China spends on people, US on offensive weapons:

The United States is squandering billions of dollars on its offensive weapons capability, while China is spending on developing its country and social programs, an American researcher in California says. Dennis Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks on Wednesday while commenting on a report which says US F-35 fighter jets would be outmaneuvered and outgunned in dogfights with current Russian and Chinese aircraft.

The latest-generation fighter aircraft F-35 “has been shown to be totally inadequate to meet the challenge of the aircraft flown by both Russia and China, and most likely would not fare well in any sort of confrontation,” Etler said. “But but the real issue for the American people is the vast amount of money being squandered on the military-industrial complex in the United States,” he added. The F-35 has encountered numerous design and production problems since it was first conceived as the US military’s fifth-generation stealth aircraft more than ten years ago. Its original $400 billion price tag has doubled, with analysts predicting more hikes yet to come.

"Just imagine 400 billion dollars, what that could do in terms of really enhancing the security of the United States, which basically would entail raising the educational level of the American people by making college affordable, and improving the infrastructure of the country,” Etler said. “Imagine, China with tens of thousands of miles of high-speed rail, while in the US we don’t even have one mile of high-speed rail.

Four hundred billion dollars spent on developing infrastructure and new modes of transportation would kick-start the reindustrialization of the US and contribute to job growth and the like,” he stated. “Four hundred billion dollars is just a pittance compared to the entire military budget of the US, which consumes over half of the discretionary spending that the government engages in, and where is the threat? What is the threat to the US national security from overseas? Who is about to invade the United States and occupy its territory, as the US has done throughout the world?” Etler observed.

“Obviously there is no threat to the US and US interests other than those which are conjured up by the United States’ government itself to give it the excuse to go about intervening wherever it deems necessary in order to maintain its global hegemony,” he noted. “So there’s no ‘defense budget’ that the US funds. It’s a purely offensive budget to secure US control over the world’s resources.

This is just one glaring example of that. And not only is it a colossal waste of money, it’s also been shown to be an example of incompetence and corruption on the part of the US military-industrial complex, which is just out to feather its own nest,” the political commentator concluded.