As a nation, the time is long overdue for fundamental changes to our national priorities
Often enough I hear people say that it’s good to spend that much on our military. “That way no one will mess with us.” That logic hurts my brain. We spend more than the next TEN countries combined. We could halve our budget and still have a ridiculously large military.
We argue about the cost of a stadium (rightfully), then pay them off for 25+ years, and those cost ONE billion (versus $880 billion). An annual per Capita hit of $2,200 is crazy.
Also, we don’t even use a significant portion of the equipment that we build. There are thousands of tanks just collecting dust. “But they create jobs.” Build something else. Schools, parks, trains, housing, etc.
“But they create jobs.” Build something else. Schools, parks, trains, housing, etc.
I’ll never get the jobs argument.
Our infrastructure, healthcare, education, housing and about a thousand other things are fucked and would create jobs if we pumped 100s of billions of dollars into solving them.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
- President Eisenhower
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As a veteran of three wars who is currently on food stamps and under poverty wage because disability doesn’t pay the bills, I agree with you. I witnessed those bloated budgets throughout my career. It’s free money and it’s a way to funnel it to large corporations. The military takes that money and then “spends” it, paying large corporations for their jets and such. Jets that they don’t need. This is all a method to keep money going to the upper class. This is the machine that Eisenhower warned us about.
The only companies who survival I care about are those who pay their employees a thriving wage. Everything else can burn.
thriving wage
New term unlocked, love it.
If we don’t have unlimited, untraceable budgets, how are we going to secretly overthrow governments, and instill our control? Or pay off officials to look the other way. Or bribe politicians to keep the corporate socialism for the Boeings and Raytheons of the world? Why won’t you think of the rich guys? God.
Julius Levinson in Independence Day : “You don’t actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”
Bernie is correct as usual. ✊
i would have absolutely agreed before the 2022-02-24
but looking at Russia and China today, the Budget was never so justified since the fall of the Soviet UnionDon’t forget the war on terror in-between… we always find reasons to justify our war machines, it’s a feature not a bug.
He’s right. Spending priorities are wrong.
Audit the Pentagon! Where is our money going and what is it being used on?
They have failed audits, multiple times.
Not exactly a surprising position from him.
A ‘mere’ 600 or 700 billion would be enough. Back in the Obama years we were considering a reduction to ‘only’ 540 billion. :o
If you spent $1 million a day since 0AD, you would not have spent $886 billion yet.
So, virtue signaling is what this is? Practically the definition of it?
Bernie is the man, we need to decrease funding from the military, and focus on our problems in the usa
