America’s Defense Spending Addiction!


The Federal government's debt is now stands at $13.8 trillion and is projected to hit $20 trillion by the end of the coming decade. The breakdown would mean every American holds more than $10,000 worth of America’s debt. However, the largest portion of the country’s federal budget is hardly ever questioned.

Everytime I think about our national debt and where the government has spent our money it makes my head spin! The numbers are staggering. Although this article is dated from May of 2010, I thought it was a valuable and easy read. I found it unbiased; it passed judgement on our government as a whole as opposed to party lines.

The US federal government debt now stands at over 13 trillion dollars, yet it continued excess military spending rages forward. The economy is in shambles and it seems the military is conducting business unrestrained.

“The fact of the matter is and you can see it by the military budget, the U.S. is in fact a warfare state. It’s addicted to militarism, its addicted to war spending and it’s addicted to war profits,” said Becker.

The United States spends nearly as much on military hardware, fixture and training as all other countries combined.

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please Americans.

take a look at this site

it visualises the mess you´re in.

want to know what 15 trillion dollars of debt look like? (notice those are 100 dollars bills)

well like this:



also the people behind the PNAC (Project for the New American Century asked for a 90 billion dollar defense budget back in 2001, now it's up to 700+ billion!! (in 2001 they got 300 billion btw)

in 2010 the USA made up 43% of global military expenditure!

Becker said it best

“The fact of the matter is and you can see it by the military budget, the U.S. is in fact a warfare state. It’s addicted to militarism, its addicted to war spending and it’s addicted to war profits,” said Becker.

But I thought it was the poor that were to blame for our financial mess. You know, "entitlement spending". Now you're saying it's defense? Why, that almost sounds like conservatives made up the rhetoric about entitlements to sound serious about being conservative while still pouring trillions into the military-industrial complex. That can't be right, can it?

Originally posted by kn0wh0w
Becker said it best

“The fact of the matter is and you can see it by the military budget, the U.S. is in fact a warfare state. It’s addicted to militarism, its addicted to war spending and it’s addicted to war profits,” said Becker.

Soon you will have a rash of military types calling you a dirty rotten commie and if it were not for Normandy we would all be speaking German.

It is all propaganda.

WAR PROPAGANDA.

Personally I think we are trying to cloak an attempt at world wide domination that is and has always been in the works. We are your original puritan pilgrims...or think we are. Don't tell anyone.

reply to post by Cosmic911


Military spending, as a percentage of gross domestic product, is 3.6% on the baseline with it rising to slightly under 5% with Iraq and Afghanistan factored in. The post-World War II era typically saw higher defense to gross domestic product ratios than today. There are obviously areas where defense spending can be pared but it is not close to being the major contributing factor to our financial situation.

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus
54% of our federal budget goes to the military industrial complex and you claim it has no effect? The budget that is sucking us all under and you think that cutting some of that 54% wont help?!?

It will absolutely fix our economy if we spent that money on re-investing in America.

What has some people become in our nation, when they will defend war spending no matter what, yet complain about spending that money to help Americans?

We have a lot of really bad people in our nation that think they have good intentions but are as much a part of the evil as the government.

It is no longer just the American government that has become evil, its some Americans themselves.

Originally posted by LoneGunMan
54% of our federal budget goes to the military industrial complex and you claim it has no effect? The budget that is sucking us all under and you think that cutting some of that 54% wont help?!?

Show me where you are getting your 54% figure from as it is obviously incorrect as all the entitlement programs combined run higher than 60%. Please also be aware that the figure I am using is defense spending as a historical average of gross domestic product, which is in fact at a lower level than it has previously been for most of the post-World War II era.

Playing defense: cutting military spending is politically unpopular, but more dollars don't make a better Army.(Military)

No one in the lobbyist-infested halls of Congress and the Pentagon wants to see the signposts of our impending defense meltdown. But consider four ugly facts:

Defense is being showered with more dollars today than at any time since the end of World War II.

