The amount of interventionism, control and central planning involved in what and where gets spent, how tarrifs, and international agreements work is staggering. And this was of course written before the massive bailouts during the housing crisis.
There is also a need it seems to constantly protect the political and economic ideology. Cannot simply, for example, institute basic income, that's too socialistic sounding, and it would involved a lot of ideological backpedalling. So to keep it masked, have to first create a threat -- "Terrorism / Communism / Drugs / War", which creates an industry, then shuffle money that way. Then few friends on top pocket some of the money and the rest trickles down as "jobs".
> When asked to identify the largest element of the federal budget, less than 1/4 give the correct answer, military spending
Well maybe it was true in early 90s' But today if you include mandatory (entitlems) or just discretionary spending budget in the pie. Mandatory spending is dominated by medical (medicare etc) and social security. So that part doesn't sound right. Anyone know more?
As a post script, another aspect that is interesting I think, I after reading this, depending on which ideology the reader subscribes to, they will come out with different conclusions. If they are more liberal -- they might say, we need to be more direct in helping out industry and have more transparent control of how money, power and policy gets distributed. Maybe have a New Deal type jobs program to repair infrastructure, or institute basic income, instead of these convoluted systems. But the more conservative reader, will probably look at this say, these manipulations are perversions and failures, had they not taken place, we would have had a more dynamic, faster, efficient system.