Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Costs of the War on Terror


For all of you on the left, please do yourself a favor, and shut the ef up.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This chart and your last comment about debt as a percent of GDP brings me to another question. GDP is a variable not a constant right? In other words, it essentially represents how much we collectively produce in America in one year? So,,If thats true, then a bad economy would restrict or reverse the growth of GDP, which means theoretically you could have debt or military spending remain constant but GDP could fall, and therefor increase the percentage to GDP ratio...OR...you could have debt or miltary spending rise faster than GDP to close the gap that way? In other words..if debt is 50% of GDP but it grows just enough to crush the economy, it will skyrocket as GDP falls even if debt does not rise in actual dollars? So the question I have is, how as GDP fluctuated over the years, and where do we cross the point of no return with debt...is it 51% of gdp or 100% or 500%? what is the threshold that triggers this colapse?

jeffiepan said...

Thanks cap'n.

Libertarian Jason said...

This graph is a bit misleading. There are plenty of other government expenditures which do not fall under military spending, but are spent by various government agencies in pursuit of the War On Terrorism.

Captain Capitalism said...

this includes the Department of HOmeland security. Come on, give me a little credit here.

Libertarian Jason said...

Ok.. What about all the other Federal Departments... Are they included as well? What percentages of their budgets are military/defense related?

Or are you saying that NO department other than the DOD and DHS is involved in anyway with things related to defense/national security/feeding the military-industrial complex? That's our "national defense" expenditures are all just one neat and tidy, clearly delineated statistic as shown by this graph?

Captain Capitalism said...

Yeah, I'm sure they are, but good luck going and trying to calculate that data.

Besides which, it may not measure exactly what percent of ALL resources are going to defense/war/intelligence, but it never did anyway.

The merits of this chart is that it's a consistent measure and spending on defense (defined as it has been) is more or less at a historic low.