Military. Ain't no use in having the fifth largest military in the world if you're going to get your asses bombed to death.
We literally cannot afford another war and the resulting nation-building commitment. It would mean appropriating a trillion dollars to North Korea (which no politician would vote for) or handing Korea over to the Chinese (which no politician would vote for).
Quantity doesn't equal quality when it comes to the military. During Desert Storm, people were worried about how it would turn out because Iraq had one of the biggest military at the time. Only real thing NK has to show for their military is their march routines. Plus, their people are so uneducated about the rest of the world, they don't pose any REAL threat. I think this whole thing is starting to become the Missile Crisis of the 21st century. People need to stop being so paranoid. Last time we acted on what we thought were real threats, the Iraq War happened. Look at all the good that did us.
Oh I'm not suggesting for a second we do anything. It's not gonna happen, they have no oil, why would we be interested?
During WWII the economy got a boost because of the call to arms put america to work to manufacture weapons and implements of war. America currently has that covered. The fact is that the longer a war goes on, the higher the US debt goes.
There wasn't a Halliburton during world war 2, either. Somebody's gonna get a sweet payoff if the peninsula implodes, but it's not necessarily going to benefit an entire countries economy.
Yeah you guys are probably right. I suppose its much more privatised now, it would certainly make a couple of blokes very rich though.
That's because most of the world was destroyed and we and all of our factories were left untouched. We were producing goods for the rest of the world for quite some time before the rest of the world got back up and running. Simply creating jobs does nothing for an economy. These jobs need to be a result of consumer demand or else it's a worthless job that adds no value to society. This is why government-created jobs just redistribute wealth instead of create wealth like a real job. It's the same thing as having somebody dig a ditch and fill it back up. You're paying them to do something that the consumer has no interest in. If the consumer did have interest in something, the private sector would be creating the jobs to fulfill their needs since there would be a profit to be made. The only people interested in mass production of weapons for a war is the government, which means they would be the only demand. As we know, the government doesn't produce any of the money it has. It gets it through taxation. So all the jobs created and all the money spent during a war isn't adding any wealth to the economy. It's simply government spending other peoples' money. Worse yet, we lose a ton of wealth because of the destruction of the goods that were made for the war. Instead of us, say, having $1 trillion back in the pockets of consumers, that money is spent on a lot of items that get destroyed and lose all of their value. Even though a bunch of jobs are created through war and destruction, society as a whole becomes poorer. Look up the Broken Window Fallacy and it'll make more sense than my jumbled ramblings.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...korean-missile-test-delayed-by-windows-8.html I thought this was pretty amusing to say the least.
I know this is a serious discussion thread, but, I saw this on my Facebook feed and it was too funny not to share. [thumb]https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/601063_10152748556415377_885672608_n.jpg[/thumb]
http://www.news-republic.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=3&articleid=8255807 Can you tell if this is a joke or not?
Hence why the whole "5th largest military" crap is just rhetoric. Un is like that one stupid friend of yours you had as a kid, the one that set off a M80 in his hand because he couldn't get it to the toilet. And the war wouldn't be difficult, but re-educating the North Korean people would be an interesting task.