It has happened over and over. When talking to a democrat socialist or a liberal, they bring up the wonderful socialized health program in Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands or some other minor Eastern European country. If it can work there, then it can work here, they proudly affirm.
They never stop to really ask themselves why these countries can afford such experiments, and the United States can’t. But more importantly, they never stop to ask themselves why the world can afford to allow them these socialized institutions, but why the world cannot afford the United States taking on these kind of massive financial changes.
First, let us look at military power. The United States, at all times, is prepared to fight a war on three fronts at the same time. The US literally has a military capacity to fight 3 wars at once, with two other superpowers thrown in for good measure.
The size and scope of US military reach is astounding and mind-boggling. The US, for example, has 13, 683 military aircraft. To compare, this is more than the next 7 countries on the military superpower index COMBINED.
America has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The rest of the world combined has two.
The United States spends about $732 Billion on its military every year, which is almost as much as the next 10 countries combined.
These are important, if not critical facts. They are important because it is all necessary for world pace and stability. If the United States wasn’t making up this kind of slack, and if America reduced its massive military budget, western civilization itself would come into immediate jeopardy. Bad actors, with dreams of expansion and empire, like Russia and China, would seize on this weakening of the West’s defensive infrastructure and expand their global reach, either by projection or war.
In other words, the United States fields almost all of the military infrastructure of western democratic nations. They are, in some ways, the sacrificial lamb.
If America instituted the expensive and grand social experiments that others can only afford because of America’s assumed protection, who is going to pick up the slack then and stop the bad guys from destroying western civilization?
In those nations that these socialist programs exist in, do they also have the financial responsibility for a HUNDRED worldwide military bases, and a military geared for fighting 3 wars at once? Is the world looking TO THEM every time the shit break loose?
And if they don’t have those responsibilities, who–do you think, is going to take up the place of world leader once America goes into unrecoverable debt?
Certainly not China or Russia, right?
Right?
In all, these countries enjoy the capability to spend large proportions of their overall budgets on socialized medicine and free healthcare because they rely on the massive military power of the United States to ward off potential existential threats such as China or Russia. American power and projection across the globe keeps them in check. If America were to institute the same programs, they would, of necessity, have to decrease military spending and weaken the whole civilized world’s defensive posture against bad actors and nations. The rest of the free world would immediately become vulnerable and have to vastly increase their own military spending budgets. They might not be able to keep or maintain these expensive socialist programs financially.
This is one of the reasons why you generally see President Donald Trump constantly urging other Western nations to increase their overall contribution to matters of defense. He probably wants nothing more than to reduce military spending so that he can introduce Trumpcare and make his lasting mark on American history.