carlfense Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 1.7 trillion over the next 10 years? Technically it would have been over the past ten years. Link to comment
Dr. Strangelove Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 (edited) 1.7 trillion over the next 10 years? Technically it would have been over the past ten years. The military budget has increased each year (as seen by this graph: Like I said, slowing the rate of increase isn't the same as actually cutting. It's hard to actually shrink the budget (and may not be possible). Best case scenario that might be possible is to 'freeze' the budget for 5 years. Edit: Sorry the picture came out in a weird spot. Edited July 21, 2014 by Dr. Strangelove Link to comment
NUance Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Here are some defense spending facts to chew on: Our defense budget is around $700 billion per year (700 x 10^9 or 7.0 x 10^11). LINK There are around 100,000 public schools in the U.S., high school level and lower (1.0 x 10^5). LINK A public school, on average, costs around $68 million to build, including land, materials, planning and labor. Let's throw a few extra computers in and call it $70 million each (7.0 x 10^7). LINK Hence, we spend about the same amount each year on defense as it would cost to rebuild one in ten of the public schools in America with brand new buildings. That's just f'ing ridiculous. edit: Correction due to one of my stats being off. There are 100,000 public schools in America, not 10,000. 3 Link to comment
BigRedBuster Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Like I said, slowing the rate of increase isn't the same as actually cutting. It's hard to actually shrink the budget (and may not be possible). Best case scenario that might be possible is to 'freeze' the budget for 5 years. That statement doesn't say anything about how we cut defense spending. Cutting defense in a meaningful and smart way means we would need to completely rethink how we use our military and what we expect them to do. 1 Link to comment
Dr. Strangelove Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Like I said, slowing the rate of increase isn't the same as actually cutting. It's hard to actually shrink the budget (and may not be possible). Best case scenario that might be possible is to 'freeze' the budget for 5 years. That statement doesn't say anything about how we cut defense spending. Cutting defense in a meaningful and smart way means we would need to completely rethink how we use our military and what we expect them to do. I completely agree. The easiest things I can think of off the top of my head is closing military bases overseas. Not that we don't have to close all of them, just half of them in say Germany and Japan. Reducing the overall size of the military is another option, while also lowering some of the benefits vets receive. I've actually never seen the points that NUance made, those stats are pretty interesting and crazy. That means that the cost of one F-22 Raptor (~125 million each) would be enough to build two brand new high schools. Link to comment
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