My understanding is that the Pentagon spends about 660 BILLION dollars per year. I found a write-up that addresses your question here: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/MoreBucksBang.html Here is a quote from that webpage: The Pentagon and all non-entitlement federal domestic programs are lumped together into a part of the federal budget called "discretionary spending." about half the discretionary budget pays for the Pentagon, meaning we spend as much on the Pentagon as we do on the combined spending of job training, all education, housing development, the environment, Space and NASA, scientific research, the State and Commerce and Justice Departments, and dozens of other programs combined. This is consistent with what Ed said then - military spending is FAR greater than all social services combined. Now I'll admit that I don't know exactly where they get their figures from, but assuming they're half-way honest, these should be reasonable - the real numbers are not real hard to find. The US military budget is greater than the rest of the world combined - wow, who's paranoid now? Terry Farrell On Nov 2, 2010, at 6:16 PM, John Formsma wrote: > Ed, > > I agree that our military spending is way out of control. And that > it is out of control because of our war-mongering. (I even think we > should be bringing all our troops home, and closing our foreign > military bases.) > > However, I'm not sure that military spending is larger than social > services. Any data you can cite? > > -- > JF > > On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Ed Foote <a440a at aol.com> wrote: > Greetings, > > In this whole discussion, I find it interesting that there is > virtually no mention of the big leak, the hole where the promise of > tomorrow is being poured. It is not Social Security, it is not > medical expense. It is not the housing crisis. It is the military > budget. We have a military budget that is larger than the rest of > the world combined, and the Pentagon is screaming for more. We have > dumped a trillion dollars into the idiotic "wars" ,(which we, as a > nation, endorsed), and there are at least another trillion in > expenses that will come due in the next generation taking care of > the damage. That is where the vitality of this country has gone. > With the money we have spent, we could easily have bought the > intelligence we needed to hunt down every Al-Quida member on the > planet and kill them, quietly. That, however, would not have been > dramatic enough to assuage the gods of war we have in Washington, > nor the public's demand for blood revenge. So we pay, and our > children will pay, and theirs afterward. Our fear of appearing weak > has led us directly into the trap that a micro-minority of radical > zealots laid for us, and like fighting a hydra, every time we kill > one, two more appear. > Take a look at the history of the last 500 years and you will > see one nation after another collapse under the weight of military > spending, not entitlements. We are repeating this, and we finally > have created an enemy with no homeland, no definition, and no way to > combat. We learned nothing from 'Nam, and we learned nothing from > Russia's attempt in Afghanistan. So we pay. This is going to be a > hard lesson for our progeny, and I don't see those that caused it > even considering apologizing for it. > There are only two motivating factors that humans obey: love > and fear. We have made the huge mistake of the latter, and will > have to back up before we can move forward. > Regards, > > Ed Foote RPT > http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101102/9589523a/attachment-0001.htm>
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