U.S. War Spending in Cartograms

  

By Jonathan H

Missile Antenna and War Spending

The decaying hull of a Titan I missile complex. The development costs – just to get these bases up and running – ran over 11 trillion inflation-adjusted dollars, more than ten times what the Iraq war is expected to cost. Despite their high costs, not a single Titan I missile was launched in the defense of this country.

Military sites abound in California. It’s fortunate for me because I literally have a lifetime of beautiful rusting landscapes within a few dozen miles. But it’s truly unfortunate for the country, and especially the parts of the country that bear the burden of a bloated military budget.

Earlier, I may not have quite articulated myself properly when I mentioned, as an aside, that U.S. military spending is — for lack of a better term — obscene. Of course, I’m not saying this just to opine. It’s a fact. Japan, the second largest military spender, tosses in a pittance 1/9th of our budget.

In the process of looking for evidence, I found the perfect illustrations for such an assertion. Behold! Cartograms of world military spending, broken down both by arms sales and total dollar amounts. It all makes one feel warm and fuzzy inside, believe me.

Global Arms Exports

Cartogram of World Exports of Weapons by Country (courtesy: worldmapper.org)

Total War Spending by Country

Total War Spending in Real Dollars (courtesy: worldmapper.org)

Isn’t GDP the Proper Way to Look at Military Spending?

Granted, there is a large contingent that believes GDP is the proper way to look at military budgets. I concede, it may perhaps be so, but only if you were looking at how military spending may bleed the overall economy. Citing military spending as a percent of GDP tells you nothing of how it affects the average taxpayer. In order to understand how much we lowly taxpayers unwittingly cough up towards military spending, you need to look at it as a percent of of the federal budget.

So how does the U.S. compare on that measure? In 2008, around 51% of our income taxes go toward war. So last year, I personally contributed nearly $2,000 to fund the production of nuclear bombs and the continued deaths of over 250,000 Iraqi civilians and counting…

Military Spending as a Percentage of Income Tax, 2004

Military Spending as a Percentage of Income Tax, 2004 (source fcnl.org)

To be honest, I don’t feel too good about that, but if I don’t put my money towards killing people, I go to jail or lose my home. And no matter who the next president may be, I don’t think they’re going to allow a $2,000 above-the-line deduction for conscientious objectors.

14 comments on “U.S. War Spending in Cartograms

  1. Aaron on said:

    Right on. I didn’t realize that much % of our taxes went towards defense spending… pretty sickening. Isn’t Federal Income Tax basically unconstitutional anyway? I’ve heard of a guy trying to prove that for years now but he hasn’t found a judge willing to hear the case.

    But anyway, as I see it looking at the defense budget as a % of GDP only tells how much the economy relies on that segment of government spending, to get a sense of US hegemony you need to look at the real $ spent as you’ve presented here

  2. Jonathan Haeber on said:

    Thanks Aaron for the words. I do recall someone going to supreme court of income taxes. In fact, there was a documentary film that covered this very thing. I believe the documentary was “Maxed Out,” but I could be wrong…

  3. William on said:

    Aaron,

    Mr. Haeber is lying about the U.S. spending 51% of income taxes on war. Reality is that about 1/2 of government expenditures go to welfare, social security, medicare, and other social programs, while about 1/5 goes to national defense. Here’s a link to the real data:

    http://www.cbpp.org/4-10-07tax2.htm

  4. Al C. on said:

    He’s probably drawing from a more accurate gauge. As far as I understand a large portion of the social security surplus goes into war spending, so to say that the money is going into social programs is an outright lie in and of itself, William.

  5. Al C. on said:

    Upon re-reading the entry, he doesn’t mention anything about Social Security or Medicare. These are taken separately out of your paycheck. Assuming Mr. Haeber makes around 30K a year (according to what he states as his “portion” towards war spending), then the $2,000 he cited would support that assertion. I don’t think he’s including cuts for social security/medicare/medicaid. Income tax is deducted separately from peoples’ paychecks.

  6. William on said:

    Al,

    I’m looking at the federal budget. If the author is trying to mislead us by making statements about how much income tax goes to the war, then he is being deceptive.

    The numbers given on the website I posted indicate actual amounts spent, so I would have to assume that any diversion from one area of the budget to another is already included.

  7. Jonathan Haeber on said:

    In the article: “In 2008, around 51% of our INCOME TAXES go toward war.” Nowhere do I say it in terms of percent of federal budget. The statistic I cited was specifically related to income tax.

    You even stated yourself in your first comment that I “[was] lying that 51% of income taxes go towards war,” which is completely false. You change your tune quite a bit.

