6 ms·
I believe less than a quarter of the defense budget is for salaries and compensations.
by mbfg 1y ago
I believe less than a quarter of the defense budget is for salaries and compensations.
- Aurornis 1y agoThe companies that build and supply things for the military have to pay salaries and compensation, too.
- Yokolos 1y agohttps://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-defense/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-d... 22%. But operations also includes civilian salaries and procurement naturally includes the labor required to produce what was procured. I would assume that R&D also includes research grants and salaries.
- OrvalWintermute 1y agothe current number is around 12.5% of the federal budget (2025 Administration budget, discretionary & non-discretionary).
- gruez 1y agoPresumably that's only for DoD employees and people serving in the armed forces? It doesn't include defense contractor salaries.
- Workaccount2 1y agoThat is only for people in the DoD. Almost nothing that the DoD uses is made by the DoD. It's pretty much all 3rd party contractors, and those contractors handle paying their employees.
- abtinf 1y agoAll spending everywhere is essentially “salaries and compensation”. It’s not like you get to the end of the supply chain and suddenly are paying God. Money always goes to people.
- estearum 1y agoWell, really at rock bottom all payments go into land rent.
- lukas099 1y agoSounds interesting but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that. Would you care to elaborate?
- frankbreetz 1y agoProfit would fall into an entirely different category then "salaries and compensation"
- abtinf 1y agoCertainly. So would materials expenses and theft and insurance and so forth. But the confusion is that somehow, money not spent on “salaries and compensation” doesn’t go to people. All of it goes to people. Defense spending isn’t buying “defense”, it’s buying time and effort for people to focus on and produce defense related things. This is the root of the original post that defense spending is a jobs program.
- ffsm8 1y ago> All of it goes to people That's just straight up false. It goes to legal entities, some of which are people. Companies aren't people mate, and neither are investment funds. The money might still be managed by people, but that cannot be called salary, even if you're stretching the definition.
- lukas099 1y agoBut companies are owned by people. As are funds.
- abtinf 1y agoFor the sake of argument, let’s assume everything you said is true. Would you agree if I reworded my statement to “ultimately, all money eventually flows to people, whether for their labor or due to their ownership of the entities receiving the money”?
- micromacrofoot 1y agothey're not burning the money, it all goes into someone's pocket