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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (217521)	2/4/2005 10:43:10 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572957

From your link "To find out how much of the government's net interest payments on the national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I have added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year's ratio of national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 81.1 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public in 2002. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government's net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $138.7 billion." Less than 81.1 % federal spending over that time frame went to defense, even if you include spending on veterans and security related international aid as defense, so it doesn't make sense to apply 81.1% of the debt to defense, esp. since in the years when the largest deficits occurred defense was a smaller % of the budget then it was in earlier years. Tim