A picture worth 1000 words: 2011 top 10 defense budgets.....share this

[tpsbmam]

whenever you hear the BS talks heading toward cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the many other cuts Republicans are itching to "negotiate" into budget cuts while guarding and even increasing military expenditures!




(Found on Facebook)

[woo me with science]

1. There are our schools, our libraries, our roads, our bridges,

our parks and after school programs, our quality of living and health care for the poor, insurance for all of us against destitution in old age, public colleges, etc., etc., etc...

All stolen for blood, devastation, despair, and the profit of a few.

[Johnyawl]

2. And 5 of the top 10 are our allies.

[woo me with science]

3. +1

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

9. I wish they'd add that to the graphic.

[Scootaloo]

12. And one of them - Saudi Arabia - spends all of that in the US

To buy machines and armarments for a military that doesn't have enough men to use them! The SA Air Force has something like eight fighters for every pilot... because only members of the royal family are allowed to be fighter pilots. it's a weird sort of outgrowth of repressing a large nation that has a population about on par with Denver.

[kentuck]

4. It would be interesting to know how much those other countries spend on American armanents?

They have healthy defense budgets but my guess is that they spend much of their budgets on American weaponry?

[AntiFascist]

5. K&R n/r

[joesdaughter]

6. An old tale

Two children are watching their mother cut them a piece of pie. The older boy is big and strong, the younger is thin and weak looking. The mother gives the big husky boy a very large piece of the pie. He goes to the table with his plate and begins to eat. She then slices a small sliver of pie and hands it to the younger boy. Disappointed he asks his mother why his brother always got such a big piece of pie. The mother giggled and told him that his brother always got the largest portion because he was bigger. The frail lad sadly said to his mum, "Then he always will be."

[Change has come]

7. K & R

[BlueStreak]

8. Our national priorities have consequences.

Our competitors are spending their resources on things that build their future and build their domestic economy. While we are spending billions every year on weapons systems the Pentagon doesn't even want, China is building the best bullet trains, the wind turbines and photovoltaics of the future, and cornering the world market in rare earth minerals.

[SheilaT]

10. The graphic is incomplete.

It should include flags of every single country that has a military. We spend as much as all of them.

[JDPriestly]

11. We need to spend so much on defense

in order to keep our trade routes open.

Who benefits the most from that? The big corporations.

So, if anyone is going to pay to keep the trade routes open, seems to me it should be the corporations.

Will they pass their taxes on us? Yes.

But at least they will be responsible for collecting the taxes to pay for "free trade" from the consumers. We pay for this one way or the other, but let's make sure the corporations are aware of how much it really costs to sell all those cheap products at you name it store.

[Egalitarian Thug]

13. And that's less than half of our total military spending.

See, the defense budget doesn't count all of our military spending. Over half of every tax dollar you pay goes toward the least stimulative spending the government engages in.

As usual it's even worse than we think.

[Scuba]

14. +1 for Fatherland Defense, CIA and other military slush funds.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. And here's a nice ditty on what we could do with that, if we had a choice.

[Scuba]

17. Well done, thanks for posting!

[KG]

15. this is why we can't have nice things.

[Scuba]

18. If we can't afford to educate our children, to tend to our sick or care for our elderly ...

... just what is it the defense budget is defending?

[Egalitarian Thug]

19. We could do all of that for the entire world and save 75% of the money and not

need the military because we did it. What is so hard to figure out here? We know why they hate us, helping them love us is the most cost effective solution.

[Scuba]

21. Well sure, but how can the wealthiest among us get wealthier doing that?

[Egalitarian Thug]

22. That's why they bought both parties.

Have you ever studied the Spanish revolution of 1936? Before they began their world war, the capitalists, communists, and fascists all worked together to destroy what the Spaniards had created for themselves.

This has been going on for a very long time.

[Kaleva]

20. If China and Russia paid their service people what we pay ours...

those two nations would be close to us in defense expenditures.

About 50% of our defense budget goes to personal (pay and benefits). The average Chinese and Russian soldier doesn't get shit.

[Egalitarian Thug]

23. Not even close. And it's personnel. n/t

[Kaleva]

24. China has well over twice as many on active duty as we do.

1.6 million to our 640k. If about half of our defense budget goes to personnel costs and we have less then half the men and women under arms, what do you think China's military budget would be if they spent just as much on each service member as we do?

[Egalitarian Thug]

25. China's military can go anywhere they can't walk to, and you know it.

Or if you don't, we're even more screwed than I thought.

Now if you're Russia, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, etc. that might be an issue, but they aren't coming here even if they wanted to, which they don't.

They want to, and in fact are, conquering us through economics and the stupidly excessive amount we are spending on our military is helping them far more than any threat they might pose even in the most extreme fantasies floating around the Pentagon.