First: Competition between the states for new business or business growth leads to discouragement of higher taxes. State spending is less subject to abuse.

Second There are 4 classes of spending (Per Milton Friedman).

1. Spending of your money on yourself. You care about both cost and value.

2. Spending of your money on someone else. You care about cost, not so much about value.

3. Spending of someone else’s money on you. You care about value, not so much about cost.

4. Spending of A’s money on B. You (C) don’t care so much about either cost, or value.

Government spending is normally of class 4. Speinding when you don’t care about the outcome is normally less efficient than when you spend and care about the outcome. Thus government spending is less efficient than private spending.

For example, in his discussion of China he ridicules the idea that China could be (any time soon) a threat to the US. His point misses the mark. No one contends that China could ever (at least in the next 20 years) inflict a broad strategic defeat on the US. Instead China has, or soon will have, the ability to control specific areas, such as around Taiwan, and inflict prohibitive losses on any US attempt to remove China from the area (in say, an invasion on Taiwan). Such a situation is where the potential Chinese threat arises and US policy makers are trying to address. Whether we really should be concerned with this is a legitimate question, but Scheer doesn’t really bother to address it honestly and reasonably.

Another example is his attacks on the F-22 and F-35. Evidently unbeknownst to him, but known to many if not most military advisors is our F-15s and F-18s are largely obselete compared to the latest generation of Russian fighters and some of the upcoming Chinese copies. Developing, testing, and producing aircraft takes a decade if not more. If we had not developed the F-35 and more importantly the F-22, the US would have inferior aircraft to other nations, especially come five years from now.

Unlike say WW2, developing a modern aircraft or weapons system takes often a decade or more of lead time. To have an effective military, we have to be prepared for future conflicts, (at least 5-10 years in teh future). It is simply untenable to wait for parity by another country or even superiority and then expect that we can recover the difference. It simply doesn’t work that way anymore (unlike again WW2).

Perhaps we don’t have to have 2000 fighters in the airforce, however that really isn’t the argument that he making. His poor and frankly ignorant arguments do a great disservice to the legitimate debate regarding the direction of our military.