• lohky@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    How much have we spent turning brown kids into ash over that same 40 year span?

    • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      That’s vague, but I’ll assume you mean funding directly for combat operations excluding VA hospital, vet benefits, DHS appropriations, etc. So that would come to $19.903T over that same period.

      But the thing is that also excludes maritime trade protection and I don’t believe brown kids sail boats towards shipping channels, but there could be possibilities where that is the case. Also that dollar figure doesn’t have anything to do with the event being depicted in the picture. That’s Israel’s Iron Dome system and costs associated with that would not be reflected in the US military budget. That is funded by general transfer of funds. Good example of such is public law 117-103. Under Division C, Title VIII, Sec. 8142 which is page 209 of that PDF linked there.

      So that number doesn’t include that and it’d be a lot harder to get that number as the Government doesn’t put out a spreadsheet for general transfer of funds. Though they ought to, because that would make tracking all of this a lot easier. It’s not impossible to calculate that, the information is all there, it’s just spread out and requires a bunch of leg work.