An interesting article in Australia's Business Spectator due to a WikiLeaks cable from our embassy in Canberra details the pressure being placed on that nation to increase its military spending. More interesting is the embedded graph. It points to precisely where America's budget cuts need to come from to cut the deficit.
Take a look at the graphic. (Can anybody help me embed it?)
No shit!
Two point 5 wars (let's not forget Pakistan), over 1,000 bases worldwide, and over $1,300,000,000 (1.3 Trillion!) spent annually on budgeted and off budget items, America's quality of life is being held hostage by the occupying army that is our military! That is where the deficit reduction must come from.
Combine the military spending of China, Japan, India, Russia and the remaining NATO members and it's still eclipsed by America.
We can be "secure" with half the current budget. And, think of the savings dismantling the TSA if we remove our bases in Saudi Arabia - the bases that started our war with al-Qaida to begin with!
Let's face it: the FIRE economy will lead to the dismantling of America's empire anyway. Let's be proactive about it. Just think of the tremendous savings from eliminating military waste alone.
But in 2002, then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that on some estimates the Pentagon had lost track of $US2.3 trillion in transactions and there was no way of ascertaining how the money was spent.
And we have no money for helping the unemployed that our trade policy and lack of industrial policy has created? And Obama wants to go after SS in his quest for Deficit Reduction Lite? We, as a nation need to get real.