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. . . .
Even the WRL couldn't juke the number up past $600 or so. Five trillion basically says 'you may stop reading here.'
mbs