The $900 billion per year U.S. military budget

I was just reading a 2017 The Nation magazine I grabbed and Jeffrey Sachs said something that shocked even me. We spend $900 billion year! I just found that he has shared this shocking fact with numerous publications.Google

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Jeffrey D. Sachs: The fatal expense of American ... - The Boston Globe

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The Boston Globe
By Jeffrey D. Sachs October 30, 2016. Part of a weekly series on ... The $900 billion in annual spending is roughly one-quarter of all federal government outlays.

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From the CIA to the GFE by Jeffrey D. Sachs - Project Syndicate

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404. Page not found. - Project Syndicate...

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Sep 29, 2016 - The US spends $1 billion per year on global education, and $900 billion on ... Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and ...

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Trump says he wants to spend even more per year (of course he doesn't attribute it to and negative fiscal situations we are presently facing) and I never hear any alarm sounding on this one.The "sequestration", that cut a little from the military's massive growth of the past decade to decade and a half, has only inspired a discussion in the media of "how much we should restore" to those "big [bad] cuts" to the poor little military and security budget.Trump wants quite a lot in tax cuts too a well as infrastructure spending.I wonder if this is a strategic bankruptcy we have coming to our nation.Perhaps we need to start speaking more about this issue?Edited by Admin, : Fix Title.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Sachs is passionate and correct in his assessments. The likelihood of reducing the military budget in today's world is necessary and yet tough to do. It seems that the planet has gone mad...(or at least we always were) I see a strategic bankruptcy globally, followed by a new system that has been prophesied. They want to have all the money...

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Two major studies have measured the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. One, by my Columbia colleague Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes, arrived at the cost of $3 trillion as of 2008. A more recent study, by the Cost of War Project at Brown University, puts the price tag at $4.7 trillion through 2016. Over a 15-year period, the $4.7 trillion amounts to roughly $300 billion per year, and is more than the combined total outlays from 2001 to 2016 for the federal departments of education, energy, labor, interior, and transportation, and the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

In todays presidential press conference, Trump reiterated his plans for the military.

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...our country will never have had a military like the military we’re about to build and rebuild. We have the greatest people on earth in our military, but they don’t have the right equipment and their equipment is old. I used it; I talked about it at every stop. Depleted, it’s depleted - it won’t be depleted for long. And I think one of the reason I’m standing here instead of other people is that frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military.

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Depleted, it’s depleted - it won’t be depleted for long.

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Enough of the depleted uranium ammo, bring me some un-depleted uranium ammo.

How much power does the president---by himself---have in ordering a first response strike? By the way I am talking non-nuclear---God help us otherwise.

While only Congress can declare war the President has as much power as the military will allow him.

I was just reading a report on the president and the Japanese PM at Trumps own resort, Mar-A-Logo. This whole story seems scandelous...Trumps own resort doubled admission from $100,000 to $200,000 for guests who--as reported---were taking cellphone pics only feet away from Trump as there was a serious discussion on N.Korea. One guy reportedly even tweeted a pic about seeing the guy who carried the nuclear football with him.

The US military is big business alright. Basically the US and Russian militaries fuck over the Muslim world pursuing their own economic agendas. Then blame Muslims for everything. The worst of it all is that most of the people in the west buy the 'we're trying to help them' nonsense. http://www.news.com.au/...y/74efcba9554c10bd35e280b63a9afb74

Understatement of the century even though it is not the money that should be bothering us but rather the obscene number of people who are killed every day with impunity under the catch all justification of National Security. The incalculable suffering that we cause while protecting freedom (read our interests) around the world throws our hypocrisy into sharp relief.I say 'we' and 'our' because it is certainly not only the US but all of us who tacitly support the brutal aggression with our tax dollars and silence let alone those of us who actively participate. Take a look at the top 15 arms exporting countries. Polite and peaceful Canada makes the list. Does that make us good capitalists or war mongers?The ugly truth is that the majority of us peace and freedom loving wealthy tax paying first world residents are guilty of supporting the military/industrial complex. Unwittingly for the most part and by proxy but even the slightest examination reveals us as hypocrites and cowards. Silent and complacent while the President executes people in secrecy from on high.So it is sad to be wasting all of this treasure but it is the misery that we cause that should really be making it difficult for us to sleep.It is a big machine and will not be easily dismantled. It is an artifact of our history and is woven in to our civilization. Fueled by our willful ignorance and our greed and selfishness.

Polite and peaceful canada 312 of those units in 2015
Russia second best 5483 units
The usa has a category of its own compared to these two at 10484 of these units.Edited by frako, : No reason given.

Sheesh. If you guys are partly to blame, that must mean we "South of the Border" folk are pretty much in league with the devil even if we did our best not to elect them. What were you guys supposed to do? Invade North Dakota and demand that we leave Iraq immediately?Yeah. I guess we all bear some of the same guilt. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What's the difference?

I am not sure about the numbers as I have seen other reports that put Canada at about $3 billion/yr in military exports. Which is about the same per capita as the US. I wonder how many would be surprised that we Canadians export as much military gear per capita as the US.I know that Canada signed a deal to sell $15 billion worth to Saudi Arabia over 15 yrs so the $312 million is definitely way low.

Exactly my point I guess.We all think that we are the good guys but that idea becomes ever more difficult to defend.