Ever wondered where your tax money is gone? That is if living is US. Below are just a few, very obvious and common dark money pits.
Disclaimer: all numbers shown here are public knowledge only calculations are mine. If you have an issue with that you are welcomed to check out numbers and come up with own calculations to correct me.
There must be many reasons why in USA there is no enough money. I daresay that a lot of money gets deducted and wasted through the tax system.
So who earns or gets money? Employed people + retirees. That would be 129 Million + 47.8 Million people. We’ll round it up to 177 Milion people. Obviously, retirees get much less money than fully employed workers. How much is the average salary for US workers? Salaries vary based on gender, education, occupation, industry, geographical location, ethnicity, and other factors.
Bureau of statistics says that average wages per fully employed person are $44564.00 a year.
Retirees average pension is about $15576.00 a year.
Take home money are different numbers. Lower. Taxman takes his cut right from the top. Armed with those 3 numbers lets see who is blowing money away.
US military bases
Did you know that the USA has about 800+ active bases around the world in 80+ countries? Those bases are stuffed with an excess of 160 thousand military personnel. They have their families with them living nearby. That must cost some nice coin. “Naturally” all this is paid by the taxpayers.
I was always wondering what average Joe or Jane has out of it? Imagine some base in Philippines or Latvia or anywhere. Do you even know where those places are? Could you pinpoint the even general geographical area where the hell that is? No? I didn’t think so. Based on online interviews on the streets I would say that 1 out of 20 or 30 people could possibly show those places on the map.
For comparison, all other countries like Russia, France, UK combined have 30 bases only.
Next question that comes to mind is why would anybody want to blow 160 to 200 billion yearly to maintain those bases? It turns out to be a pretty expensive real estate proposition. Every politician you would ask that question would come back with a universal answer that bases are necessary to protect the homeland and project US power around the world.
Both parts of that explanation are total bullcrap, thinks I.
Think about it. How can you protect the territory of USA by running base in let’s say Indonesia? That place is about 12000 Miles away and as we already established most of the Americans don’t even know where that is. It can very well be on Mars. Would not make any difference.
And the second part of the answer is a totally invalid reason. Means that the USA is running aggressive and threatening policies scaring people and their neighbors in their own countries. Do you really believe that they want jets, bombs, rockets, naval fleets, nuclear submarines on their soil? Not a chance. That is shoved into their throats.
We could discuss this a whole day long. In my mind, it is money thrown out of the window. All 200 Billion of it. Americans have absolutely nothing good out of it. If that money is split between our money earners it would be:
$1129.94 more a year or $94.16 more per month for every worker and a retired person in America. In other words, every money earner pays $1129.94 per year for the military bases which existence is baseless. Imagine having 900 dollars pension and suddenly there are 100 bucks more added on top of it. Every month.
If your roof is leaking or home needs repairs and improvements keep in mind that your money keeps roofs and homes in far away lands in perfect order. No leaks there even that Home Depot is tens of thousands miles away.
So much about bases let’s move on.
Veterans Affairs
There are about 21 Million veterans living in the USA and around the world. If you didn’t know veteran is every person who at one point of life served in or around military services. So we are not talking about fighting men and women only but everybody who was even close to the military.
Those people have special privileges in regards to the healthcare. Again, there is a relatively small number of wounded soldiers as a result of combat operations. Physically and mentally affected would be maximum of about 500 thousand men and women. The rest are simply all others just mentioned, not affected by war operations, maybe never moved from offices and bases in the USA.
Every state has a VA dedicated hospital, at least one. If veteran happens to live in Thailand he or she is entitled to all health care provided on American soil. That means VA pays those bills coming from overseas no questions asked. Also, if veteran somehow doesn’t like VA hospital services that Government specifically assigned for the veterans he/she can go to any hospital of their choosing.
VA authority pays all outside services bills, all 8 Billion dollars per year of them.
I am not suggesting that VA should forget about wounded soldiers. It is a consequence of wars. More about that below.
Their mandate is to provide lifetime healthcare for those in need. How much that costs? About 185 billion per year! Quite pricey. Consequences of wars are very extensive and again taxpayer is hit in the wallet. How much?
$1045.19 a year or $87.09 a month per every money earner.
Aircraft carriers task groups
While we are going to work, shopping, school, college, sitting at home or doing really just about anything there are people on the move 24/7. That duty falls on the shoulders of servicemen on aircraft carriers. There are 20 active aircraft carriers in US Navy crisscrossing the oceans at any time. Each has about 70 airplanes and about 6000 personnel working around the clock to keep all that machinery moving.
