User:Xerographica/Unnecessary war

An unnecessary war is any war that people perceive to be unjustified and/or a waste of taxpayers' money. The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Gulf War, The War in Afghanistan, and The Iraq War have all been described as unnecessary wars.

History

For most of recorded history the power of the purse had been exclusively controlled by kings/emperors. Their control over taxes/tributes derived its legitimacy on the basis of divine authority. This authority was severely challenged in 1215 by the Magna Carta.

To guard against despotic royal rule, parliament sought to limit the kings’ powers to impose taxes so as to curtail their ability to maintain a standing army beyond times of war and immediate external threat - The evolution of parliament's power of the purse.

In other words, the nobles felt like the king was spending too much of their money on war. So, due to irresponsible spending, they took the power of the purse from him.

Opportunity costs of war

Every war has a cost...but far more importantly...every war has an opportunity cost. The cost is how much money and lives were spent on a war while the opportunity cost is what the money and lives could have accomplished if they hadn't been spent on the war. Clearly it's in the interests of the citizens that a nation's limited resources be used to produce the maximum value.

Here is Adolf Hitler arguing that more defense spending would create more value...

However well balanced the general pattern of a nation's life ought to be, there must at particular times be certain disturbances of the balance at the expense of other less vital tasks. If we do not succeed in bringing the German army as rapidly as possible to the rank of premier army in the world...then Germany will be lost! - Adolf Hitler, 1936

Here is Dwight Eisenhower trying to help people understand that wars have a very high opportunity cost...

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron...Is there no other way the world may live? - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Here's Daniel Brown's answer to the question raised by Eisenhower...

Each taxpayer could be contributing to a community which would become more reflective of the kind of world in which he or she would like to live. Gaudeat Emptor! - Daniel J. Brown, The Case For Tax-Target Plans

In other words, "opportunity cost" isn't one king, or one president or 500+ congresspeople determining the best uses of an entire nation's resources...it's each and every citizen considering the best uses of their own resources.

Tax choice, by giving taxpayers the freedom to consider the opportunity costs of their tax spending decisions, would ensure that the supply of national defense reflected the actual demand for national defense. This is how we would achieve a balance that maximizes value.

See also

• Boondoggle (project)
• Bridge to nowhere
• Guns versus butter model
• Government success
• Other people's money
• Pacifism
• Parable of the broken window
• Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act
• Tilting at windmills
• Unused highway