Okay, let’s do some back-of-an-envelope math for a ballpark number:
2009 Kingsepp study: $3.61 a week. Let’s round that up to $4/week.
That’s 4 x 52 = $208/year.
I’m not quite clear whether that is per capita in total or per “taxpayer”, however you define that. So let’s say per capita. According to https://www.census.gov , on 2017-07-04, the USA had a population of 325,365,189.
325,365,189 x 208 = $67,675,959,312/year.
FY2018 budget request for military spending1) $639,000,000,000.
1) The military budget pays the salaries, training, and health care of uniformed and civilian personnel, maintains arms, equipment and facilities, funds operations, and develops and buys new equipment.
This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which are in the Atomic Energy Defense Activities section, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department’s payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the DHS, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by the NSA.
There are probably a couple of billions kicking around somewhere in black budgets that are difficult to allocate.
So, all in all we’re looking at 10% of the budget spend on the military-industrial-intelligence complex, tops. Off the top of my head:
Cut one or two projects that aren’t going anywhere anyway.
Support one or two dodgy regimes less.
Give away less weapons for free.
Get better deals on the stuff you buy; that includes getting stuff that was developed with an eye on better operational and maintenance cost.
Cut down on mass surveillance of your own citizens.
Cut down on security theatre.
This can be done.
