The Budget of the Military

By Zhaohan Zhang

36,446,752,214,896 that’s the number of this nation's national debt, and even as you read this paper, it continues to rise exponentially. To combat this, we only make 29,653,878,882,907 dollars in gross domestic product. America is still the largest nation in the world based on economic presence and money made. So where is that money going if not to dispel our national debt? Well, it's a mixture of many things, including Medicare, health, social security, income security, and most importantly, defense or the military. While the defense budget isn't as high as medical costs or social security, the military budget receives, on average, 800 billion dollars annually, give or take a couple of billions. Now, in retrospect, that can't be that right. It's a small amount compared to the 36 trillion dollars. Well, let's be honest: 800 billion is still a crazy quantity of money, and it's every year. 

What does the military do with the money it is given? To start, salaries. There are roughly 2.08 million personnel in the military, all with differing wages between 50 and 150 thousand dollars, with a maximum of 240 billion dollars for a simple salary. In the fiscal year 2023, the cost of maintenance and operations was 318 billion dollars, the most significant amount spent. That quantity is more than the Health system in the United States. Well, the money has to have a good reason for spending since it's so high. Sometimes, however, if we look at the military, we see some interesting expenditures. For example, it cost 1 million dollars to ship two 19-cent washers. Back in 2007, amidst the Iraq war, two washers were sent over as supplies, costing the Pentagon $998,798.38. This ended a multi-series scam by twin sisters, costing the military and the Pentagon over 20 million dollars. Although this was 17 years ago, we see similar expenditures under the military today, if not worse. Yes, the military needs money to function. That is a fact that's imperative; however, the quantity of funds being provided to our military is a little excessive, especially with very minimal threat to the United States right now. Most issues are seen and handled politically.

Now, what could we be doing with the money? Many of the issues stem from healthcare, education, and mental health. These are some more significant issues we face within the United States. Our healthcare mainly lacks quality, with a steep decline since 2020 with COVID-19. Our education system has also been dropping in quality, especially with not-so-great teacher salaries and overall subpar and outdated curriculums. And mental health, especially recently, there has been a steep increase in mental health issues in citizens aged 16-25. In Wyoming, we have very little assistance with mental health, facing the highest suicide rates in the entirety of the United States. Adding more funding to these and other government agencies and systems would heavily change, and more success would likely be seen from more funding.

Regarding our health care, we could use the money on not just furthering health but also stabilizing the current system of health and ridding it of corruption, with education we can provide more money to teachers and curriculum courses to help our students learn better and for mental health the acquisition of money would help give more professionals to areas that need it and help create or modify mental health courses in the united states. Eight hundred billion dollars is a large sum of money. A quantity of money that would benefit our nation and our citizens more if we spent that money on some other systems in the United States. 

The money the military spends isn't necessarily being put to harmful use, nor is it entirely unnecessary. Focusing on quality rather than quantity is a key part of that funding. Still, the abuse of their money and inadequate proper spending set a bad habit for the future of America. They left a bad impression on other nations. First, let's talk about our nation, the issue of our vast national debt, and its increasing risk. This is exceptionally dangerous, realizing our debt is more than double that of China, which has the second highest National debt, but with this comes a sense of reliance on the government if the government continues to pump this quantity of money into our government, it can highlight this idea of relying on the government too much for money for specifically social programs reducing community and individual innovation and self-sufficiency. With a large amount of money from the government comes the possibility of corruption. It's something we all know the current government isn't exactly perfect. Still, if the quantity of funds being received from the government is increased, it could push their agendas onto our military instead of the needs and agendas of the people. Now, how does this affect other nations? I imagine this is purely a domestic issue. However, as America is the world's largest economy and most influential country, it leaves a sense of the status quo for the rest of the world's nations. This is a recurring pattern we see as arms races. Where multiple nations or just 2 "fight" each other by attempting to upgrade their military at a rapid pace. Not only can this affect the economy, but it can also leave a bad taste in other nations' mouths. What's the point even if America and other nations have an arms race? There haven't been any super significant conflicts between the world's nations; there are some, like the Russo-Ukrainian War or the Israel-Hamas War. These don't involve other nations in direct combat. Instead, these nations send weapons to them, incentivizing combat and war. 

Providing money to our military and the Department of Defense isn't bad by any means. We should continue to develop our military because it keeps us safe. However, by looking at recent military spending patterns and how it can affect not only ourselves as a nation but also other countries, we can see that maybe the funding for our Department of Defense is a little unnecessarily high.