* The forces the Pentagon has been buying with those growing dollars have been shrinking steadily since 1946.

* These shrinking forces are more and more antiquated: the average age of our aircraft, ships, and tanks has been increasing relentlessly since the '50s.

* Despite all the extra money, training is shrinking, too. Key combat units are being sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with less and less training.

This is an older article but it highlights some of the inadequacies regardless of immense defense spending.

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Originally posted by Cosmic911
Defense is being showered with more dollars today than at any time since the end of World War II.

Dollars may be up but it needs to be measured against historical spending as dollar spending is up on most programs since the end of World War II

Defense spending in the United States has fluctuated in the last century, rising from one percent of GDP, peaking at 42 percent in World War II, declining from 10 percent in the Cold War to five percent today.

The defense establishment that sent the White Fleet around the world before World War I was tiny, compared to the defense establishment of mid century. It was about 1.25 percent of GDP. Yet this tiny establishment was expanded into an expeditionary army in World War I that consumed over 14 percent of GDP and turned the tide of the war in France. After the war the armed forces were rapidly demobilized and defense spending returned to about 1.25 percent of GDP.

Then in World War II the United States achieved an unprecedented mobilization of resources, and defense spending rose to 42 percent of GDP in 1945. But after the war it never returned to previous levels. From a low of 7.33 percent of GDP in 1948 it doubled to 15 percent at the height of the Korean War in 1953, and was maintained at about 10 percent during the peak of the Cold War through the end of the Vietnam War​. Against this the defense buildup during the Reagan era, from 5.6 percent of GDP in 1979 to 7 percent of GDP in 1986 was modest, and the Bush buildup from 3.6 percent in 1999 to 6 percent in 2010 to fight the first battles against Islamist extremism equally restrained. The plans of the Obama administration show a reduction in spending back to 4.6 percent of GDP by 2015. source

* The forces the Pentagon has been buying with those growing dollars have been shrinking steadily since 1946.

* These shrinking forces are more and more antiquated: the average age of our aircraft, ships, and tanks has been increasing relentlessly since the '50s.

* Despite all the extra money, training is shrinking, too. Key combat units are being sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with less and less training.

This is an older article but it highlights some of the inadequacies regardless of immense defense spending.

These are all highly valid points and plays to my statement earlier about there being room to modify the exisiting defense budget to make it more efficient. It still remains, however, that defense spending is not the major cause of our fiscal woes.

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus

These are all highly valid points and plays to my statement earlier about there being room to modify the exisiting defense budget to make it more efficient. It still remains, however, that defense spending is not the major cause of our fiscal woes.

maybe not the major cause but it defitenly plays a part.

since 2001 america has almost doubled it's military spending

A new report released today by SIPRI, a Swedish-based think tank, reveals that U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001. The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.

the money that is feeding the warmachine should be feeding the impoverished and underfed mouths in the USA.

Interesting that in the late 1980s, we got to watch the Soviet Union spend itself into oblivion by way of stupid wasting of resources on military adventurism.

The cause and effect were obvious - military spending is the worst way to spend money from a pure economic standpoint, the SU was spending impressive amounts of money on military hardware without the healthy economy to support it.

So they spent themselves into extinction.

Now the US is doing the same exact thing. We are wasting bazillions of dollars on military adventurism, with no economic growth to show for it. As we see, things are going from bad to really bad to worse.

Not entirely sure just why it is that the reality of what the US is doing to itself economically is such a big shock to all the eddy-cated types... I can see this connection, and I'm no economist. But still, when the inevitable collapse comes, as happened at the end of the Bush regime, everybody is shocked shocked.

Ill conceived military adventurism is by no means our only economic problem, but it is a major contributor.

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus


I certainly don't think our military spending is the only reason for our economic woes. There are so many other factors that are contributing. But I do think its "out of control." Former military myself, it is so obvious that military spending has gotten out of control. (However, being a New Yorker it so obvious that entitlement services spending is completely out of control as well.) A lot of military spending gets allocated to R&D and a lot of good stuff comes out of that. However, I've had friends re-enlisting in the Army who brought along private Kevlar vests because the logistics and supply are either f&^*% up or in short supply. That's unacceptable. Unbelievable.

