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Originally Posted by maskedmelonpai
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i don't understand this. you understand that in the absence of American hegemony, there will be foreign hegemony, no? I know you cited a number before that liek 50% of our budget or something crazy goes to defense spending. is that why you think it's too high? where's that number come from?
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The real figure for military spending by the US is 66.3% of the discretionary federal budget
Military spending, even when it does get reported, is often only referred to in terms of the increase being proposed, without the total budget outlay ever being provided. It is reported (including in the Times!) wrong in so many ways. For example, while the actual Pentagon budget outlay is sometimes mentioned, the amount of the interest on the debt that is for prior military spending that was financed through borrowing is not included. Nor is the spending on veterans’ health care, which is surely part of military spending. Nor is the share of the Energy Department budget that is for nuclear weapons included. According to the National Priorities Project, the 2015 budget for the military was $598 billion, which represented 54% of all federal discretionary spending. That number didn’t include over $100 billion in veterans spending and $26 billion for nuclear weapons, bringing the total to about $730 billion. 2015 total discretionary spending was $1.1 trillion,so including nuke spending and veterans spending, spending on the military represented 63% of the total. In other words two-thirds of your tax bill!re
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There's many numbers floating out there -- but one thing is for sure, they obscure the real number of military spending with all kinds of budget tricks. The pentagon has black budgets where we don't even know what is being spent on what.
You understand, a lot of this money effectly goes in the pocket of Boeing, Amazon, and other companies that are paid by the military to for stuff...and its all super secret and we can't know about it -- national security you know.
So I just don't buy the idea that its all there to make us safer. Its stupid to believe that. We do know that NATO spending is x13 times higher than Russia which is the biggest competitor we can come up with.
None of this has prevented China from out maneuvering us on cyber warfare and trade -- because its not about that. It's about pay days for the military industrial complex.
American hegemony doesn't really work the way we thought it was going to. You can't just build a lot of planes, tanks and bombs and control the world. Not unless your planing to actually go Hitler on everyone and annex them...but not even the US can do that in reality.
One of the biggest problems is American (the older generation especially) attitudes about this issue. "Well I don't know shit -- but something tells me I should just not worry about it and trust the "experts" that are all getting rich of the status quo." That's got to end or we will go the way Japan did when they just let their military decide foreign policy.
There is a reason we elect a civilian as commander and chief.
07-12-2018, 04:40 PM
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