Military Spending

The way we spend our time and money is good indicator of what our priorities are.

Federal Budget

Currently, about half of the US federal budget goes to the military. Of this, half goes to current military spending and half to service loans for past military spending (often conveniently left out of statistics and public discussions on this topic).

Global Spending

Looking at the international military spending, we see that the US military budget is about as large as that of all other countries combined.

In a global context, this is clearly excessive. Domestically, it is devastating.

The US seems to have no lack of money for war, but very little for taking care of the basic human needs of its own population.

Priorities

The most astonishing aspect of this is that the US population appears to happily support this discrepancy. The excessive US military spending is arguably the most important aspect of any budget issue, yet rarely comes up as a topic. In fact, both of the current presidential candidates support increasing the military budget!

Empire

It all does make some sense in the odd logic of the empire. The US empire, following the pattern of empires in the past, survives on global military, economic and cultural dominance. The wealth of the empire is largely channeled into perpetuating this dominance.

And, again following the patterns of empires of the past, it will extend its own resources to and beyond its limits, and the empire will crumble. Which, ironically, will benefit the people of the US in the long run as more resources will be made available to the simple basic needs of the people (healthcare, education etc).

For now, they are caught up in and blinded by the empire archetype (a dark aspect of the hero and/or king archetypes), to their own and other's detriment.


---------------------

Numbers

• The US military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's.


• The US military budget is more than 8 times larger than the Chinese budget,
  the second largest spender.


• The US military budget is more than 29 times as large as the combined spending
  of the seven “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea,
  Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.4 billion.


• It is more than the combined spending of the next twenty three nations.


• The United States and its close allies account for some two thirds to three-quarters
  of all military spending, depending on who you count as close allies (typically
  NATO countries, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and South Korea)


• The seven potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together spend
  $116.2 billion, 27.6% of the U.S. military budget.

[source: global issues]