THE U.S. GOVERNMENT already spends $600 billion dollars a year on its military — more money than the next seven biggest spenders combined, including China and Russia.
On Monday, the White House said it would request $54 billion more in military spending for next year. That increase alone is roughly the size of the entire annual military budget of the United Kingdom, the fifth-largest spending country, and it’s more than 80 percent of Russia’s entire military budget in 2015.
If Congress were to follow Trump’s blueprint, the U.S. military budget could account for nearly 40 percent of global military spending next year. The U.S. would be outspending Russia by a margin of greater than 9 to 1. [my emph]
Alex Emmons @ TI.
No, I don't get it either...
ReplyDeleteOh, follow the money, if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteMordor as a Business.
It does fuel conspiracies about the US wanting to take over the World. SS-USA?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ghxqb
You'd think we had learned nothing from this excursion into economic globalism....
DeleteAnd did you know...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.peri.umass.edu/media/k2/attachments/spending_priorities_PERI.pdf
As a job creator, the bang for the buck from military spending is less than tax cuts for household consumption, healthcare spending, clean energy investment, and only about a third of the jobs created by education spending!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Other_military-related_expenditures
For those unaware, the "defense budget" does not include all sorts of related spending...
"This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which are in the Atomic Energy Defense Activities section,[17] Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and intelligence-gathering spending by NSA."
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/waste-greed-fraud-business-makes-worlds-greatest-army/
Wanna talk about that ol' conservative catch-all, "waste, fraud, and abuse?"...
"Part of the problem may be that the Pentagon has 1.7 million contracts open, which makes oversight difficult, if not impossible."
And for what? Is the world a safer place?
The Defense Sector is now so politically powerful, such a huge welfare state, such a Sacred Cow, there doesn't seem to be much we can do. But of the rise of the Bernie Sanders movement and the abject failure of the GOP One Party State just a month back in power, who knows? Maybe change is coming. But it better come soon. Historically, this state of affairs bodes very ill for our future. We should have listened to Ike.
JMJ
I will hear nothing; do not address me; I hate you more than I do Cleon, whom one day I shall flay to make sandals for the Knights. Listen to your long speeches, after you have treated with the Laconians? No, I will punish you. - Aristophanes, "Acharnians"
DeleteThanks Jersey. Food for thought there.
DeleteBut it better come soon. Historically, this state of affairs bodes very ill for our future. We should have listened to Ike.
DeleteHear, hear!