[walljm]

The vast majority of our defense spending is Salaries for US Service Men and Women. And they are under paid in many cases. Just bumping the salary of the bottom ranks would likely shift the spending ratio.

(you can verify this by digging into the monthly treasury statements: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/monthly-treasury-st...)

[anotherman554]

Can you elaborate? What you wrote seems to contradict this source:

"Roughly one-quarter of the Department of Defense’s budget is for military personnel."

https://www.cbo.gov/topics/defense-and-national-security/mil...

[walljm]

I looked closer, and it seems my memory is either bad or the levels have changed since I last dug into those numbers. In either case, thanks for checking those numbers!