See what I mean GP? We're really not supposed to talk about this stuff.
mrep, you're either misinforming me, or you're misinformed. That 3.2% that you named doesn't cover domestic military spending (Homeland Security, FBI, NSA) nor does it cover pensions for widows and retirees, nuclear weapons research, nuclear waste disposal, nuclear weapon manufacturing, interest on war debts, the VA. Factoring in these costs actually puts military spending second on your list: 993.8 Billion Dollars, just 7 billion shy of the trillion we spent on social security. We now have a growing number of "civilians" in the military too; these private contractors help to make military spending look smaller than it really is.
And keep in mind the military budget has only grown since 9/11 never shrinking. We're still blowing up Yemen, Somalia, the Levant and Afghanistan as I type this, after already blowing up Iraq, Libya and Pakistan over a period of 20 years. It's expensive.
GDP can’t be spent. The Pentagon budget is about 750 billion and federal tax revenues are about 3.5 trillion so the pentagon budget is about 20% of tax revenues. The ‘about’s here are fudging billions.
I can't wait to hear from "conservatives" who "care deeply" about deficits to come out of the wood works and teach us the virtue of "not spending money we don't have" now that we have given our tax breaks (again) to all the corporations from Amazon to Walmart.
Nobody gets to whine about deficits until we raise our tax rates up and stable for at least a decade[0]. I don't see anyone campaigning for higher property taxes (my recommendation is an annual tax of 7 to 9 percent[1] of the property value with a housing allowance to all residents physically present in the US) similar to the carbon tax in Canada.
[0] My off-hand recommendation for income above 50 x 2000 x minimum wage (for example, at a minimum wage of USD 15, it is USD 50 * 2000 * 15 = USD 1.5M), the progressive tax rate should be at least 90%.
[1] The idea being not paying this tax for roughly ten years ought to be enough to get you evicted with minimum fuss so we can "sell" the property to someone who will pay the property tax. No exceptions. No homesteads. No charitable work exception. Applicable nationwide.
The pie slices represent the spend as a percentage of total spend, and the percentages are of GDP. I'd hope government spending is not 100% of spending!
