Cutting the military

After WW 2 ended the people were tired of war and the defense budget was cut. Within five years we were in another war in Korea and we sent our military over there with obsolete equipment. 38,000 soldiers died in that war and many because of poor equipment. Our WW 2 tanks went up against Russian built tanks and they were out gunned. Once again when the cold war ended we decided that the wars of the future would be high tech and we didn’t need as many troops. Then came 9/11 and once again we were at war. The big complaint was that we didn’t have enough ground troops and our soldiers had to do multiple tours of duty. In addition there were complaints about outdated equipment. Now as these wars are winding down The President has proposed cutting military. There has always been a running argument between spending on military programs and spending on social programs, what is referred to in economics as guns vs butter. If we underspend on social programs some people are homeless and some go hungry and when that happens we reverse course and spend more. When we underspend on military people die and/or are injured. It is very difficult to determine what might be needed for some future war and therefor hard to decide on how much to spend. Thus the tendency is to overspend and this results in waste. Often times those who complain about our soldiers not having proper equipment are the same ones who complained about the high cost of military.