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I have strongly mixed feelings, especially with 60% of federal taxes going to military spending. National parks are good though.
by AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
I have strongly mixed feelings, especially with 60% of federal taxes going to military spending.
National parks are good though.
- leetcrew 8y agocan you cite a source for 60% of federal taxes going to military spending?
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoThe first link on google: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... claims 54% on "military" and additional 6% on "veteran's affair"
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoThat's not accounting for payroll taxes like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- right? Because those, combined with debt service, make up a HUGE portion of the federal budget.
- leetcrew 8y agoyeah that is out of the discretionary budget, which is roughly a fourth of the total budget. the government also spends more money than it collects in taxes, so the 60% figure doesn't have much to do with what fraction of your tax dollars actually get spent on the military.
- yarosv 8y ago~54% according to the breakdown on wiki[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud...
- yarosv 8y agoAs noted above and below, this is not full budget. Please ignore this comment.
- dumbfoundded 8y agoIt's not 60% of federal taxes: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... It's 60% of discretionary spending or around 18% of all federal spending. The biggest programs are entitlements: social security and medicare.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoOopsie! You are right and I am wrong. :o(
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoHow much should go to military spending?
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoI don't know. Seriously. Would be happy to hear any thoughts. It just seems to me that spending more than half of the budget on military is somewhat wrong.
- zeveb 8y agoReally? Given that the United States form a federal republic, and that under their Constitution most authority is retained by the states, and that the military is one of the few things not relegated to the states, it would make sense for the military to be the major federal expenditure.
- munk-a 8y agoMuch less? If you're asking the internet for raw numbers on budget allocation it's a bit of a silly question to throw out. I don't, myself, object purely to the proportion... but more to the fact that military spending tends to disappear into defense contractor's pockets and being spent on more lobbying to increase spending on the military more. I also have a moral objection to the nation being such a war monger and would love to see our military spending drop by the effect of needing to blow less things up. So, I'll state clearly and without _any trace of sarcasm_ military spending should be 75rad% of our budget, which is a reduction of 4rad%. Also the 60% number in the grand parent is... I have no idea where that's from, in 2012 DoD spending was ~15% of the budget and it has always, within recent history, been below the amount allocated for social security.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoOf course I don't expect a raw number, it was a rhetorical question. I half expected the reply to be zero...
- mullingitover 8y ago
- izzydata 8y agoAccording to this if the federal budget is 4.4 trillion and military budget is 886 billion then that would equate to 20%. Not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but it isn't 60%.