taxpayers at work

The media highlight easy targets like street crime... keeps us all frightened, hunkered down in our homes and cars. Can't get organized there... can't do street demos from the bunker. The storm trooper Right and many advertisers will get on their case if media strays beyond the permitted parameters and individual journalists labor under the threat of termination for "over-inquisitive" reporting. Health care for all is WAY too expensive but aircraft carriers? oh we gots to have'em... our very survival is at stake.

Military spending, from the point of view of the rulers, has three advantages: it's not obvious how much an aircraft carrier should cost so profits can be exquisite; military spending empowers mostly our favorite class (whereas spending on education creates more jobs and empowers those who might eventually question class privilege); then of course the military, like the police locally, can intimidate other nations and/or subdue them when the local dictator fails to do their job - all to keep/make an advantageous situation for international corporations, esp. U.S.-based (access to resources and cheap labor on terms that profit same along with local cooperative elites), and to squelch any stirrings of profit-threatening real democracy.