    I personally think you are being deceptive by saying that the government spends go towards “welfare, Social Security, Medicare.” Welfare barely exists anymore thanks to Reagan, and Social Security is being robbed by the war machine — even Medicare isn’t keeping up with health care costs and inflation.

  8. Aaron on said:

    I independently checked and believe the ~51% of income taxes to be accurate. The figure is interesting to me only to determine one’s personal contribution to death & mayhem oops I mean Homeland Security. The personal contribution to the total amount spent will of course be less. Most of the money spent was likely created from thin air by the Fed anyway, just look at the deficit… of course that is just a “hidden tax” anyway since it’s what causes inflation in the 1st place. I also feel that if you take the main point of the article as a comparison of $ amount spent by different countries as I did, the ratio of US war spending to the total US budget is really only a side point anyway.

  9. WorkerBee on said:

    With the national debt creeping toward $10T, I think it might be more reasonable to assume that whatever portion of our 2008 income tax is attributable to military spending is still paying for the production arms involved in Vietname….or maybe Korea? We don’t need to sweat paying for the current war, that’s our great-grandchildren’s problem.

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  11. Wow. I’m still trying to get over the fact that the author states that $2000 is 50% or so of his total federal income tax bill annually. I’m guessing college student or something; the fed (and out “betters” (or is that “bettors”?) in Scrotamento) take me for many times that amount. Lucky you.

    These Titan sites are incredible from an engineering and execution standpoint. I envy your having toured a few; I’ve been through a number of Atlas F sites myself and it is awesome, as you say. To think these things are out there, silently decaying under the great fruited plains of the nation! Makes me wonder what else is out there! Actually, it makes me a little sad, too; at the time these were built, there was an element of local pride in their being nearby – the folks in the nearby towns (at least with regard to most of the Atlas sites; not sure about the Titans but basically the same idea built at the same time so why not) all knew about them so it’s not like these programs were secret. Hell, there’s a “Route 66” television show episode from 1961 where one of the guys is working at the Convair plant in San Diego, with scenes on the assembly building floor with him touching up one of the Atlas rockets!). Nowadays, I could not imagine the country coming together for a sustained effort for the “common good” as these things were felt to be at the time (“missile gap”, anyone?), certainly not in a manner that these were, where they were designed and built in a very short order. The carping over the energy infrastructure and the abysmal record on siting/building new plants or upgrading the grid, not to mention the discourse over how/whether to do the “green” energy projects is demonstrative of my point.

    Incidentally, I ran one of those “currency converters” for 1960 dollars for these bases and found that each of the 18 Titan I sites would cost $1 billion to build out today (they were built at a cost of $130 million apiece in ’60 dollars). Think about excavating, constructing the hardened facility and equipping it with all the necessary tanks, conduit, electrical, antennae, power equipment and computers, etc. — the sheer amount of stuff that was in those bases!

    And then consider that a single B-2 stealth bomber costs twice as much.

    Wow.

  12. I meant “our betters”, not “out betters”. D’Oh!!!!

  13. Marcus Ranum on said:

    You might enjoy reading Franklin (“Chuck”) Spinney’s paper on the Pentagon’s spending death-spiral. It’s good for explaining some of why a stealth bomber costs so darned much (it’s waste!)
    See:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_C._Spinney
    http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm

  14. Defending the country is one of the very few legitimate reasons for the existence of any federal government. The Preamble to the Constitution refers to “providing for the common defense.” That defense has to be paid for somehow.

    Defense IS the main business of the federal government. The vast majority of all the other things we are taxed for are more properly, legally and effeciency-wise, the realm of the various state governments. There are no provisions at any level below the federal for creating, training, equipping, maintaining, and directing a military structure for defending the entire nation of the United States of America. The National Guard are STATE troops and when they are not federalized for wartime service, they have no obligation to take any action of any kind outside their own states. There is no legal obligation or framework for State governments to do anything about defense at the national level.

    Look at the chart above this comments section. Of all the things mentioned there, preparation for war is the ONLY one which is directly referred to in the Constitution. All the rest of them can be considered as being a proper concern/function for a federal government only by arguing that they are somehow *related to* some section of the Constitution. It can therefore be rationally argued that all those other things are unConstitutional – that they are not authorized for action by a national level government – and should then NOT be addressed by the national government. It could be rationally argued that by a strict interpretation of the Constitution, defense (preparation for war, if you prefer) is the ONLY legitmate reaason for the federal government requiring tax revenues, and therefore defense should receive 100% of all federal tax income.

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