>(When seeking opinions on Patriotism one must also be aware of the vast
>number of Americans who work in some area of that octopus nominated the
>"National Security State" by sage commentators. Statistically it is the
>largest Industrial grouping in the world: now employing somewhere over ten
>million workers producing products and services totaling over fifty
>percent (50%) of the US Gross Domestic Product)
>
>
>Wow. Five trillion dollars. U.S. defense budget is $300 billion.
>Where in the world does this number come from?
Wow indeed. You hear this sort of thing pretty often. Somehow, the War Resisters League figures that half the federal budget goes to the military, but I never followed their math. The biggest element of the military budget is salaries, accounting for something like 40% of the total. Military hardware procurement is something like 2% of GDP.
By the way, where does the stat I saw earlier about the military's high share of oil consumption come from? Petroleum purchases are only about 2% of total military spending.
Doug