Say no to keeping our communities safe?

On September 28, 2012, Politico published the article “The mounting cost of violence” written by Democratic Representative Mike Honda from California. In this article Honda is discussing the high price of violence related expenses that are made in the U.S.  I think his intended audience is the general public and voters, because he is trying to show that our society/government should be spending money in other securities for the future.

 One of his arguments is that the expenditure of $2.16 trillion related to violence is way too much. I definitely agree that amount seems incredibly high and crazy, but how many things is that money really being spent on? Hundreds of things all over the world.  Honda is making it seem that all our government is doing is providing guns and war tanks with that money. “Is this really how we want to measure America’s success, how we want to develop as a society, and how we want to leave the world for our children and our children’s children?” He seems unrealistic and wants the world to focus on other things like economic and food security and don’t get me wrong those are things of high importance as well,  , but we are living in the real world where crime, violence, and terrorism are a fact of everyday.

Another argument he made was that “military spending is a poor source creation of a job.” The people in the military are risking their lives to do a job that many of us would never even consider, so that we can live freely in our country. For him to say that is very naïve because there is a lot of skill, determination, and training/education that is needed for the variety of jobs in the military.

 When you break it down to direct and indirect costs of violence there are all kind of things that are taken into account, for example hiring all of our authority personnel, programs for training, medical expenses for those injured, lifelong recovery for those injured, firearms, and the list goes on and on. I mean if there weren’t people to protect us and help the wounded we would live in a world of chaos. One expense that I would agree is a waste is the prison system. Our tax dollars are basically supporting criminals that our officers/attorneys/judges work so hard to put away and yet we still have to support them being in prison. That whole system just doesn’t seem fair.   

I did find logic when he compared the money spent on education/health care vs. military and their job output. Even though education/health care make more job output most of those jobs will in some sense contribute to the “violence” spending. The goverment should make improvements in spending for education and health care and maybe even changes to the spending on violence, but to say there are better things to spend the money on doesn't quite make sense.  It's like he is saying let's get rid of laws and protecting our communities and everyone defend themselves. Nonsense.