If you were in a terrible car accident and the doctors are struggling to keep you alive (which is analogous to the state the government is in right now), if there was a way to keep your heart and lungs alive by temporarily disabling power to your eyes and nose, you better believe the doctors would do just that.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
In Korea... in a war to posture against China, in a place we didn't belong, playing world police.
How did that war go, btw? Did we impress the Chinese into staying passive?
But again, that's fear mongering to say, "If we reduce our military, China will own us." I believe if we cut our military spending in half, we would still be in 1st place by a significant margin? And that isn't even to comment on what a real war would be like between "superpowers" now that everyone has nukes. Also, insane to say we will be going to war with China in modern day. Maybe in another 50 years when circumstances are drastically different, and I don't just mean us spending less money on being world police.
Words of interest in your post are "some people" and "want". In the current state, it shouldn't matter what "some people" "want". It matters more what the entire country as a whole NEEDS. And it needs to survive, which can be done without continued funding for space missions and the like. Once we get out of this huge deficit we can think about reactivating these functions to full force, but for now, I do not think national parks need resources that could go towards feeding the homeless.
Surveillance satellites are generally run by the NRO. Military communications satellites are mainly maintained by the Air Force, with either Army, Navy, or Air Force managing their payload, depending on the type of satellite it is. Launches are generally contracted to commercial entities now, with United Launch Alliance (a 50-50 share between Boeing and Lockheed) handling most of the military launches.
People didn't live fine without government? Hmm, ok. If the government didn't exist, would you spontaneously combust? No, you would be perfectly fine. I do not argue with the fact that there are some good government programs, but there are just as many bad ones that take away from the hard working (high taxes).