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Originally Posted by Ishniknork
It ain't cheap, and this thread makes me wonder what price he puts on his own head...
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If the goal was saving lives, the money can be much better spent.
For example, there were approximately 4.3 million children born in the United States last year. Our infant mortality rate (meaning child dies before first birthday) is 6.43 deaths per 1000 births (according to the CIA World Fact Book). That means approximately 27,650 children died before their first birthday last year.
Now if we were to invest a very very tiny portion of that military budget in health care and bring our infant mortality rate down to the rate that Cuba has (6.22 deaths per 1000 births), that would save the lives of 900 children per year.
And if we were to bring our infant mortality rate down to that of Canada (4.69 deaths per 1000 births), we would save the lived of approximately 7,500 children per year.
And if we were to decide we would spend enough money to make our health care system the best in the world and have the lowest infant mortality rate of any country (lower than Singapores which is 2.29 deaths per 1000 births), then we would save the lives of almost 18,000 American children per year. (that's the number of people killed on 9/11/01 times 6 --- each year)
And that is just one of dozens of areas where money could be spent in order to save thousands of lives per year.
And this whole argument is assuming that by spending all this money on the military that they are actually protecting us better -- I take issue with this assumption. I'm pretty sure the people of New Zealand, Sweden, and Finland (just to name a few) are much safer than us Americans are. What are their military budgets?
Strength does not always translate into security. For example, would you feel safe living in the homne of a Mafia boss? Imagine all the security he must have. I would bet he has personal body guards, and they have quite a few guns in the house. How safe would you feel living there? Personally, I would feel safer living in my own home where there are no guns and no special security.
Security 90% based on your behavior and perhaps 10% based on strength.