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This has been the standard political cycle since Nixon. Democrats roll back military spending and funnel that money to their domestic pet projects like environ

This has been the standard political cycle since Nixon. Democrats roll back military spending and funnel that money to their domestic pet projects like environmental causes, fighting poverty, and improving education. Then, once a Republican is back in office, they roll back most of those pet projects and funnel the money back into the military budget. You can more easily see the ups and downs on some of the charts here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
Wow, TIL the US spends almost a full percent of GDP on veterans. That sounded like a huge amount to me, but then I found the US has an equally huge number of veterans: 22 million, or 7% of the population are veterans! So it's just ~$8000 per person per year. Think about that for a minute: if you put 30 random US people in a room, on average two of them will have served in wars! Edit: you can also clearly see the rise of the military industrial complex in those graphs.
- ashark 10y ago
  The state of the US military makes a lot more sense when you consider that it's the only jobs program that Republicans will enthusiastically support. A large part of its de facto mission is to be an (unusually wasteful) welfare program that can actually secure serious amounts of funding from Congress. That 7% of the population of veterans receives some serious benefits, including retirement if they served (IIRC) 20 years, plus they were employed for some period of time when they might otherwise not have been (or have displaced someone else from a job). [EDIT] grammar
wnevets 10y ago
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chart2p32.png http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chart2p32.p... so "defense" spending was higher during wars, not really surprising and its peak was during Obama's term. Really doesnt fit the whole republican vs democrat theory.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

Wow, TIL the US spends almost a full percent of GDP on veterans. That sounded like a huge amount to me, but then I found the US has an equally huge number of veterans: 22 million, or 7% of the population are veterans! So it's just ~$8000 per person per year. Think about that for a minute: if you put 30 random US people in a room, on average two of them will have served in wars! Edit: you can also clearly see the rise of the military industrial complex in those graphs.

ashark 10y ago
The state of the US military makes a lot more sense when you consider that it's the only jobs program that Republicans will enthusiastically support. A large part of its de facto mission is to be an (unusually wasteful) welfare program that can actually secure serious amounts of funding from Congress. That 7% of the population of veterans receives some serious benefits, including retirement if they served (IIRC) 20 years, plus they were employed for some period of time when they might otherwise not have been (or have displaced someone else from a job). [EDIT] grammar

wnevets 10y ago

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chart2p32.png http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chart2p32.p... so "defense" spending was higher during wars, not really surprising and its peak was during Obama's term. Really doesnt fit the whole republican vs democrat theory.