There's a whole lot of "hidden" costs in not having carriers. If you need to project power across the world without them you need to be keeping countries "sweet" ad infinitum - hence the outlandish "foreign aid" budgets people whine about all the time. While one understands those expenditures do not entirely cover basing aircraft on the ground there's a chunk of that expenditure that does so it's a bit like insurance - it's very expensive until you need it.
However, if you have serious international ambitions the ability to place, (as the US so brilliantly point out), 4.5 acres of sovereign territory anywhere in the world at short notice is priceless... But don't expect the polis to ever see that...