James R. Rummel

I am a self defense instructor who lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Teddy Would be Proud

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The title refers to the 26th President of the United States. You know the guy with the line about the big stick.

I was thinking about this while reading a report on the Jane’s Defence server. It seems that the US defense budget was 46% of global military spending in 2003. It’s is expected to equal the rest of the world’s combined expenditure in 2006.

I wonder about these totals. The numbers from this page from 2003 indicate that the US defense budget was 49% of the global total even back then. This page at GlobalSecurity.org pretty much agrees with that, even though some of the figures are different. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out that we’ve passed the halfway mark already.

There are a few observations that I can make about all of this. One is that all of this money that America is spending isn’t directly tied into present military capability. The US leads the world in R&D spending, including military technology. (The US accounted for 89% of all R&D dollars in 2003. It may have changed since then.) A significant amount of this cash is going towards projects to ensure that a future belligerent will have little chance to destroy the US, even if the present rosy economic climate dissolves in the future.

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Basted in Melted Blubber

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The world faced an ecological crisis. Whaling had driven several species to the edge of complete extinction. Unless something was done, and done fast, it was possible that many whale species would be wiped from the world’s oceans in less than a decade.

So the International Whaling Commission was formed in order to place limits on the number of whales which could be harvested each year. The preliminary work was done in the 1930’s with the signing of the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling.

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Having Babies and Having Socialized Health Care

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It’s been my experience that most people who favor a form of universal, government controlled health care have extremely unrealistic expectations. They want unlimited resources to be available to everyone, at any time, no matter the cost.

This subject was recently explored by Susanna at A Cut on the Bias. The subject of her short post was a proposal by the Australian government to limit in vitro fertilization treatments to 3 tries per couple. Any further attempts would have to be funded by the couple themselves.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me, at least so far as any government controlled health care plan can be said to be reasonable. But Deb over at Accidental Verbosity doesn‘t see it that way.

Deb details the resource-intensive care that she received during her pregnancy, and she argues that since the care allocated to a healthy fetus shouldn’t be rationed then the procedures to create such a fetus also shouldn’t be rationed.

Deb makes a good case as long as you accept the base she’s using to build her arguments: that unlimited care is too valuable and politically sensitive to ration. The only problem is that this is a straw man.

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Rolling In It

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I was just reading this news item, which discusses the provisions that various emergency agencies have set up in order to take care of animals during disasters.

This is certainly nothing new, and it’s eminently practical since livestock are a major form of agricultural assets. Protecting farm animals against needless death is a way for the state governments to protect their tax base.

But people are taking steps beyond moving cows or horses out of harms way. Emergency shelters for people are now preparing to meet the needs of pets as well as their owners.

Megan McArdle says that it’s very difficult to declare yourself wealthy because the goalposts keep retreating as you move up the income ladder. That’s certainly true, but I think that I’ve found an indicator of the relative wealth of the nation as a whole.