From: "Max Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
> 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 $600 or so.
> Five trillion basically says 'you may stop reading here.'
>
> mbs
============ Not to defend them but they may be 'using' a cumulative accounting strategy. One estimate of the cold war -I think using '47-'89- in terms of the defense budget was 9 trillion$. Add in environmental cleanup, indoctrination of the nation via school, films etc. and you're gonna get some big numbers over that time period.
Ian