Glenn Greenwald writes The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending.
"Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. 'Only' about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries' defense budgets."
Our annual military budget is $623 billion while the entire rest of the world's is $500 million. "The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six "rogue" states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion."
This is 41% of the federal taxes collected annually. You think it might be cause of our debt and fiscal difficulties? You think it might be part of the reason the rest of the world thinks we're war mongers? Bush wants tosell the Saudi's $20 billion of weapons. Sure that's money to defense contractors that employee Americans, but maybe we could find other things to make and sell them.
You've heard all the candidates talk about change, and you'd think changing this would make money available for other programs. But Greenwald has quotes from the three Democratic candidates saying they would all increase defense spending.
2 comments:
It would be interesting to see a break down of the "defense" budget. Certainly a portion of it covers things such at ROTC and technology research which other countries might fund through different budgets. But since our military has it's fingers all over the world, it makes sense that it's budget is on par with the whole rest of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Post a Comment