Up Up and Away

Depending on how you look at it this chart either is good in that it says we are keeping our troops safe (which is debatable!) or bad in that we are allocating too much money to too much hegemony, while lining the pockets of folks like Lockheed Martin the maker of the F-35 and others on the Spade Defense Index I discussed earlier. I say this money would be better spent domestically. We are currently spending $698.14 per active-duty US military enlistee. Could this not be better used to combat the mushrooming of charter schools in place of public schools, agribusiness at the expense of Vermont (and the nation’s) local small farmer, alternative energy advances vs. traditional mountain-top-removal and dams galore.

Click the chart for larger view.

I think this chart says alot and speaks to another reason why the F-35 is a bad idea…..The MIC and it’s angel investors/shareholders will be the only ones who benefit from our men and women sacrificing their lives for the advancement of across the board free-markets. We are spending more and more, but we are creating blowback due to inaccurate drone strikes and the fact that we insist on bringing F-35s to a gun fight. This graph demonstrates the exponential rise in spending per troop and it presages the collapse of the MIC, because exponential rises are not sustainable, rather their meteoric rise further decouples the blue from the white collar and the troop from the war profiteer. Vermont and Chittenden County should not participate in such a decoupling.

Author: Ted Auch