You sound like these employees produce those $870 billion. In fact they take them from one set of people and send them to another set of people. Getting handsome pay, union benefits, pensions and what not on the way.

> That's way better than most private charities.

Charities do not have IRS, FBI and the police to jail anybody who does not pay them and take their property. So they have to do it the old-fashioned way - by convincing people to give them money voluntarily. So if you want to compare, add the costs of enforcement to it.

> the right wing darling of the military industrial complex is far worse

I just heard couple of days ago Hillary Clinton boasting about almost everything in iPhone being fruits of government-sponsored research. I don't think it's true, but to the measure it is, most of this research is done by the military industrial complex. In fact, the left often mentions the internet is rooted in government research - to the measure that it is, it's the same military again. You can't have it both ways - either it's bad, and the research they do and money government funnels to them is evil, or they actually do cool things and money funneled to them are great investment. You can't have both.

And btw the whole military budget is 16% of all federal budget. And that doesn't take into account what state and local governments spend.