The aircraft carrier is never alone at sea. There are at least 6 to 8 other ships surrounding it at all times. That group of ships represents a strike group. There are also supply ships that meet strike group from time to time and bring in everything from toilet paper to aircraft to replace or replenish.
Whom will strike group strike? Almost no one. Strike group is rarely used in operations. Probably 99.99% of war operations are on hard land, not at sea. So why do they exist at all? Popular answer is "to project US military power". In plain English, it is to instigate fear into people of far away countries. To scare shit out of them. There you have it.
Let’s see some numbers. The aircraft carrier is the biggest and most complicated ship in the navy. It costs 9 to 13 Billion. For purpose of easy calculations, we’ll average it to 10 Billion each. There are 20 active ones and that makes it 200 Billion of floating hardware. And what hardware that is! It is stuffed with modern jets at about 20 Million each. A full load would be 1.4 Billion of flying machines.
Don’t forget destroyers and frigates. At 2 Billion each it makes it about 12 Billion of additional ships in the strike group.
Again, so whom they strike anyway? A bad guys. Means enemies of United States. That is a very, very, loose term. Apparently, it is very easy to become enemy of United States but that is a story for another day.
Still, they keep busy by doing what the military knows the best, blowing money. Literally. If you thought that your Ford F150 is blowing too much gas try to fill up F-16.
5290 lbs per hour of jet fuel. With maintenance costs each hour of the jet flying around carriers costs about $15000. And boy do they fly? They are flying like there is no tomorrow. Day and night. Training. No wonder that a strike group costs about 6.5 Million per day in running expenses.
The lifetime of a carrier is about 40 years and we’ll take the same number for smaller ships. It costs about 468 Million per year of hardware per task group. Multiply by 20 it comes out to 9.36 Billion for all of them. Add everyday expenses for all task groups we come to extra 47.45 Billion. The total bill comes out to about 57 Billion per year.
Back to taxpayers. $322.03 a year or $26.83 a month pay for fleet cruising high seas. Sure changes life for better to average Joe or Jane at home, right?
Military budgets
Americans are in love with the military. Looking from a side it is very hard to comprehend why? Pushing aside the discussion about the morals of it one thing is true. It sure ain’t cheap by any measure. Yearly military budget is around 540 Billion but that is always considerably exceeded and real numbers come to about 800+ Billion expended.
Let’s be clear about something. There are no real limits in military budgets. Whatever they want that is what they get. How can you argue with national security needs? We’ll take 800 Billion as a very conservative number.
A quick visit to calculator tells us that the taxpayer pays $4519.77 per year or $376.64 a month for the military. That is a mighty sum if you ask me, but let us move on.
And there are the wars
Wars are on the top of the money blowing list of any mankind activities. Destruction, hurt and death on the massive scale are a theme of the day. There is nothing good to look for. People try to ignore it as long as nobody from close family and friends is killed or crippled. Then it becomes very personal.
All wars could be placed in only 2 categories: aggressive wars and defensive wars. Attacker brings the aggressive war to other country forcing it to wage defensive war in order to defend from aggression. By default defending country always suffers catastrophic destruction in infrastructure and human lives. There is an injustice of astronomical proportions right there!
We can’t put a cost on human life so we will not even try. We’ll just look as the wasteful monetary economics of it.
If somebody thinks that war is occasional thing let me blow that bubble with absolutely amazing fact. Since it’s inception, from the year 1776 United States were in wars for 222 years. So out of 242 years of existence, there were only 20 years of peace! If that is not a mind-boggling I don’t know what is?
If the United States as a country was in any other place on Earth you could argue that location is an absolute hornet’s nest and the US was simply forced to defend. Truth is completely opposite. The USA is almost like an island and thousands of miles of the vast oceans are separating it from other humanity.
In respect to aggression neighbors like Canada and Mexico are simply the best neighbors anybody would ever want. Neither one would never attack the USA in any way. Both mind their own business. In such unlike event, both would be simultaneously defeated in one weekend. I mean we are talking stupid now so those possibilities are utterly irrelevant. We can agree that USA will never, ever be attacked by it's only neighbors.
