The sad thing is this isn’t even all of it. Much of the “financing” for our ops in Afghanistan, Yemen, & the 100 or so other nations the US military is “active” in come from separate budget allocations. So the real “defense” budget is over $1 trillion per year, not counting all those CIA, “Homeland” (why does that always sound like “fatherland” to me?), etc., etc., etc.
The waste is obscene. If the US government ever tried to seriously rein in military spending we’d quickly see that this is NOT a republic.
Still, there’s quite a bit of bullshit in this article as well. For example, the graph on the front page shows spending “perhaps” never ever going down - but it cuts off right at the war’s end. Actually, the curve looks pretty much like other wars. It might do something horrible tomorrow, but that’s not what you call data.
Likewise the 170 bad bad golf courses are probably all on military bases and open to families. Maybe our service members should have no recreation facilities at all, or maybe golf is bad because it’s symbolic of wealth. But nobody is wealthy in the military, except the very rare rich kid who enlists.
That’s the point. If the country were that great to live in, everyone would want to come! The best way to control immigration is to make sure anyone with any sense stays away.
It’s interesting that golf is seen as a rich person’s sport in the US, while hunting is more of an everyman sport. I guess it’s the need to maintain the golf course and the cost of equipment. Growing up in Ireland, it seemed to be almost the opposite. It was pretty easy to play golf and we had plenty of courses around my area, but it was difficult to get a gun license and you would probably need to have access to private land to do any hunting. There was also the fact that hunting often looked like this:
I don’t have the data, but my gut feeling is the US military probably already out-golf courses every other military force, with the British as runner-up.
(Not that it ever stopped them from claiming a gap if it was convenient.)
BTW, @all the Brits in bbs: any data on how many cricket fields the British military has?
I would have assumed that you would have done a quick calculation on that before making an absurd general statement equating revenue with government spending and then assuming a direct link to how much employees are paid. Feel free to also compare the DOD to ExxonMobil.
We know. At least, some of us do. Just not the ones able to do much about it.
On another note, let me just say that no matter how interesting your data is, there no excuse for combining dollar amounts with different timescales in a single table. You should not mix units of $/yr, $ through 2020, $ in 2013, $ over 10 years, and $ over 5 years. It’s unnecessarily confusing even if you take the few seconds to do the calculation and figure out what it means.
I can’t speak to all of the golf courses, but they’re built for the use of active duty, reserve and retired members of the military. I’m a DoD employee (stop throwing tomatoes, I’m trying to leave!) and we get some MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) benefits. I’m guessing golf courses are included, but I don’t golf and I don’t believe I’ve ever tried to use any MWR facilities or programs.
In my opinion, any fee is too high for junior enlisted. There’s no reason not to let them play for free, although these days a mid-career enlisted person, with all the added benefits, makes a pretty comfortable wage. (I was Navy enlisted in the 1980s when Reagan was in office; trickle-down was in effect and we got trickled on, pay-wise.)
Another thing too is that many golf courses are located on bases that have active runways, and the courses fill up vacant land used as a buffer under flight paths.
At what rank do you draw the dividing line between cocksuckers and non-cocksuckers? It’s apparent you’re writing more on emotion and less on experience. There are plenty of enlisted members that play golf. It may be that the most junior of them play video games rather than golf.
As for the rear-echelon a-holes, I can say that at least some of them work hard. As much as I hate working for the government, and the military in particular, I have to stick up for those that I feel are getting hammered unfairly. The facility I work at is headed-up by a two-star admiral, and he’s constantly flying all over the place for meetings, and not necessarily to vacation paradises. He spent his time “in harm’s way.”
Yes, there are people that suck on the government teat, but they’re usually weeded-out if they’re in the military, or unless you’re John McCain, in which case you can crash airplanes through carelessness with impunity.
But that golf demographic is changing. Greens fees are still outrageously-high, especially for a non-golfer like me (why the hell would I pay that much to hit a ball around a lawn?), but I see plenty of 20-somethings with clubs.
