The link that i provided did not calculate military spending based on GDP. GDP means little as a percentage of spending, it just doesnt mean much. This 40% is based on tax money- it suggests that 40% of what you pay in taxes is spent on military, i thought it was a simple straightforward measurement.
Its obvious that some people didnt even read the link let alone make the attempt to understand it. Please dont dismiss it until you have read and understood where the numbers come from and please explain why… Also please keep in mind that these large numbers take into account interest aquired on the national debt from military spending; interest is the “hidden” spending. the figures are based on the fact that we pay for war long after it is fought (veteran benefits, interest etc.)
IF YOU THINK THESE FIGURES ARE FALSE OR MISLEADING, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY… thanks
Maybe IM the one who is naive, but i tend not to trust the government to give me an accurate representation of how my money is spent. msmith537, your .gov link is VERY broad, i dont see any type of % table or graph or anything. If you could narrow that down i would appreciate it : )
After some 3500 years, the Trojan War seems to have lessons to teach. There is yet another possible cause that I can’t believe that hasn’t been brought up yet.
We have mention the reasons of mere men, but everyone knows from the Illiad that the war was actually between the gods, using humans as pawns. So religion has now raised its ugly head.
When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and escorting young ladies around Washington, he opined that “Power is the strongest aphrodisiac.” This ties into the subject quite nicely and gives us one more cause of war; power.
So, as is happening today with the war in Iraq, we can still make claims of different causes associated with an ancient war.
But power can come thru economic means as well as thru a military.
As a sidebar, did anyone else catch that the government just awarded the rebuilding of Iraq to Halliburton? Think the Vice President have some power of influence?
Wrong the purpose of the military is to prevent or discourage war.
I like Tuckerfan’s general premise, but I must disagree with him about the necessity of a nation having a standing military. This past weekend on BookTV there was an author whose book was about European history since 1945. His reason for writing the book was:
[ul]Americans don’t know enough about the contributions Europe has made towards world peace, etc.[/ul]
In other words his slant was towards giving the Europeans more credit than they are getting. After his talk there was the usual Q&A session and someone asked:
[ul]"How soon will NATO be done away with?[/ul]
The author smiled and said
[ul]“It won’t be”[/ul]
He then explained that the European countries like France, Germany and most of the rest do not want to spend money on military matters. They leave it to the U.S. and spend their money on giving their citizens public health care. The problems we are having with France and Germany have to do with the fact they are no longer afraid of Russia and so they don’t need us for protection as much. Notice that France wanted to be involved with Iraq, where she has a sweetheart oil deal and other economic interests, but when it comes to North Korea she is happy to shove the problem into our lap.
So I have four conclusions:
[ul][1.] That France, Germany and Russia had economic reasons for opposing the war, so economics doesn’t always start wars.
[2.] If it wasn’t for the military might of the U.S. socialism wouldn’t exist like it does in Europe and Canada.
[3.] The U.S. pisses off other countries because it has the most power.
[4.] None of it has to do with love or religion.[/ul]
There is no debt incurred solely because of military spending. Unless, of couse, you assume that military spending always comes last in line of the budget, which it does not. Regardless, veterans benefits are probably a net positive on the economy.
Not “just” to Haliburton. They got an undefined contract. This is going to be much too big for one company. Regardless, they do have some rare experience with putting out oil fires, a few of which have been lit.
The first problem is that they decided that only taxes which could be used for military spoending easily “count”. That is not very honest. Social security is bloody well a tax, and there are quite a few others. They also left out every other non-income tax.
Like I said earlier, dropping the national debt solely on the military tells me more about their priorities, not the government. And again, veterans benefits are most definitely a social benefit, not a ilitary one. They are certainly not required and do not help or affect our military capacity in any way.
Floyd, may I point out that they have a very strong incentive to decieve here?
Bandit
I simply wanted someone to discuss it; if there is something wrong, i wanted it pointed out rather than dismissed without reason… and if you actually read where all the numbers come from (if you read the whole thing you can get a better idea) you see that interest and the debt is not rested SOLELY on military- it uses a percentage… nowhere does it say that military spending is the cause of ALL debt, that just isnt true here. Yes, it doesn’t take SS tax and all the like into account, why would it? Thats all seperate. You cant spend SS money on military so why would it be included? I dont think its that decieving, but the reason i wanted people to check it out was to point out what was truth and what might be decietful. I see your point about veteran benefits, but on the other hand, we wouldnt be paying them if we didnt go to war right?
OK, I know the link i provided isn’t a short little article but in order to understand or dismiss it as deciet, you have to read the whole thing… It doesnt sound to me like you took the time to understand it, feel free to prove me wrong.
Yes, it says 80%, which is still flat wrong. It is an intellectually dishonest trick to jack up the spending percentage on their graph. They are essentially counting military spending last in the budget, so that they can lay most of the budget spent on debt servicing at the military.
Theres quite a lot of money that will never be used for military spending. That money is still part of the federal budget. Moreover, it does not really have to be spent solely on social security. The government could at any time take that money and dump it into anything.
May I point out that all of your links are extremely biased, and therefore suspect on their face, the “National Priorities” one aside. But I’m damn glad we do spend so much, as its far easier to replace money than people. That last one was not from the New York Times, it was someone trying to use the change in budget to criticise the government.
In fact, all of these sites are realy just politically motivated bashing. They have one thing in common - they want to spend much less on defence and more on social services. That fine, but its isn’t fair to lie about it, and skew graphs to make your side look better.
The OMB puts defense spending at 30% or so - and that only counts part of the congressional budget.
Im sorry, but this link you provide is not only long (12 pgs), but it is hard to read with tiny letters,half the text running vertical instead of horizontal, I cant find the 30% that you found; could you tell me what page that was? but even 30% is still alot IMO…
Reguarding the link to the NY times, how do you know it wasnt from the NY times? It certainly claims to be or rather it says all the data came from that same page in NY times, You cant say its not unless you have a copy of the paper. You can tell it was scanned from some newspaper, I assume its NY times- maybe i can find that paper on the web.
I agree that 80% number was high which was why i originally gave a range of 40% to 50% military spending, when calculated with 50%, the military budget came out to around 40%.