The only conclusion is that that United States is actively searching for troubles. Aggression and bullying other nations into armed conflict are what the US does. With no exceptions. Theater of war is always conveniently located on another side of the Earth. Destruction is always reserved for some away land. No bomb was ever dropped on US territory by other nation. The exception could be about 25 minutes of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii almost 80 years ago. That is all.
Considering the fact that the US is never in danger of anybody attacking it, 99% of nations in the world are minding their own business, taking in account huge expenses that come attached with every war common sense tells us that the US would never be involved in any wars whatsoever, right?
Again, nothing is further from the truth. Both Democrats and Republicans seem to have no problems sending Americans to wars. The concept is: shoot first and we’ll worry about consequences later. As usually, a taxpayer pays out of the pocket for US military adventures overseas.
Looking at 2 recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq there is a price tag of 2.4 Trillion dollars of direct costs! Untold Billions in indirect costs.
Yes Sir, 2,400,000,000,000.00 dollars worth literally blown to smithereens.
Now I had to grab scientific calculator because a regular one simply can’t handle such large numbers. Calculation says that each money earner paid so far $13,559.32 financing those 2 wars alone. There were more wars before and likely will be more in the future. Jack the Taxpayer is on the hook for that from the first paycheck to the last pension he will ever receive.
The question that should follow should be: “What benefit (if any) did American citizens experience out of those wars? Did cost in American lives and expense justify it?”.
An answer to those questions require a whole new article. But we can say this: before sending men and war machines into the action bear in mind that military hardware is pricey to play with:
F-16 airplane = 19 Million, each hour of flying it will set you back for $7,000 to $22,000
A-10 airplane = 11.8 Million
Abrams tank = 8.92 million, $450 per mile costs, each round fired is about $6,900
Maverick missile = $110,000 ea.
Cruise missile = $1,600,000 ea.
1000 lbs dumb bomb = $3,100 each
Laser guided bomb = $40,000 each
Needless to say that in war expenditure of weapons and munitions is just astronomical. Nobody is even keeping a count. Just keep firing, the cost is the last thing on their minds.
Also, don’t call Pentagon to find out about numbers. Accounting is not their forte. What they know is just to ask for more money and resources.
Next time before sending fleet off from San Diego or waving American flag to soldiers leaving Fort Bragg to keep in mind how much will those adventures cost you!
Is dropping a bomb on somebody’s head really so appealing that you, American taxpayer, that you are so ready to pay for it?
And there is a NASA
Mankind has a bug up their asses. It is called curiosity. We have to see and know everything there is to see and know. Including going into far away space and peek into it.
NASA site has thousands of photos of space objects. There is nothing more thrilling than receiving photos from spacecraft passing by some unknown asteroid or for example Pluto.
Pluto is 2.7 Billion Miles away from Earth. It is hard to fathom the distance. I must admit I can’t even imagine how far that is!? But it seems that little satellite cost is directly proportional to distance it will try to travel.
And Pluto is our backyard, a Solar System. Everything else is way, way, way farther. Remember yellow text at beginning of every Star Wars movie? It starts from the bottom of the screen, goes under angle like a carpet and disappears in the far distance. That is how I see truckloads of money disappearing into dark space.
At the danger of many readers jump at my throat and choke me I will say that space exploration is a very expensive adventure that we really don’t need. The basic cost of running NASA is 20 Billion per year. That is $113.00per year for taxpayers or about $10.00 per month.
My beef with that is more of the practical nature. Don’t get me wrong. I could watch “Cosmic vistas” or “Smithsonian channel” about space a whole day long. It is very interesting. Stars and planets. Those little robotic vehicles crawling on Mars and sending thousands of images. It is quite amazing and helluva captivating. But at the end of the day I ask myself “How is my life, or lives of any other persons living on Earth better now after we saw those images?”
Other than having a nice paycheck if working for NASA there is nothing good out of it. Elon Musk showed off everybody in just in a few short years with his SpaceX agency that flying rockets can be done for less and better than before. He competes with NASA. It is clear to me that Elon Musk or his crew will be on Mars before anybody else. But why?
Travel 7 months with one-way ticket and land there makes no sense whatsoever. Every breath of air, every drop of water, every swallow of food, every freaking minute of just being there is extremely expensive and outright dangerous. Drinking own filtered urine to minimize water loss is the smallest problem. There are thousands of challenges to overcome every day. Thousands of chances to die. X rays bombarding everything day and night.
I really don’t need anyone to go there … at my expense, thinks I.
