Politicians like to tell you America is out of money but there is never any shortage of funds for bombs, bullets and wars.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
The Jimmy Dore: Where Most Of Our Money Go
When I saw this I was shocked. The so called evil empire, Russia, spends 4.5% of its GDP on defence, the same as the US spends on defence, but the US spent 9 times more on defence than Russia because it has a bigger economy. Below Jimmy Dore shows how 54% of government discretionary spending gets spent on defence. People complain about the taxes and the welfare queens but only a fraction goes on welfare. The rich are taking the lion share in sales and subsidies to their industry-military complex. And it will be much more when Trump gets going. Western propaganda is trying to paint Russia as evil, but imagine how the Russian people must feel when their enemy had been going on a military spending rampage for decades and has surrounded their country with US bases when they haven't done anything wrong.
Politicians like to tell you America is out of money but there is never any shortage of funds for bombs, bullets and wars.
Politicians like to tell you America is out of money but there is never any shortage of funds for bombs, bullets and wars.
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8 comments:
Hi Kaivey! I wasn't a regular commenter when you were posting here, but have seen some of your past posts before. Good to see you back.
It is not 54% of GDP - it is 54% of "Discretionary Federal Government Spending" see - Expenditures in the United States federal budget
Quote:
Expenditures are classified as mandatory, with payments required by specific laws, or discretionary, with payment amounts renewed annually as part of the budget process. Expenditures averaged 20.4% GDP over the past 40 years, generally ranging +/-2% GDP from that level. The 2014 spend was 20.3% GDP, versus 2013 spend of 20.8% GDP and a recent 2009 peak of 24.4% GDP.
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The U.S. defense budget (excluding spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Homeland Security, and Veteran's Affairs) is around 4% of GDP.[46] Adding these other costs places defense and homeland security spending between 5% and 6% of GDP.
Such a comparison only makes sense if the GDPs are comparable. Since US GDP is 9x that of Russia, it is in effect a multiplier. The actual ratio - using an independent estimate of US military spending (between $977B and $1.3T) is something on the order of 20:1.
Yet we are supposed to believe that with around 5% of US spending, Russia presents a grave threat to our national security. Exactly how many foreign military bases do they have, and how many are on our borders?
Noah, the US spends between 4 and 6% of GDP on Defense as I have stated in my earlier comment. Jimmy Dore was talking about discretionary spending - which is where defense spending comes. Mandatory spending is a bigger part of the pie, and that include Social Security and Healthcare. All told Defense spending is ~ 17% of the Federal budget, which itself is a fraction of the GDP.
Thank you for correcting me.
Thank you, Penguin Pop. Hilary and the threat of WW3 made me a bit miserable (I thought Europe was doomed), so I took a break from politics for a while.
It is good to see you back.
@unknown, you missed my point. As military spending as a % of GDP is roughly comparable (your point), the US out spends Russia about 20:1.
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