EUA: armas devoram 63% da receita, 10x mais que educação. Mais que na Guerra Fria.
São 103 milhões na pobreza, e 47 milhões em extrema pobreza.
But of that annual $1 trillion, the money allocated for military spending amounts to some $633 billion. That is, nearly two-thirds – more than 63 percent – of the total US government’s budget is consumed by the means of war and killing. To give this some perspective, the US spends ten times more on weapons and the means of destroying and killing other human beings than it does on educating its entire nation.
As a result of this warped “good value”, over the following year millions of unemployed Americans will see their income support terminated as the new federal budget mandates $25 billion in cuts. Millions more Americans will go hungry as $4 billion in food stamps is axed. Millions of Americans will succumb to disease and illness as $30 billion is slashed from federal health care. Already, official figures show that there are nearly 47 million Americans suffering from extreme poverty in the US. Some estimates put total US poverty at 150 million – nearly half the population – amplified by six years of economic depression since the US-bank-induced global financial crash of 2008. These same Wall Street banks, which are an integral part of the military-industrial cancer, receive $85 billion a month in bailout cash footed by the US taxpayer. Of course, this ludicrous imbalance of US military spending as a share of the nation’s wealth is nothing new. Former US President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the spawning military-industrial complex almost half a century ago. But what is revealing about today’s situation is that U.S. military spending just keeps on growing regardless of rational or moral norms. It is estimated that between 1962 and presently, the annual American so-called defense budget has more than doubled. William D Hartung at the US-based Center for International Policy reckons that the American military now consumes $100 billion per year more than the average during the Cold War years, when the US and the Soviet Union were bound up in a gargantuan arms race.
Mais que todos demais somados.
Mais que todos demais somados.
The US spends more on its military than all other nations combined, including Russia and China. Yet deluded “American exceptionalism” labels everyone else a threat to world peace. As the US expands its militarism globally and in particular towards Russia and China, it compels these countries to likewise allocate more and more of their budgets on weaponry and arms development instead of socially beneficial improvement. This negative repercussion for retarded international development cannot be overstated. As already noted, the American “dream” is in reality humankind’s nightmare. China is estimated to have doubled its annual military spend to around $200 billion over the past decade, largely fuelled by Washington’s militaristic “Asian Pivot”; Japan is now increasing its military spending by five percent as a result of Chinese territorial claims, which in turn stem from Washington’s pivot into China’s backyard; while Russia is planning to ply some $700 billion into its weapons industry over the next decade. Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Federal Assembly in Moscow last week, “Let no one have illusions that he can achieve military superiority over Russia. We will never allow it.”
