[cg5280]

In 2024, the average American spent about $17,000 on taxes. Nearly $4000 of that went to the DoD, about $3500 went to interest on federal debt.

I think it’s fun to think about it in this way. I personally spend hundreds of dollars a month on war.

[tshaddox]

Those numbers look way off. Are you making the common mistake of ignoring mandatory spending? In 2024 defense spending and net interest were each about 13% of federal spending.

[rayiner]

Total government spending in 2024 (at all levels) was about $9.5 trillion. So the military spending of about $950 billion was 10% of that, or $1,700. Interest on federal debt was also about 10%.

It’s worth also looking at what other countries spend on defense. Now that the U.S. is cutting off NATO, France plans to raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Applying that same figure to the U.S. would bring us down to $700 billion in 2024. So you’d pay $1,250 if the U.S. military budget was similar to what France thinks is a good number.

Germany is currently at 2.3% and plans to hit 3.5% by 2029. That’s the same percent as the U.S.

[jocaal]

Funny how people complain about federal debt, when the people complaining benefitted the most from the system. It is your children who will be paying the interest, while the older folk enjoyed a heated economy with high government spending. Economics is just as fundemental as physics. There are conservation laws that cannot be violated. However you can make other people hold the bag.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> There are conservation laws that cannot be violated.

Modern Monetary Theory on line 2 for you!

There is no possible sense in which "economics is just as fundamental as physics": the latter concerns the behavior of the physical world with or without humans in it; the former describes the dynamics of a human created system featuring humans interacting with each other and the physical world.

[marcosdumay]

Monetary identities can not be violated¹. What you are talking about isn't one of them.

1 - They are also useless by themselves, any rule that actually tells you something will have exceptions.

[wat10000]

What are those conservation laws?

[jocaal]

It's simple accounting. Net money in must be more than or equal to net money out when adjusting for any temporal changes in the face value of the assets. If you use more than you produce, either you are going to have to pay in the future, or in the case of the government, you can die and let your children pay.

[wat10000]

There's no law of conservation of money. It can be pretty trivially created and destroyed. It may not be a good idea, but it's entirely doable.

[ck2]

Defense spending in the USA is double what is publicly published

There are all kinds of dark budgets and stuff spun off into "civilian" programs that actually aren't

The published cost of Iran War is like $30 Billion when it is obviously over $100 Billion by experts and that doesn't including replacing all the missiles

TWENTY-ONE TRILLION DOLLARS since 9/11 spent on defense 2001-2021

* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...

imagine how much food clothing shelter for the US and WORLD that would buy

we'd have humans on Mars already with that budget not even knowing now how to stop space-blindness and bone-loss

[kccqzy]

> imagine how much food clothing shelter for the US and WORLD that would buy

President LBJ proposed his Great Society agenda, which he defined as “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.” It was a war on poverty, touching food, shelter, and education. At that same time, the country also increased its defense spending due to the heightened tension in the Cold War and escalation in the Vietnam War. The country could really do both.

[mrguyorama]

It's like when people comment "This is why the US doesn't have healthcare" around military or war boasting.

No, the US absolutely can afford to have a gigantic military and massive welfare. That's what being the richest country on earth means

But for some reason we spent the past 50 years insisting that we are better off just letting a few individuals direct that wealth instead of making some choices collectively and democratically.

People might come to their senses when the second gilded age once again leaves a third of us unemployed and parents dying in ditches.

[laughing_man]

>Defense spending in the USA is double what is publicly published

Show your work.

>There are all kinds of dark budgets and stuff spun off into "civilian" programs that actually aren't

How much, though, as a percentage of the federal budget? Also, DoD does a lot of stuff that doesn't involved national defense, like breast cancer research or canal and levee maintenance.

>The published cost of Iran War is like $30 Billion when it is obviously over $100 Billion by experts and that doesn't including replacing all the missiles

Those missiles will be replaced in future defense budgets.

[victorbjorklund]

Doesn’t sound like those numbers are correct? I doubt out of the total taxes (all taxes, on all levels) 44% went to only pay federal debt (excluding state, city etc debt) and DoD.

[germinalphrase]

You have a source to share for that framing of the tax spend?

[blobcode]

Although not quite exact, here's spending data for 2024 (https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-data/published-report...) - about 14% of tax dollars went to defence, 0.14*17000=2380.

[rayiner]

That’s just federal spending. $17,000 sounds too high to just be federal taxes, it looks like federal + state/local. Accounting for that, military spending is closer to 10%.

[luckylion]

> I personally spend hundreds of dollars a month on war.

Or, put another way, you spend hundreds of dollars a month on not having to learn russian and live as putin's peasant.

Seems like a good deal to me.

[perilunar]

The Russians can't even take Ukraine — what makes you think they have a hope in hell of taking the US?

[wat10000]

The oceans exist for free.

[BurningFrog]

You spend that money on defense, not war!