Something of a thesis I've been working on in my head lately is that the United States has replaced a traditional welfare state with its imperial military Keynesianism and the military-industrial complex.

• American military bases and other facilities often render total economic dependence on the surrounding community or region. They offer employment for locals and station personnel act as consumers for the local economy
• The US grants effectively unlimited subsidies to defense contractors, almost always guaranteeing a profit to the companies in question no matter the eventual cost overrides. These companies and their production facilities also frequently engender economic dependence for the surrounding community, employing tens of thousands of people and more. In fact government largesse in this regard played a massive role in the development of the modern conservative movement, as southern California, particularly the LA suburbs, became a huge hub for the aeronautics industries from the 1950s onward. This region also happened to be a historical hub of anti-union sentiment, so the suburbs with high property values that grew like a fungus around LA became inhabited by industrial workers who were effectively bribed with high wages and good benefits not to unionize. The modern conservative movement as we know it developed here in particular in the late 50s/early 60s, as this booming economy and middle class adopted a reactionary homesteader rugged individualism ideology, because the middleman of private defense corporations obscure the fact that the origin of their material prosperity was not due to their own sweat and grit as "pioneering frontiersmen" who earned everything from hard work but through massive amounts of government largesse.
• The US government slashes social programs and cuts taxes for the rich, and produces massively expensive private sector health care and higher education, and subjects the newest generation to debt slavery, all in order to entice them into joining up with the volunteer-only military. The phrase "the military is the most socialist organization in the United States" is in large part correct, as it offers extremely extensive and robust 18yo-to-grave welfare benefits that can even be passed down to offspring; and also concentrates people from disparate geographical regions, races, and creeds into single locations, forces them onto a disciplined and heavily time-structured regimen that includes exhaustive physical training, and force them to act as a cohesive, collective unit that should in theory at least trust each other implicitly.
• You literally can't lose an election by being too pro-military and voting to further fatten the enormous defense budget every time. It's practically the only method that is completely devoid of electoral negatives. It's the sacred cow issue of American electoral politics where politicians don't dare suggest ever cutting the defense budget, in the same way welfare state programs are the sacred cow of the ex-social democracies of Europe.