94,000,000,000 bottles of Nyquil

[armyowalgreens]

The US government spent $609 billion on defense in FY 2008
That was 21% of the entire federal budget.

http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2008/fy2008_weabook.pdf

8.8 billion on an ICBM missile defense system

6.1 billion on the F-35
4.6 billion on the F-22 Raptor
2.6 billion on the F-18 Hornet

2.7 billion on Virginia class submarines
1.2 billion on the Littoral combat ship (stealth Navy vessel)

Most of these machines will NEVER see combat service.



But let's put the defense budget into perspective.

$609,000,000,000=

-126.9 million years of health insurance (At an average cost of $400 per month for a single US citizen)

-30.5 million full chemo-therapy treatments (At an average cost of $20,000)

-898, 230 heart transplants (At an average cost of $678,000)

-1.93 million liver transplants (At an average cost of $315,000)

-11.3 million kidney transplants (At an average cost of $54,000)

-304.5 million emergency room visits (At an average cost of $2000)

-11.8 billion mile ambulance ride. That is 23,495 trips to the moon and back (At an average cost of $54 a mile)

-20.3 billion flu vaccines ( At an average cost of $30 per dose)

-54.6 million years of poverty level income (At current US poverty level income for a single person of $11,200)




- $17,000 for each and every man, woman and child that currently live below the US poverty level (37 million people)







Feeling sick yet?

[hedgehog]

1. To really put it into perspective, consider this:

[Retired AF Dem]

17. If our allies would of pulled more of their share

esp with NATO our bar could be alot shorter. We went broke so other countries could finance their social needs.

[mix]

19. The burdens of empire.

It's always someone else's fault, never the Pentagon's.

[Retired AF Dem]

21. If you knew anything about anything

you would know the Pentagon doesn't hold the purse strings.

[mix]

22. Right, it's the "politicians", not the corrupt generals or the political weight of the military.

What a good soldier.

[Retired AF Dem]

23. Civilians control the money

me thinks someone needs to retake civics class. Since it seems someone slept through it the first time.

[mix]

24. You are naive to think that the military does not control the budget process. nt

[Retired AF Dem]

27. And you are naive to think that the military does

You hate the military. That is your right. The military has to ask congress for money and only congress can give it to them.

[armyowalgreens]

28. Congress gives it to them because the politicians are owned by big-death.

Especially those who have districts that have companies that hire shit loads of people to build missiles and tanks.

[mix]

29. It is a shame that liberals like you who have served do not see

how cancerous the military-industrial complex is and how it is destroying our country.

I do not "hate" the military. I hate what the military has become since WWII.

[Retired AF Dem]

30. I understand and agree with what you are saying

but you need to understand it is members of congress that fights like hell to make sure that the military contracts with Boeing, Lockheed and many others are kept operating in their districts. Lost jobs mean lost votes.

[Selatius]

31. Can you honestly blame the person for believing the military does influence spending?

Many retired officers from the military have found lucrative money by becoming lobbyists for defense giants like General Electric, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. Hell, quite a few who were former military have gone on to work for defense contractors like Halliburton or Blackwater.

There is a revolving door between the defense establishment and the defense industry. When one leaves one, he can enter the other.

Technically speaking, you are right. Civilians control the purse strings. It's just the money is too good to stop the gravy train, or perhaps "corporate welfare" if one wants to be more blunt.

The US was never established to be world policeman. It was a warning left behind by former President George Washington and several others. They already had to deal with one military superpower with worldwide reach.

[nashville_brook]

32. great post: do you know what a "mcguffiin" is in movies? military spending is a political mcguffin

it's the "thing" that is focused on in order to further the plot of getting more money. it works because our culture values empire over everything else.

if we valued cookies over everything else, politicians would line up to inflate the national cookie budget over everything else.

[gmoney]

60. I just used mcguffin in another thread!

LOL... I think it was originally Hitchcock's term for whatever was the catalyst object... the money in Psycho, the microfilm in North By Northwest, etc.

[Canuckistanian]

55. Oh, yeah. You nailed it.

I've worked for a few defense companies with the upper executive positions filled with Admirals, Generals and Colonels.

They know that if they play ball during their military careers, they'll cruise into the sunset in luxury and affluence.

"Don't rock the boat" isn't just a Naval term.

[Pavulon]

57. Making nyquil pays shit, boeing

pays really well. Union shop last time I was there.

[Sabriel]

2. How many pallets of hundred dollar bills does it equate to?

I can only think in those terms now, thanks to the massive payoffs in Iraq.