I think in pre-Korea, during WWI or WWII, the economy was stimulated by war, money went back in the hands of the people, there were jobs....I don't think that's the case anymore. Not that a nation should go to war to stimulate the economy, I just think that was a secondary effect. The money stays in the hands of the few these days. We are still dumping money into a defense budget like we did during the Cold-War. Our thinking has to change. Our tactics have to change. Washington has to change.

a congressional watchdog group found in 2008, over 150 Members of Congress had $196 million collectively invested in defense contractors

The Military-Industrial Complex is here...and its hungry!

reply to post by Open_Minded Skeptic


"Interesting that in the late 1980s, we got to watch the Soviet Union spend itself into oblivion by way of stupid wasting of resources on military adventurism."

You are absolutely right! In fact, I think that was part of our defense policy with the Soviet Union....try to bankrupt them into submission.

Originally posted by Cosmic911
I think in pre-Korea, during WWI or WWII, the economy was stimulated by war, money went back in the hands of the people, there were jobs....I don't think that's the case anymore. Not that a nation should go to war to stimulate the economy, I just think that was a secondary effect.

You have to keep in mind that both World Wars used deficit spending (war bond sales) to accomplish the spending increase which is very similar to what we are doing now by continually selling more Treasury Bonds to finance our overall spending addiction.

The money stays in the hands of the few these days. We are still dumping money into a defense budget like we did during the Cold-War. Our thinking has to change. Our tactics have to change. Washington has to change.

Defense spending is below Cold War era levels which were around 10%. I agree that we do need to re-evaluate our defense tactics in the sake of efficiency as we currently do not have a Soviet Era style threat.

a congressional watchdog group found in 2008, over 150 Members of Congress had $196 million collectively invested in defense contractors

The Military-Industrial Complex is here...and its hungry!

The obvious insider trading aspect of elected officials is obscene. It does however extend to all aspects of spending as they are making decisions for all departments and spending sectors based on profiteering from these decisions. You and I would go to prison for this (and for a long time), they however get rich while putting us in the poor house.

Originally posted by Open_Minded Skeptic
Ill conceived military adventurism is by no means our only economic problem, but it is a major contributor.

It is dwarfed by other aspects of the overall budget. Some savings can be realized by altering the military budget but even if you eliminated it all together we are still speeding along the road to inslovency.

The US Defense Budget isn't what you're told it is.

When Ronald Reagan got elected he found America bankrupt. To keep the country going he created Trust Funds for all the Federal Departments and said git out there and invest it so you have money to live off of, to pay your retirees.


DOD alone has enough money in its retiree trust fund to pay the military retirees for over 8 years without 1 penny of Federal Appropriations:

www.actuary.defense.gov

What did they invest in to make so much money? My guess? Monsanto GMO seeds would be a dead ringer...computer corporations....who's making cars in China?

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus

The obvious insider trading aspect of elected officials is obscene. It does however extend to all aspects of spending as they are making decisions for all departments and spending sectors based on profiteering from these decisions. You and I would go to prison for this (and for a long time), they however get rich while putting us in the poor house.

Isn't this the truth!

I just wish Washington used better discretion.

Lost and Reported Stolen - $6.6 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, reported on June 14, 2011 by Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen who called it "the largest theft of funds in national history." (Source - CBS News) Last known holder of the $6.6 billion lost: the U.S. government.

Missing - $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces. (Per CBS News on Dec 6, 2007.)

Mismanaged & Wasted in Iraq - $10 billion, per Feb 2007 Congressional hearings

Halliburton Overcharges Classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported - $1.4 billion

Amount paid to KBR, a former Halliburton division, to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items - $20 billion

Portion of the $20 billion paid to KBR that Pentagon auditors deem "questionable or supportable" - $3.2 billion

Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq - $9 billion of US taxpayers' money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

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