Please look - this is where your income tax goes.

HOW THESE FIGURES WERE DETERMINED

Current military” includes Dept. of Defense ($653 billion), the military portion from other departments ($150 billion), and an additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the “war on terror.” “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.*

The Government Deception

The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending. For a more accurate representation of how your Federal income tax dollar is really spent, see the large chart (top).



All this came from this site: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

These charts are about a year old but you get the idea.....the military is where all the money goes that comes from your income taxes.

Much of the military is privatized. So, let's not have a bash the people that enlist party.

I'd rather sacrifice the military jobs for civilian jobs. Go ahead and enlist if your so into the military. I agree with what much wiser men than me have to say about it.

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger

Blind obedience to authority is the enemy of the truth. - Albert Einstein

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool. – John Dryden

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age. – Alexander Pope.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first. – Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen. – Ambrose Bierce

That pernicious sentiment, “Our country, right or wrong.” – James Russell Lowell

“My country right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.” – G. K. Chesterton

Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and “My country never wrong” is an even more dangerous maxim than “My country, right or wrong.” – Bertrand Russell

Patrioism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. – George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. – Denis Diderot

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. – George Santayana

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations. – H.G. Wells

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. . . . Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship. – Erich Fromm

One of the great attractions of patriotism–it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat, Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. – Aldous Huxley

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots – Gordon Allport

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Elbert Hubband

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy. – William Inge

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism corrupts history. – Goethe

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind. – Thorstein Veblen

The standardization of mass-production carries with it a tendency to standardize a mass-mind, producing a willing conformity, not merely to common ways of living, but to common ways of thinking and common valuations. The worst defect of patriotism is its tendency to foster and impose this common mind, and so to stifle the innumerable germs of liberty. – J.A. Hobson

2. Patriotism and War:

At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that is why I am no patriot. – Jules Renard

No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as has the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism. – Preserved Smith

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. – Hermann Goering.

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

3. Patriotism and Religion:

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. – Guy de Maupassant

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. – Luis Buñuel

To be patriotic, hate all nations but you own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own. – Lionel Strachey

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism! – David Starr Jordan

4. The American Syndrome:

If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution. – Matt Quay

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism. – Edith Wharton

The 100 percent American is 99 percent an idiot. – George Bernard Shaw

Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism. – Thomas Corwin

5. Three relatively positive assessments of patriotism:

A patriot is somebody who protects his country from his government. Or better yet: who has the guts to protect his country from its government. – Piotyr Dirk

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. – Thomas Jefferson

You are using most of them in the wrong context. And if you think you'd be living in the country that you are now without a strong military you are extremely naive. And for that matter, judging by your opinion, your damned lucky you are living in a nation with an all volunteer force. Those of your stripe that paint with such a broad brush, and use huge generalizations help nobody. Mainly what you accomplished by your post is put words in my mouth that don't exist and make assertions based on assumption and not fact. Broaden your reading lexicon, and/or understanding of current events.

then I should be able to specify I don't want mine going to fund war.

Benefits for veterans is one thing, but nothing for war.

Out of curiousity, would you be in favor of paying far less tax and deciding how your money or the fruits of your labor should be used? You make a great point, one that is often overlooked. Our current system of taxation is far more complex than a pot of money used for the greater good.

billionaire. The US contributes 40% to total global military spending, China 5.8%, Russia 4.0%. The rest of the other countries contribute the rest. Look at the gap between the US and China - the 2nd biggest player.

I would like to see that spending cut by at least half and those extra funds directed towards education and healthcare of our citizens. Instead of being number 1 in Military Power, I would like to see the US become #1 in Healthcare.

I don't think paying less taxes would get us there.

To rewrite the tax code and close the loophole that allows a corporation with a p.o. box in barbados to pay no taxes. My point is address the symptom and not the cause.

with government.

with this administration - but I'm not seeing a lot of that happening especially as it relates to people/corporations paying their taxes and blocking those loopholes.

And here



In other words, lots and lots of hardware that is expensive, used for a few years then stored.

not included in the pie charts, because it's funded separately from the other items.

LBJ added it to hide the magnitude of the increase in military spending that the Vietnam War caused.

this is not news or a new thing. It has been like this since at least VietNam. All of our national debt is much smaller than the total military expenses over the years it has been accumulated. We have been going broke in this manner for a very long time and for no discernable good purpose.

All we have managed with all this expense is to give jerks like George W. Bush the ability to start unwarranted wars without need for allied support from other countries. We could cut the military budget in half and still spend 3 or 4 times more than the nearest competitor.

line is China at 5.8% of the total. It really boggles the mind.

even more than ever, and no president since has brought it back down to the previous proportions.

"600 ship navy", "star wars" (SDI), creation and deployment of Pershing II missles to europe, got the ball rolling quite well, and a good bit before GHWB, who I am sure kept right on going.

As I recall it, Reagan increased defense spending by some 300 billion a year, all of it in deficit spending, because of his "tax cut" (actually not a cut, but rather a transfer of tax burden from income and corporate taxes to payroll taxes).

It needs to be reduced by three-quarters or more.