But not in a 1 trillion dollar federal budget. Many useful social programs could be financed at a fraction of the cost that goes to the 'national security state' (more or less, the civilian and military intelligence agencies, the dept. of defense, the dept. of energy). Moreover, to pay for all that stuff, without a true progressive income tax to redistribute wealth, the US has a tax system that extracts Caeser's due out of the hide of the working class (including those who think they are middle class).
And of course there are many non-fiscal aspects to this enormous amount of militarization that the US has. Why is the US the number one country in producing (or now controlling while farming out to overseas) computer software and hardware that really doesn't work very well? Well, early on the market with the government, including defense helped companies like Intel and MS enormously. And take for example that nutcase Ross Perot, whose whole business re'sume' comes from running a company that got gov't contracts to make all that software and hardware that didn't work not work better.
That reminds me, someday I'll tell how I caused a national security breach at a navy supply depot by pressing a 'o' instead of a '0' on a newly installed IBM pc in 1987.
Charles Jannuzi