$5.9 trillion gone into the Pentagon’s annual “base budget,” from 2000 to today

[walter4]

8 Trillion on Our Military Addiction?
How much safety bang for its buck is the U.S. getting from those trillions?

http://www.alternet.org/world/15205...ity_complex_should_scare_the_hell_out_of_you/



1. $5.9 trillion: That’s the sum of taxpayer dollars that’s gone into the Pentagon’s annual “base budget,” from 2000 to today. Note that the base budget includes nuclear weapons activities, even though they are overseen by the Department of Energy, but -- and this is crucial -- not the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, even without those war costs, the Pentagon budget managed to grow from $302.9 billion in 2000, to $545.1 billion in 2011. That’s a dollar increase of $242.2 billion or an 80% jump ($163.6 billion and 44% if you adjust for inflation). It’s enough to make your head swim, and we’re barely started.


2. $1.36 trillion: That’s the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars by this September 30th, the end of the current fiscal year, including all moneys spent for those wars by the Pentagon, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies. Of this, $869 billion will have been for Iraq, $487.6 billion for Afghanistan.

Add up our first two key national security spending numbers and you’re already at $7.2 trillion since the September 11th attacks. And even that staggering figure doesn’t catch the full extent of Washington spending in these years.


3. $636 billion: Most people usually ignore this part of the national security budget and we seldom see any figures for it, but it’s the amount, adjusted for inflation, that the U.S. government has spent so far on “homeland security.” This isn’t an easy figure to arrive at because homeland-security funding flows through literally dozens of federal agencies and not just the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A mere $16 billion was requested for homeland security in 2001. For 2012, the figure is $71.6 billion, only $37 billion of which will go through DHS. A substantial part, $18.1 billion, will be funneled through -- don’t be surprised -- the Department of Defense, while other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion) and the Department of Justice ($4.1 billion) pick up the slack.

Add those three figures together and you’re at the edge of $8 trillion in national security spending for the last decade-plus and perhaps wondering where the nearest group for compulsive-spending addiction meets.


Continued..
http://www.alternet.org/world/15205...ity_complex_should_scare_the_hell_out_of_you/

 

[DT-waw]

8 trillion? its at least 2x more!

on Sep 10th 2001, one day before famous "terrorist" attack, Donald Rumsfeld told on TV that pentagon cannot account for 2.3 tn. a day later, something crashes into pentagon HQ, destroying accounting department exactly.

it was way before these wars. how much is missing today?

and who finances that military spending? Asian countries. they export goods to usa, so american people could live. and asians buys U.S. bonds, so it can be spent on military.

 

[DT-waw]

The cost of Burj Khalifa, something which generates awful amount of money from tourists, was 1.5 B usd.

so, USA could build one thousand of such buildings for just 1.5 trill.

add some super advanced, hyper comfortable high speed trains, ultra huge parks, all powered by solar panels and geothermal energy.

total cost would max at 2.0 trillion.
as an offset, large amounts of jobs and businesses could be created, massive income from tourists for decades to come.

but americans prefer to spend money on wars.
and are surprised why nobody else on the planet likes them.

 

[Der Vent]

Why isn't this discussed more

this is of tremendous importance and clearly why US is going down