Because those who pay for the taxes frequently don't. So some justification needs to happen to spend other peoples money. A better way would be nice, though.
This is a popular argument but there are plenty of things that cost orders of magnitude more taxes that go towards projects that lots of people don’t agree with. Americas trillion dollar war machine for example.
Well put. But, of course many on here don't have time for the concerns of simpleton non-elites, and whether they should have a say about where their money goes; I've noticed lately I look for the greyed out comments first on HN.
It would be nice if the research could be just for the general public good instead of having to have an explicit use for the military to get the money.
Well we're getting into political territory, but recently that "subsidized" seems to have swiftly changed to "threatened", so, I don't know. What you say used to be true in the past, but it's not so clear anymore.
Also: only country that ever invoked article 5 was actually the US. In that sense the opposite is true ("lots of countries have subsidized US defense"). The US "subsidy" came from the strong conviction that "US would act if we needed it", but that conviction is quickly evaporating.
On the other hand the US is running a large deficit and has a large debt - >120% of GDP - so that spend is in part other people's money.
With the foreign countries holding the most US debt being Japan, China, UK, Luxembourg and Canada.
I would also point out that you could view US bases in places like Japan or Chagos Islands as 'subsidising' local defence or it could be viewed as simple occupation.