Wednesday 13 November 2019

War...What Is It Good For?

'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children'  - Dwight D. Eisenhower

I don't know who wrote the definition of what exactly a war is but apparently it is an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.
In the Book 'What Every Person Should Know About War', the author Chris Hedges has come up with some amazing statistics  which should shame us all, such as of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or 8% of recorded human history.  
At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century and estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history range from half a million to 1 billion.
The combined armed forces of the world includes 21.3 million people with China the largest with 2.4 million, the America with 1.4 million, India 1.3 million, North Korea 1 million, and Russia 900,000.
Of the 21.3 million military personnel, 97% are male.
The Worldwide military spending is estimated to have reached $1.7 trillion in 2017, the top five biggest spenders were the United States $610 billion, China $228 billion, Russia $69.4 billion, Saudi Arabia $67.6 billion and India $66.3 billion, which accounted for 60% of global military spending.
Since the second World War, America has spent $16.23 trillion on the military and its supporting manufacturing base employs 3.5% of the U.S. labour force. In the same period America has spent $1.70 trillion on it's nations health care.
Between 1900 and 1990, 43 million soldiers died in wars but during the same period, 62 million civilians were killed and in the wars of the 1990s, civilian deaths constituted between 75% and 90% of all war deaths with more than 2 million children killed.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

we had to spend a lot on defense to protect western Europe from USSR for 2 reasons:
1. Europe didn't have enough money to both rebuild and to defend themselves
2. Europe has proven that it cannot be trusted with strong armies...

we also spent a lot to weaken the soviet union and to free the rest of europe
Result: Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bosnia, etc now have a chance to establish democracies and free millions of more peoples

Then there is the middle east. we have always had enough energy for the USA, but needed middle east oil to keep Europe operating... so, when UK, France dumped their duties in the middle east we stepped in... you are welcome

Korea: Truman felt the need to stop the spread of communism - as a result we now have a strong S. Korean nation with millions of free people...

Vietnam: Kennedy and LBJ believed they needed to stop the spread of communism - alas didn't work out so well...

SO, YOU ARE WELCOME

NOT ASHAMED


Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

bullshit on the healthcare number you presented

https://fortune.com/2019/02/21/us-health-care-costs-2/

we spent $3.5 trillion in 2018 alone...

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2018/042.pdf

1990 (just the one year not the decade) = $0.7 trillion
2000 (just the one year) = $2.4 trillion
2005 = $2.1 trillion
2010 = $2.6 trillion
2015 = $3.2 trillion
2016 = $3.3 trillion
2017 = $3.5 trillion
2018 = $3.5 trillion
-------------
= $22 trillion (and that is just a few of the years)