never get said budget since such ventures are both

A) Too expensive except for government.

B) The final product is too expensive except for the government... until it goes down in price after the initial sticker prices are paid back via government contracts.

It's just like Nasa.  Could a public corporation do better?  Dunno.  They'll never get the funding since there isn't enough motivation outside of the government doing it.

But that's the point I'm talking about. If the government were to take 5 billion from military spending and distributed it amongst privately managed investigation institutes -where the money would be under public scrutiny- as a society the US could get a better return on their tax money. We want less taxes and more efficiently managed, don't we?

To what gain?  There would be no one to buy said products... unless you suggest the government also buy a bunch of stuff it won't even use.

Or unless you are talking about weapons... which these deals already go to private companies, but putting them under public scruitney would be dangerous when it comes to keeping the things ours.

This is disgusting, in my opinion.  The US should not be in the business of exporting war machines.  We even claim to be trying to keep world peace.

If we didn't sell our weapons, we would slow the need for new and better weapons.

Well, for starters they might actually a better return on their investment. Less $$ for more science. Besides, while no one would be buying F22's, the science and technology would trickle down faster to society.

I don't disagree.  Just stating the simple facts of the situation.

As it's said.

"God give me serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things i can, and wisdom to know the difference."

It's no different a statement then saying that abortions are a good thing for society because they reduce the number of poor and unwanted children.

Nobody is pro abortion. (well few)  Most people would perfer a world where people were actually responsible with sex.  However given that it can't be changed...

You go where the data points.

Look, I'm not lobbying for the all out cut off of all military funding immediately, but i believe an reduction in spending is due. I said a number like 20% would be sufficient. Hey, instead of keeping 250,000 troops active, why not reduce that to 200,000 instead?

Instead of getting the F22 out this year, lets reduce some spending on the R+D on that; it will delay the project a little so it might come out next year instead.

That seems like the complete backwords thing to do when trying to stimulate the economy.  If anything it should be argued that we should increase production when it comes to replacing our outdated planes and ships.  Do stuff we were going to do down the line now early to spur production.

The F22 is already out though... we've got some made... other countries actually want to buy them.   We had them made with the Promise we'd buy 700+ and instead have decided to purchase only like... 128.  which really hurts Lockheed and Boeing.

the extra money could be used to help balance the budget, or to build up infrastructure, or to lower taxes, all of which would be beneficial.

Don't make it sound like Defense spending is exactly what we need to stimulate the economy