The Cost Of War
by Vince Daliessio
Despite the fact that this website springs from an extremely biased perspective (and one, I might add, not very much in harmony with our own here at libertyguys.org), it offers both an accounting of the mounting cost of perpetual global war;
...but also spells out the alternative uses that dedicated welfare-statists feel the moneys forcibly stolen from us at gunpoint ought to be reallocated to. (Note the state-by-state and city breakdowns).
The National Priorities Project (NPP) believes that current government spending is disproportionately directed toward military expenditures, while shortchanging other "priorities" such as healthcare and the environment. They seem to implicitly accept the current overall level of spending, that is, as long as the "massive" tax cuts are rescinded, and most of the funding currently being given the military is redirected to uses the organization approves of.
Our opinion here at libertyguys.org is that, somewhat to its credit, the proportions of government spending are actually pretty close to correct, if one uses the constitution as any guide at all, which we are pretty certain the NPP does not. Our quarrel is with the overall level of government spending, which we feel could easily be reduced by between 98 and 100 percent without any ill effects.
For more on how this could easily be achieved, see Harry Browne and James Ostrowski.