[armyowalgreens]

4. 6,090 pallets of $100 dollar bills.

$100 million per pallet.

[JTFrog]

12. Nifty graphic at this link

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

http://www.zee.me/blog/2009/03/what-does-one-trillion-dollars-look-like/

[Stardust]

35. Thanks so much for that. I've heard various attempts to put a trillion

into perspective but find it hard to remember...that graphic is amazing. Visual is the key.

[kcass1954]

56. My favorite definition of 1 trillion...

"A trillion one-dollar bills placed end-to-end would reach all the way around Bill O'Reilly's ego."


from Skinner's journal...

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Skinner/76

[mix]

3. Our military is a cancer, not an asset to our country. It must be reined in

if we are to move forward as a country.

[padumdang]

8. The saddest part of this whole clusterf... is that a Republican (Ike) warned us about it

50 years ago. :grr:

[HughBeaumont]

25. That's why I call it "The Pentasewer".

Money goes in . . . very little good, if anything, comes out.

Our war machine is taking our young men and women and ruining them. They think they can just stick them in some godforsaken desert, fight a created enemy that threatened not ONE American citizen, be exposed to hostile fire almost every other day, see things we can only imagine in our nightmares and assume they'll be just fine when they return to the real world.

This is what happens when you live in a nation where your economy is not diverse, the divide between all social strata is too great and there are no other options for advancement. This is the result of wasting entirely too many tax dollars on FOLLY so rich men can get exponentially richer.

"Why do we fight? I think we fight because basically not enough people are standing up saying, "I'm not doing this anymore." - Ret Lt Karen Kwiatkowski

[cherokeeprogressive]

36. As a Veteran who not only didn't point a weapon at anyone, but didn't pull the trigger,

and who painted orphanages in Columbo, Mombasa, and Caracas, I say FUCK YOU.

[armyowalgreens]

46. I don't believe that poster was saying that the military is inherently bad.

They are referring to it in it's current form. And they are pretty accurate. The military is not exactly spreading good will to the rest of the world. It should be reigned in.

[mix]

53. Orphanages?

Should we forget the crimes of the US military in Vietnam? The training of death squads and torture teams in Central America? Or even the School of the Americas, whose graduates have gone on to military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, just because you painted orphanges as a part of some propaganda program? Should we also forget how the armed forces have drained our budget for decades, at the expense of public schools and other infrastructure?

Your denial and sentimentalism are grotesque.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Amazing! I recc'd this and someone must have unrecc'd it. I would rec it 100x

if I could.

THis is EXACTLY the kind of relativity that needs to be promoted and examined each and every day in a democracy.

Is our collective money spent wisely?


NO

[armyowalgreens]

6. I will personally hunt down anyone that unrec's this...

And I'm not usually one that gives a shit about unreccing.

I spent a long time finding and crunching the numbers.

[mix]

16. There are many sentimental militarist liberals/progressives here who served...

...unable to see how destructive the military-industrial complex is...superb post.

[Cid_B]

42. Feel free...

I.. Cid_B unrecced your post.

[armyowalgreens]

43. I'm going to need your address PMd to me as quickly as possible.

I'll get packing right now.

[Cid_B]

44. There is some paperwork involved ...

The flights to Afghanistan are tough to come by...

[armyowalgreens]

45. Don't worry, I have a boat.

[Cid_B]

47. Might be tough...

No coast....

[armyowalgreens]

48. The boat will get me close enough. I'll hike the rest.

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. Take one down, pass it around...

93,999,999,999 bottles of Nyquil on the wall

[onehandle]

10. LOL! nt

[TheMadMonk]

18. That should see the kids through to the beach. nt

[RavensChick]

9. After seeing this,

I am. This is outrageous, to say the least!:grr:

[Hannah Bell]

11. kr

[padumdang]

13. It's a new 20,000 car every second. Every second of every minute 24/7 for a year.

Cheap at half the price?

[margotb822]

14. As a military member, I feel sort of torn

I've received so much from the DoD, my education, a job, health care, pretty much my whole adult life thus far (9 years) has been because of the DoD. Yet, I see so much waste. It's not that it's inefficient, because I suppose it does what it does best, but it's so damn big. And, it's not just the military, the DoD is MASSIVE. I'm afraid that so much of our economy is directly linked to or once removed from it that dismantling it would be disastrous. And auditing it? I'm sure it would be blocked and hindered at every step.

