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A comment on U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds. Parent comment

Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by fizzbatter on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:40PM (#12322372)
Holy cow, i thought something like %40 of the US economy went towards military? I have obviously never researched that, if anything i'm saying this because i believe my belief is somewhat common. Why do so many believe military/defense is so highly spent?

Also, where the hell is all of our money going haha. I'm googling, some random images/sources/etc are saying that Military is ~19%, with social health/security/aid/etc being around ~60% percent. But the numbers in so many of these sources differ greatly. That, combined with your 3.3%, everything seems so drastically different.

What were you basing your 3.3% off of?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by ythl on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:42PM (#12322391)
> Holy cow, i thought something like %40 of the US economy went towards military

No, you're thinking of welfare/social security

Edit: anyone care to explain the downvotes? My data comes from here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/interactive-budget

Add together social security, income security, and other welfares, and you get ~40% of the budget.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by monkmartinez on Friday August 19, 2016 @03:16PM (#12322723)
No one likes to hear the truth. I gave you an upvote because saying that medicare, social security waste, and welfare are more expensive that the military ruins the little utopia's HN'ers have built up in their minds.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by izacus on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:44PM (#12322411)
He's quoting % GDP of USA, not % of budget. I think that is a discrepancy.

The spending is still massive in comparison to pretty much any country in the world. As I said in the other post, just a handul of worlds countries come close to spending 3% of GDP on military - now couple that with the fact that USA has largest GDP in the world and you get a staggering amount of money spent.

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Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by DenisM on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:42PM (#12322390)
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?year_h...
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Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by catalinbraescu on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:44PM (#12322408)
3.3 from GDP. 19% from Federal budget.
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Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by waterfowl on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:45PM (#12322432)
3.3% of GDP. The ones where military is a huge share as are SS/medicare is the federal budget.
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