Rich Dogs

            My dog, Gracie, recently tore her ACL and had to have an expensive specialty surgery to repair it. I obviously care greatly about my dog, and she definitely had a physical problem that needed to be addressed, so it was an easy choice for my family to pay for her surgery.

However, there is a bit of an ethical dilemma here. There are many people, not only in third world countries but also in the United States, who cannot afford to get the proper medical care needed for their health problems. In an article from the New York Times, I learned that about 48 million Americans are currently living without healthcare (number comes from Census Bureau).

So, after my dog had surgery I started to wonder if it was really right to be providing specialty care like this to pets when many of our fellow Americans are forced to go without it. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I think it is wrong to provide care to animals. I love animals, especially my dog, but this is just a troubling situation. It really goes back to the idea of a divide between the rich and the poor.

For example, in the same article, the author cites a study that found that almost 25 percent of people in households that make under $25,000 a year do not have healthcare. Among the wealthy (households earning above $75,000 per year), under 8 percent did not have healthcare. This means that if you are living in a household whose annual income is less than $25,000, you are over three times as likely to lack healthcare than someone coming from a family with means! While poor people cannot afford to pay for proper medical care, people with means will often pay for not only their own care, but for the care of their animals. The idea of the rich having such luxuries as animal psychotherapists and pet acupuncturists contrasts sharply with follow human Americans who don't even have basic medical care.

Protector or Bully?

            I have always thought of the United States as the world’s police force, a big brother for countless other nations around the world who depend on us to keep them safe. I mean, come on, the world would be a chaotic mess if not for the U.S., right? Perhaps not.

While researching for my junior theme, I have repeatedly come across this question of whether or not the U.S. really is the world’s police force or if we are just a big bully. I find myself questioning my belief of the United States acting as the world’s police force, and my research process has opened my eyes to some aspects of our use of military that perhaps aren’t so heroic.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, Melvyn P. Leffler discusses the United States’ dominant military. He writes about our defense spending, revealing that the Pentagon insists that we have defense capabilities “sufficient to create an international order conducive to our way of life.” This quote really stood out to me; it implies that the U.S. is making people accept its’ ideals and values as their own by using military power to instill fear in other nations. In this sense, the U.S. seems less like the world’s police force, less like the heroic nation that I like to think of it as.

I am also reading a book right now called National Insecurity by Melvin A. Goodman. He writes that the U.S. is the only country that uses its military “primarily to support foreign policy rather than to defend our borders and people” (10). This quote implies that the U.S. is more aggressive than most countries, which might not be a bad thing, but it is definitely something that I will continue to research. A military, in my opinion, is meant to serve the purpose of defending a nation and protecting it from harm. The fact that we are using our military abroad to “support foreign policy” is alarming to me. This could mean that we are trying to get other nations to conform to our ideals, as Leffler suggested.

In my American Studies class the other day, we talked about the U.S. controlling how other countries are run and what type of government they run. For example, we learned that in the Iranian Coup the U.S. government took the Iranian leader out of power and put in a man who they found to be an acceptable leader. Who are we to tell other nations how they should run their government? I can see how some would argue that this makes us more of an international bully than an international police force.

To be honest, I am still unsure what I think of this. I can see an argument for both sides. I chose to give mainly the argument for the side that suggests that the U.S. is a bully in this blog post simply because I feel that it is the side that is not heard as much because people are sometimes hesitant to speak up.

Proposed Defense Cut

            According to an article from the LA Times, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently announced a budget proposal that would shrink Army troops to levels that have not been seen since before World War Two. In addition, the plan calls for almost $500 billion in cuts to the defense budget over the next ten years. When I first read this, I was quite alarmed! I have always viewed the U.S. as the most powerful nation in the world, and I feared that this would interfere with our capability to defend ourselves.

However, upon further research, I realized that the amount that we currently spend on the military is absurdly high. For example, in an article written by Glenn Greenwald, I discovered that the U.S. spends almost as much on military as all the other nations in the world combined. Below is a pie chart that illustrates this.

The U.S. also spends the six times more than the second greatest spender in the world, China. To me, this is absolutely ridiculous. I understand that we need to have a strong military to defend ourselves if conflict arises, but there is a balance, and the amount that we currently spend is just too much.

In my opinion, I think it is irresponsible for the government to spend this much on military. We are already in huge debt trouble, and I find it hard to believe that this budget is sustainable. In addition, we could be spending the money elsewhere, like healthcare or improving educational systems. We already are the most powerful nation in the world…but are we the most well educated? I think not.

1 Plane or 25 Schools…Take Your Pick

             When researching for Junior Theme topic ideas today, I came across an article from Forbes that I found to be very interesting. The author, Loren Thompson, details that by 2015, the U.S. Air Force is planning to buy 80-100 new bomber jets to increase our national security and, as the government stated, to “deter nuclear aggression”. I found it peculiar that this would be an act meant to prevent violence, because wouldn’t buying 100 deadly airplanes create alarm in other nations? As shown by the title of his article (“What Planes Cost – And Why $550 Million is Cheap for a New Bomber”), Thompson believes that the government is being very economical in their spending.

However, according to the very same Forbes article, each of these planes is projected to cost about $550 - $700 million, and that does not include the price of testing and developing the planes, nor does it include the price of the support systems that will be needed, like refueling tankers. Not counting the impact that inflation will have on the price, this new fleet of jets will cost around $55 billion. This doesn’t sound all that “cheap” to me.

            While I am aware that our Air Force’s current fleet of jets is about 30 years old and many people think we need more bombers, we could be spending all of this money on something that I believe is far more important – educational systems in America. Perhaps we could reduce military spending in other areas in order to accommodate for this new purchase. In the article, Thompson explains that each one of these $550 million planes is equivalent in “opportunity cost” to about 25 high schools. That means that instead of buying a new fleet of planes for our Air Force, we could provide our nation’s students with 250 new high schools.

            To me at least, there seems to be a problem here. We are, without a doubt, the strongest nation in the world in terms of military power. However, we are not the strongest nation in terms of our educational system. For example, our education system is considered to be “mediocre” according to an internationalranking of OECD countries. So in my opinion, we should be spending this money on making much-needed improvements to our education system, rather than spending it on a new fleet of jets.