The US is "budgeting" by printing money that does not exist, making each and every printed dollar that much more worthless. Soon and very soon, the house of cards is going to fall down to the ruin of us all. It is not hard (for most) to see this coming, it is only a matter of do you have the balls to stop the madness before it's too late. Given our government's track record (on either side of aisle), the answer is no, the answer is they are cowards and crooks who can't stop spending, and we are still headed straight for a financial cliff that we can see with both eyes wide open. When we finally crash our financial system, it won't matter if the US still has 11 carriers, there will be not be enough dollars that could be printed to pay for their upkeep. Just ask your average Venezuelan how many bolivars you need right now to buy a loaf of bread.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Equation
Lieutenant General
Speaking of costs, what's the estimated cost of a fully equipped Ford class with its air wing, and the estimated yearly upkeep and training cost? I imagine operation, maintenance, and training costs of a carrier is proportionally higher than that of a destroyer, but how much would that proportion be? With that information, we can make some estimates on the financial burden on the PLAN in order to support a 6+ carrier fleet and have some idea about its feasibility.
Off topic, but if the government was "printing money that doesn't exist", core inflation wouldn't be below target.
Many of these dollars leak to other countries to buy what US need to live and the remainder fell into the hands of banks and other large companies. That's why inflation is low. US used to destroy oil exporting countries that talked about selling oil for other currency than dollars ( Iraq, Libya ) but then in order to punish Iran it forced India to buy oil for physical gold and Iran liked it so much that now it only accepts gold, roubles and RMB. Another reason for low inflation in US is the artificially low interest rates and when these return to normal the budget deficit will crash through the roof. It already is unable to maintain its infrastructure ( I saw an article recently that the NY subway system is using 1930's technology, in WaPo? )
We see that China has two yards developed to build aircraft carriers and both can build at least three carriers per ten years, perhaps 80k fleet carriers in the one place and 50k sea control ships at the other. Looking at the production rate of 055's it is also able to build the escorts. It has just build a plant to produce nuclear subs at a good rate. If US were to go for a naval arms race it will loose because of the dollars.
Reported inflation isn't nominal, but real. Lower interest rates actually lead to higher real inflation (in theory, this holds out in practice under normal circumstances but things get wonky at the zero lower bound).
If inflation is low because demand for US dollars globally is high, then the US isn't "printing money that doesn't exist". The money it's printing is capturing the value of using US dollars for global transactions. Anyways, that's the last I'll say on this little diversion. Sorry for the off topic.
Technically the US isn't printing any money at all right now, as QE1-3 have all concluded. That term is my stand-in for the debt-driven US economy that grows unsustainably larger each passing day. On the other hand, QE4 is right around the corner whenever the next recession hits if it hasn't started already. I predict that this next one will be even worse than the last one and may actually be the snowflake that finally triggers the avalanche. Also, officially reported inflation is a well-known voodoo statistic that probably doesn't reflect inflation as it affects the common citizen. There are too many incentives for the government to underreport inflation in order to keep its costs low, as payouts from SS and VA benefits and the like are all adjusted upwards yearly to account for "inflation".
We can take this discussion out of this thread if you're interested in continuing it.
Engineer
Major
Have you ever heard of the phrase "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? Inflation index disregards a lot of items that actually impact the life of ordinary citizens.
Nitpick, USN from what I understand has 22 active Ticos and 62 active Burkes, making 84 Aegis ships.
And given the USN's plans for Flight III Burkes as replacements for Ticos as they near retirement age the overall number of Aegis ships may start to approach 100 and might even briefly peak above it, but that also will depend how quickly Ticos are retired in the 2020s.
Either way, the USN doesn't have quite that many aegis ships, definitely not over 100.