I think the key is the politics. Voting against the ever-increasing DoD budget is a political killer for so many politicians, even if it makes sense (thanks Reagan).

It's to the point now where the DoD is the only organization with the funding to carry out a full range of diplomatic tasks. Even Gates has requested that funding be transfer to State, but it's been denied.

I don't know. I feel so torn...

[hedgehog]

20. What we're seeing now is the Pentagon standing up to say it

doesn't want all the fancy new weapons systems but more careful spending on what might be actually useful. It's all the Congress critters with weapons plants in their districts pushing the spending now.

[quaker bill]

15. Imagine

how massively different this country and the world would be. Think not of one year but that we have been spending like this with very little if any break every year since World War II.

[BadgerKid]

26. +10.

Outrageous!

[armyowalgreens]

33. Bump

[armyowalgreens]

34. Bump again.

One more time in the morning.

[Libertas1776]

37. Since when did

we become the freaking British Empire? (note: we've been standing their shoes for some time.) At least when they did it, they called it what it was; imperialism. We call it military defense expenditures. Well, all empires and the hulking military amassments all eventually come crashing down, and we are in our twilight years.

[krispos42]

38. I don't mind the military spending so much

In that as a percentage of GDP it's not that bad. "IF you want peace, prepare for war". I'd rather spend a fair bit on military hardware that we never use than slack off and wind up fighting another world war.


However, we're spending too much on gold-plated fancy shit. And on two wars that we really don't need. And too many bases overseas. And we're deficit-spending because we're too cowardly to properly tax the wealthy and corporations.

We have enough advanced stuff to take on and take out most nations within 2 months and with minimal losses. We need more of the basic stuff to win the peace in the post-war land we have to then occupy.

Better body armor, for example. A replacement for the M16, perhaps. Automated towed mortars. Tiny, tactical UAVs. Better vehicles. More combat engineers. More civil affairs units.

And get the goddamn contractors out! You need electricians? Teach the soldiers a trade, something they can take away from the Army when they muster out instead of just how to pull a trigger and hump a backpack!

[armyowalgreens]

39. My purpose wasn't to attack the military...

It was to attack the military-industrial complex.

We spend obscene amounts of money on technology that we don't really need in a time when the money could be used for MUCH better things.

This thread attracted a couple military haters. But that was not the point of my OP.

[Echo In Light]

49. I DO "mind" the military spending b/c I'm against empire and militarization

[krispos42]

58. So am I

We have fleets for a reason... so we don't need so many bases overseas. Keep our aircraft, our troops, and our firepower safely at sea. If the shit hits the fan, we use helicopter-borne Marines and the 82nd Airborne, supported with naval firepower.

But we can't do this when we're in the grind of occupation duty, which is why we need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Vroomfondel]

40. We need to close our overseas bases and bring our troops home from Mideast

This would cut a huge chunk out of the "defense" budget, and would go a long way toward funding universal healthcare. But we do need to maintain a strong military. Your statement that "most of these weapons systems will never see combat" is off base. Since WWII, there have been literally hundreds of critical weapons systems that have not seen combat. And thank god that they haven't. But that doesn't mean they weren't effective or necessary.

[armyowalgreens]

41. No, I'm right. We haven't been in a conventional war for almost 2 decades.

You might argue that we used conventional tactics during the Iraqi invasion. But we do not need stealth ships. We do not need the F-22 or F-35. We do not need to invest so much money in our submarine fleet. We do not need to build more F-18s.

At least not right now. There is no clear threat of a conventional war. Yet we continue to invest in useless eye candy.

Why do you think we halted the F-22? We don't need it.

We have the most powerful military on the planet with plenty of fighters and plenty of submarines.

Plenty of good technology comes from the military. But they also spend billions of dollars a year on useless shit.

[Algorem]

50. how much do they spend on controlling u.s. people?

i guess that would be secret.

[armyowalgreens]

52. Well technically almost all the money is spent doing that.

It's call coercion.

[populistdriven]

51. Easy Fix for Runaway Defense Spending

Remove defense from Discretionary and put it on Non-Discretionary side of the budget!

Make sure it is a line on everyone's payroll deduction.


It is an easy sell to the teabaggers: "The defense of this great nation isn't discretionary!"

[JVS]

54. Could we make meth out of that and sell it to other countries for a profit?

[TexasObserver]

59. Please tell me we didn't pay retail for those bottles of NyQuil.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

61. And, unlike the military, Nyquil is actually useful.