Canadians could face tax hikes as Ottawa scrambles to fund defence target (www.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 23 hours ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Yup. Cutting federal staff worth 3.5% of GDP was never going to work.

That's fine. Spending on the military is mildly redistributive anyway.

[-] patatas@sh.itjust.works 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Was listening to the most recent episode of The Dig https://thedigradio.com/podcast/economic-warfare-w-asli-bali-esfandyar-batmanghelidj-nicholas-mulder/ and they made a really astute point that the US's immense military budget does not exist to produce the most effective weapons (as we can clearly see in their war on Iran), it exists to spend money into private corporations' pockets. Canada is apparently no different.

The podcast guests also mentioned that Iran's yearly military budget is only about US$8 billion, yet they've been quite successful at waging asymmetric warfare in self-defense against the largest and supposedly most powerful military on the planet. As for Canada: even before all these increases, we were already spending more than 3.5 times that amount, around US$30 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures.

And even now, the Canadian government/military are acting as if we still have to spend three times that amount in order to have any hope whatsoever of fending off attacks. It's ridiculous. This is robbery.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

and they made a really astute point that the US’s immense military budget does not exist to produce the most effective weapons (as we can clearly see in their war on Iran)

Sooo what's the casualty ratio right now?

They have great weapons, it's just that weapons can't occupy a country.

Also notice that military contractors give the same average long-term returns as everything else.

[-] sbv@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 hours ago

I've heard the argument that we should include infrastructure in our military spending. Stuff like transportation infrastructure (mostly up north), an east/west electric grid, etc. Things that improve resilience and would (probably) improve our chances during an invasion.

[-] AGM@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

Yeah, I agree with taking money allocated for defense and spending it on infrastructure that would improve defense but it's primarily going to be for civilian benefit, but doing so just makes it even more glaring the we don't just fund that infrastructure without making it part of a defense budget.

[-] sbv@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

Yeah. It's shitty that we've deprioritized infrastructure, but I'll take whatever shady, off brand justifications we need to get it.

I'm pretty sure that's how the US justified building their interstate highway system.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 hours ago

I think that is precisely the dynamic. The oligarchs basically found a socially acceptable way to funnel taxes back into their pockets instead of productive purposes they're meant for. It's a great trick since you can always find ways to scare people into funding the military, and these policies tend to have fairly broad support.

Meanwhile, it's not even clearly whom our military plans to fight exactly. We're certainly not going to take on the US, especially given that most of our weapons are produced there. We're not going to take on Russia either. Our best bet for protection would be to create deeper ties with China which could act as a balance to the US. Also, as we now see in Iran, the kind of military we are building is completely outdated. Modern military would rely on cheap drones and missiles as a primary form of defense.