Military isn’t a problem. It’s a scape goat for people who don’t understand the size of our economy. By treaty we are obligated to spend 2%. We spend about 3%. That’s how large our economy is.
It paid for my education and the job skills of many people I know. It doesn’t mean we can’t be more efficient with the spending but the military provides real benefits to society. Ever hear of the army corp of engineers ? NOAA? PHS?
Military spending is also required by the constitution.
GDP is not the amount of money spent on infrastructure or foreign aid. That comes directly from tax dollars and need to be measured that way. The entire economic output of the United States is not relevant when discussing infrastructure rebuilding or foreign aid.
And no they don’t come from tax dollars. They come from borrowing which is a large part of our problem. We over spend every year. Our tax revenue doesn’t even come close to our spending.
Sorry… you think foreign aid and infrastructure doesn’t come from tax dollars? What do you think is in government budgets that have to get passed every year?
The point being is we borrow for those things. Each year we go further and further in debt. Tax revenue is not exceeding the expenditures and it hasn’t for a very long time.
We could easily afford to rebuild America and Gaza if we didn’t spend so much money on our military.
If we taxed the wealthy and businesses properly, like we did back before Reagan, we could easily keep the military and rebuild everything.
It would be far better to tax the rich like we used to.
Unfortunately it seems that the military will be useful as Russia needs to be taught a lesson.
Military isn’t a problem. It’s a scape goat for people who don’t understand the size of our economy. By treaty we are obligated to spend 2%. We spend about 3%. That’s how large our economy is. It paid for my education and the job skills of many people I know. It doesn’t mean we can’t be more efficient with the spending but the military provides real benefits to society. Ever hear of the army corp of engineers ? NOAA? PHS?
Military spending is also required by the constitution.
Where did you get 3% from?
3% of gdp.
GDP is not the amount of money spent on infrastructure or foreign aid. That comes directly from tax dollars and need to be measured that way. The entire economic output of the United States is not relevant when discussing infrastructure rebuilding or foreign aid.
It’s how we measure funding for programs.
And no they don’t come from tax dollars. They come from borrowing which is a large part of our problem. We over spend every year. Our tax revenue doesn’t even come close to our spending.
Sorry… you think foreign aid and infrastructure doesn’t come from tax dollars? What do you think is in government budgets that have to get passed every year?
The point being is we borrow for those things. Each year we go further and further in debt. Tax revenue is not exceeding the expenditures and it hasn’t for a very long time.
The GDP is only used in the context of NATO. For everything else you use % of the budget.
It’s how things are measured in general. It’s a common government statistic