Do we spend enough on our Military?

OK I was thinking. There are 350 million Americans. We spend 600 billion a year on our Military.

This equals to 17$ a year allocated to defense for each citizen.

Is this pathetic to anyone else besides me? I know 600 billion dollars could still somehow relate into enough defense. But you would think that our defense budget should potentially be much higher.

If I spent as much money as the government did for my security, I couldnt even probably buy a pocket knife, nevermind missiles, rockets, bombs, airplanes and satellites.

I think there should be a tax option to optionally commit more money into the US Defense budget.

It is no wonder we were soo ill prepared for 9/11. We probably had rent a cops on top of the twin towers with super soakers to shoot down the jumbo jets, since they only committed 17$ to spend.

Not sure about your numbers on what we spend on defense and the number of American Citizens, but when punching them in on my handy dandy abacus, I came out with $1,714.28 per citizen. I would say that buys you a pretty damn good knife.

The question should be more like, how much of the money spent on defense is spent efficiently/effectively?

Sorry too many zeros make my eyeballs pop out. 1714$ is correct.

This is about what a semiautomatic assault rifle is sold for on the commercial market.

How many missiles are allocated around my town for my 1714$ worth? How much of a chunk of a space sattelite does that cover? Need alot of sattelites to surveil the Earth.

Can 1714$ protect me 360 degrees from air attack? From sea invasion? Does it buy enough equipment to protect me from other countries with billions of people, without turning the world nuclear?



[edit on 24-3-2005 by Ritual]

Now I will admit that an abacus is old, but this time in addition to using it, I used my computer's calculator and this is how it came out (600,000,000,000 divided by 350,000,000 = 1714.285714 repeating decimal).

Now just using estimation 600,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 you get 2000. And to make it even easier to see, suppose you had the same 600 billion dollars and bumped up the population of America to 300 billion citizens (yes I know more than the total population on earth), then you can clearly see that is 1/2 and therefore 2 dollars per person. The population bump is 1000 times the population you used and multiplying 2 times 1000 = 2000. Now if you still see something wrong with my calculations, well, you are beyond my ability to teach you.

Ok I did not see your edit while typing the above. However, you are correct 1.7k is not even close to paying for the type of protection you are suggesting. As a caveat I would say what you are suggesting is not realistic. There is no need for each person to have the kind of protection you are suggesting and I doubt it would even be viable for the government to spend this kind of money.

I do hear though that the FED creates money out of thin air so maybe they can afford it, but then they would charge you interest on the money they made out of thin air and still come out ahead and richer then me or you.

Better than China, they spend .02 cents per person, but they have over 350,000,000 in the military, more than the population of the US.

1.2 billion people and 60 billion spent....

www.cia.gov...

We spent 370 billion in which equates to a little over 1200 per citizen in 2004.

www.cia.gov...

and

The United States led the world in defense spending, accounting for 47 percent of the total [$400 billion], followed by Japan with 5 percent and Britain, France and China, with 4 percent each. The figures were in line with estimates by Jane's Information Group, a spokesman from the company's London office told the AP.

Originally posted by Ritual
Is this pathetic to anyone else besides me?

The US spends almost as much as the rest of the world COMBINED! ( www.armscontrolcenter.org... ) and some people still feel it's not enough!
.

The United States has bout 300 Million people and we spend about 466B on our military this is for 2005-2006. I do not think it is enough, I think that we need extra money for terror systems to protect us against a terror attack and we have to increase the size out our military which would cost more money. I think our annual DOD budget should go form 466B to about 700B. This I think world cover what we need to do and I would not mind paying a tax that would go toward our military budget.

Here is a link to the World's Military Budget.

Military Budget

[edit on 24-3-2005 by WestPoint23]

yea, you do make a good point, thats alot of money. im sure we could spend extra money on our defense budget, but were going good right now, we have the most advanced military in the world, and our population is happy with that. youve got to remember though, we borrow money from other countries too, if you havnt noticed, Bush has gotten us into one hell of a debt. so we actually have more money than what you said, but thats just the money that comes out of our taxes.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
The United States has bout 300 Million people and we spend about 466B on our military this is for 2005-2006.

Military Budget

[edit on 24-3-2005 by WestPoint23]

Actually the site say FY04.

United States $466.0 billion FY04 actual [see Note 8]

Nevermind

[edit on 24-3-2005 by dev_add]

This is a disgrace, even France are spending more than the UK on defence now what the hell is this gov doing to our armed forces? We have troops in Iraq, need new aircraft carriers and most of our equipment is pretty sub-standard (sa-80). We have a bigger economy than france too so it is certainly viable to spend more on defence, we make so many commitments and cannot back them up properly cause our forces are being neglected

I hear things about the troops in Iraq not having enough equipment. But if they were int he States they could buy the equipment themselves witht heir own money on the market. So that doesnt make sense, its not like there is a shortage. It seems like they are trying to cut corners and just barely get by as far as funding the military and its soldiers.

We dont have border protection.

We dont have air defense.

We probably almost guaranteed dont have submarine and naval defense. There have been cases of foreign submarines popping up off our coast. So I would say its a guarantee that we dont have any naval defense.

Our soldiers might generally have "decent" equipment, it is not latest generation. Our armored vehicles for instance are old.

We dont have port searches.

