If you make $50,000 per year ....

[grantcart]

105. The numbers just don't add up

If you accept and add up numbers 1,2,3,6,7 that would be

100
80
83
100
138

that equals 501 billion.

The DOD budget is $ 613 billion and if you add another $ 80 in related off the books intelligence it would be about $ 700 billion.

http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15056

Items 4 and 5 are rather fanciful projections but have absolutely nothing with government expenditures anyway.

I suspect that the non corporate items are based on a per capita item while the corporate item is based on a per family item, that would bring it much closer to reality.

I believe that more realistic calculations would bring home the point more effectively, because the way it is presented undermines credibility.

It would be fair to say that direct and indirect subsidies equal the defense budget and should be the first cuts we make in any budget, although some of those expenditures (incentives for alternate power sources, for example) are subsidies that we in fact want.