Quote Originally Posted by Spektrewing386
i think that America is so over-kill with the whole defense budget by a huge huge HUGE margin. We spend more on defense than the other top 10 countries on the list do COMBINED.

But then you will probably say "But we need all that money to sustain our oversea bases and ever increasing technilogical weaponry."

I say to that:
We dont need a vast number of our oversea bases and every year millions and millions of dollars goes into weapon research where most likley 80% of those designs get tossed even though millions and millions of tax payer money was already spent on it. Down the drain for nothing. Most of the designs seem pretty stupid and useless. Change our super aggressive hegemonic foreign policy to allow us to downsize military spending to allow us to use the difference in the defense budget on better programs more suited to help the people actually paying for it. Like healthcare and education and community development. Nothing more comes out of your pocket and maybe even a little less.
So instead of being militarily superior, we should downgrade to be equal with everyone else. I guess that we should drasticly reduce what we spend to pay our military personell because just their paychecks total moe than 125B yearly. That doesnt even inclue the money spent on medical and dental care, basic equipment and housing for single members. Just a rough guess, but I think those 4 things would add another 125B to our military budget. The add in the cost to repair and replace damaged equipment and you can add another 100B if not more.


Only about 15% of our military budget actually goes to purchasing new weapons systems. Maybe another 15% total goes towards R&D to make sure that we stay the most technologicly advanced military in the world. That alone is a line of defense.