As usually taxpayers will feel hit where it hurts. In the wallet. And what benefit will be there for them? Try none.
There are millions of activities and places on Earth that need utter improvements and they are not happening because of lack of interest and money. Go and travel from Detroit on I75 to the South. First of all, Detroit looks like a city after the war. Then comes thousands of potholes in Michigan. Then there are potholes in Ohio. Worn out bridges. Unregulated waterways. Underfunded schools. Expensive and overstretched healthcare. Railroads in ruins. Airports needing improvements. Millions of citizens on food stamps. Billions of dollars in student loans. Animal species disappearing from the face of Earth.
A few days ago there was a news on TV that made me really sad. Last white rhino in the world died. Poor guy had every right to live in peace but didn’t survive. Now no money in the world can bring that specie back. And many others. I feel for animals. What chance do they have with us?
Back to space exploration. The thing is, space is 15 Billion years old. We are exploring it for the last 50 years. Trust me on this, space will be there for other Billions of years so give it a rest. Let us explore and fix our own planet first before going to other planets. If we spend next 50 or 150 years repairing our home planet there will be plenty of time left to reach for the stars.
Conclusion
I still have in my drawer a Sarasota County (Florida) tax bills. Everything is broken down into bits and pieces. County general revenue, Bonds debt service (?), mosquito control, Memorial hospital, water regulation, police, coast inland navigation, firefighters, school board, school district fund, school improvements, emergency medical services, solid waste management, storm water utility.
One can kind of understand what is what there. But every man and his dog knows that personal income tax is where a total bust is. Nobody ever asks taxpayer do they approve certain expenditures.
For starters, according to articles of the Constitution personal taxation is not allowed! Only corporate activity is to be taxed and personal labor not. Tax money grab trend started in 1913 together with another “great invention”, the Fed Bank. Both enslaved American people forever.
Comes hell or high water it boils down to endless taxation for everything you stand on, drive, eat, drink, put on yourself, live in, touch and see. Government grew out of every reasonable proportion and citizens have to finance its existence. Not only that but also have to pay for military adventures, banks gambling out people’s money, failed projects, stupid researches, pseudoscience and really everything under the sun.
Don’t fall for an explanation that the war machine creates jobs. Few hundred Raytheon workers assembling bombs with big wages doesn’t make up for the rest of 320 Million Americans who pay for that.
Also don’t fall for words that large and powerful military is a must. Most of the countries in the world have small military and don’t blow too much money on it. For example Canada, the second largest country in the world has about 100,000 people in the armed forces. About 55,000 of that are soldiers., the rest supporting personnel. To compare sizes I learned that there is about of same number of police in New York city!
Do you think that Canadians are upset for not having more military? Not a chance! They want it even smaller. Money can always be spent on better things.
The list above is not by any means an exhaustive list of hits onto taxpayer’s wallet. It is annoying, tireless and powerless feeling. Government hand in your pocket at all times. Everybody who is working or is retired on pension deserves more. Not only more money but also more decision power.
Next time when you see on TV jets screaming around, navy ships on the blue ocean, tanks speeding through the desert that is your well deserved money being blown up. Literally.
Video of the bomb dropped on some poor people heads. There is your 40 thousand dollars worth. Waiting forever for CT scan or social assistance? Need medications you can’t pay for? Medical insurance expired or unable to pay for? Not enough money to send kids to the college?
You will "feel better" thinking about that shiny 20 Million dollars F-16 jet ripping through the skies of some exotic unknown country. There are your medications built into that war machine. Unpaid insurance bills coming out through exhaust of the jet engine. Unpaid college funds being dropped as high explosives bombs.
Need to repair or replace old clunker on your driveway? You will sleep better knowing that all Government fleet limos, Humvees, APCs, tanks, trucks are well taken care of, fueled, oiled and in good shape.
Talking about war material. Just few days ago US left Afghanistan to the Taliban and rewarded enemy with 83 Billion worth of the finest military equipment. They were well armed before, but boy they are equipped now as never before. Former, present and future terrorists won that war.
Would you like to get $594.72 check in your name every month? That is summed up amount just from expenses listed above. Need more incentive? Still into deadly fireworks even at your own expense?
Tank firing a $4,000 round bringing down somebody’s home and everybody inside. Must be thrilling experience. There is a cancer chemo drugs for someone you love gone through the flat bore 120 mm main gun.
Must be worth it.