It is probably safe to say we dont have a real good amount of space defense or surveilance. There are probably foreign satellites and foreign weapons that fly over the US everyday from outerspace.

We dont have natural disaster protection.

We dont have protection for the citizens in case of a WMD attack.

I just cant see how 1714$ a year per person can guarantee the safety of a country that is so large and has so many enemies, and drug and border problems.

And god help us if another country actually launch's a missile at us. It would probably get a US air escort into the nearest city.

That is how lack the US Military is.

Jumbo Jets, nah we wont shoot them down, we will let them fly intot he world largest city.

Ahhh another 3 jumbo jets, let let them fly into the Military HQ at the Pentagon. But lets say we shot down one of them in Pennsylvania, but really we got lucky and it crashed probably from a passenger uprising. Else our next largest Military base was doomed.

Granny with Mace did more then the US Military was capable of on Sept. 11th.

We are responsible for close to 50% of worldwide military spending, and you feel that is not enough?

How did this become a question of what the military did on 9/11? Here is a simple analogy. You are the school bully, and one day someday stands up and punches you in the chest..you are shocked...then another hit to the nose, and with the blood you realize this is for real. You try to defend yourself but you are not sure, since you would have never expected this. It is called shock.

I do not see what else we could have done? What, scramble F-16's to take out every aircraft you deem suspicious?

I do not see where bashing the US comes from. I guess those missle batteries in DC are not protection. Go to your homeowners assoc and ask if you can put a patriot battery in your backyard.

If you want the US to spend more, does this mean you want to enable the war machine to roll on, the one so many complain about??

Never expected suicide airplanes? Never expected terrorist attacks? Never expected preemptive attacks? Give me a break, this is war 101.

f-16's? How about SAM's instead (Surface to Air Missiles).

I dont need permission from my "homeowners assocaition" to put missile batteries in my yard, thanks. I think its time you get out of yours too if that is the case.

What is wrong with the war machine? As long as it is put to good use, and isnt used to try and conquer the world. Without any security you would have anarchy. Crime is still rampant in the US. Law Enforcement barely gets by. And evidently our Military barely gets by too.

So what is wrong with protecting the borders, not cutting corners on National Defense, and maintaining a large Army, Air Force, NAvy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps?

I would of expected New York to have Military assets nearby that could of shot down an airplane. When I take flights from NorthEast to SouthEast US you practuallyf ly directly over New York city. You can look out the window and see the city. If the plane decides it wants to take a dive bomb, it would only take a minute or two to smash into a skyscraper. I expected that they had planned for this. I guess not.

But I dont want to rant about 9/11. I just want to debate about wether doubling or tripling the Military budget would do any good as far as improving the countries security.

Cripes where do you people come from the military planet of dewyscrewemandhow? Stop spending all those bucks on a bigger militay its not here to protect us as much as it is here to go on the offence for American corporations overseas where YOUR jobs are going!!

We were not supposed to be like this! We are in a great strategic position and all we need is a good defence and not a strong offence. In times of all out war we can gear up fast enough while our nuclear deterent keeps the wolves at bay.

If we werent running around the globe placeing despots in different countries and making the people of those countries see red enough to attack us there would not have been a 911!

That money should be spent on education or health care. What a bunch of mindless armchair general idiots! You should be ashamed for your lack of education on how the world works!

Never expected suicide airplanes? Never expected terrorist attacks? Never expected preemptive attacks? Give me a break, this is war 101.

Show me that book. War 101. I don't remeber reading about this in the ART of War, and I thought that was war 101.

dont need permission from my "homeowners assocaition" to put missile batteries in my yard, thanks. I think its time you get out of yours too if that is the case.

Open your mind, and quit bieng defnesive. I am trying to show that there are things that are rolled out that are there for our defense.

What is wrong with the war machine? As long as it is put to good use, and isnt used to try and conquer the world. Without any security you would have anarchy. Crime is still rampant in the US. Law Enforcement barely gets by. And evidently our Military barely gets by too.

YOu killed your arguement here. Exactly, we are funding our soldiers to fight overseas, when the money should go to Law Enforcement here in the States. Deep down I care about my on country first, and my rights.


NY has security measures in place that are not known to the general public. MOst cities do. Are they supposed to release that kind of information, no.

IF we doubled our military budget it would accomplish nothing as recruitment is down again. It would only be more money shot into a blcak hole.

Time to invest in UAV's. YOU can buy quite a few for the price of one F-22.

Ritual
OK I was thinking. There are 350 million Americans. We spend 600 billion a year on our Military.

your numbers are wrong.
are population is around 295 million, and our FY05 defense budget was 420 billion.

I find it kinda funny that this thread is still alive after how wrong this guy was with his numbers.

$1,424 per person, per year.

[edit on 26-3-2005 by Murcielago]

Originally posted by Murcielago

Ritual
OK I was thinking. There are 350 million Americans. We spend 600 billion a year on our Military.

your numbers are wrong.
are population is around 295 million, and our FY05 defense budget was 420 billion.

I find it kinda funny that this thread is still alive after how wrong this guy was with his numbers.

$1,424 per person, per year.

[edit on 26-3-2005 by Murcielago]

You kidding, right?..this is unbelieveable! The citizen of the USA spend this much money for the Army..unsolicitous! reduce it to the half and spend the rest to people in need.