Donald Trump is a billionaire. That doesn’t mean he’s a terrible person. Everything else he does, says, and probably enjoys thinking about DOES mean he’s a terrible person. It’s easy to see why he would think about cutting social programs, including arts programs that barely affect the budget. It’s easy to see why he would give all the money to corporations and let the average person suffer. The answer is simple. He likes to hurt people. He’s never wanted to pay anyone for work they’ve done, even when he’s said he pay them. He’s threatened people, and he’s going to keep doing that.
What will Trump do with the extra money? (By the way, his budget plan doesn’t seem to actually make him any money, but who’s paying attention besides me?) He’ll build up the already gigantic military to be an even stronger force. Fact is, that can’t be all that bad, but do we need it? Well, there’s North Korea, China, Iran, ISIS, and others that want to kill us. I mean, that’s true, but our military budget is already more than half a trillion. More than half of $1,000,000,000,000. Lots of zeroes there. That’s per year, FYI. We all know this, but he wants to add even more to it.
However, I think it’s probably not a bad idea to invest in the military. I think you can do it without spending much more money, though. I think he wants to increase the budget by 14%. However, he could shift some resources to cybercrime without spending extra money. He could also retrain officers in more modern skills that aren’t akin to the conventional warfare strategies that are proving highly ineffective. Moreover, I don’t think even a 14% increase will be enough to attack the major enemies we have. ISIS? Okay. We can do that. Tough, but we can do it. North Korea? No. That can’t be done no matter how much money we throw at it because China will never let it happen. Cybercrime? I’m not sure that won’t be our Achilles heel. We’re just not good at cyber defense. We’re trying, but so far, the Chinese, Russians, and a couple others are far better than us. I’m not sure cutting Planned Parenthood to pay for a cyber defense is really smart. We’ll end up getting rid of an important domestic program in favor of a military program that doesn’t accomplish its goal. I say go for it, but I don’t think it’s going to work, and I don’t think we should gut our domestic programs for a fight we can’t win.
I think it’s more effective to simply start boycotting countries we don’t like. Not just sanctioning but specifically banning economic activity in certain industries of an entire country. In most countries, you can’t do that. For example, Iranian citizens seriously do not deserve this. However, North Korean already destroys its people so if we hadn’t already sanctioned them in every way possible, I’d say blocking all economic activity between the U.S. and North Korea wouldn’t hurt them more than their government is already hurting them anyway. When it comes to China and some industries there and some industries in some other countries, I think it’s time to put a blanket ban on economic activity across entire industries. I don’t think we can continue competing in traditional ways. China has found a way around that. They’re real smart, and they’re beating us. Therefore, I think we need to start changing the way we fight them and their allies, and I don’t think that requires more money.
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