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I looked up US defense spending since WWII, adjusted for inflation: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html One
by prospero 18y ago
I looked up US defense spending since WWII, adjusted for inflation: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html
One the one hand, you're right in that the spending never really dips below $250 billion, except from 1945-1950. On the other hand, defense spending has doubled in recent years, and there is noticeable growth historically whenever we actually used our military.
War isn't necessary for the military-industrial complex to get rich, but it helps. I don't think the logistical complications of war are a very meaningful deterrence for the people who stand to profit from it.
- asdflkj 18y agoDefense spending has increased (not really doubled, though, according to those numbers), but much of that increase was poured down the drain actually making the war happen. Defense contractors' profits probably don't scale linearly with defense spending in times of war.
- prospero 18y agoAt the bottom it says that these figures don't include the costs for the day-to-day expenses of Iraq or Afghanistan. Those costs, if my cursory Google search is to be believed, are around $9 billion a month. All told, that's about $600 billion a year, or twice the "peacetime" average of $300 billion.