zlacker

It is true that the defense and aerospace sector employs larges amount of people and drives significant amount of R&D. But getting inefficient for them became highly profitable and the F-35 JSF is the prime example of that.

Then, if fruit pickers made $20 an hour, you would be getting all of your fruit from Mexico/Central America, and fruit and all products made from it would be more expensive.

Other jobs like gardening and landscaping would simply either not be done, or get done by property owners themselves. Now they will be tired, be less productive at work and have less time for their kids, or, see their property value drop while their local crime rate goes up.

>>partyc+(OP)
Not just that, those programs create (and are explicitly required to do so) large amounts of spinoffs in specific states. This is one force (almost the only one, frankly) that spreads knowledge, creates new centers of expertise across the US and thus binds the US together economically and socially. (NASA being the other, much smaller one doing this)

It would be very bad to kill it without replacement.