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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (105513)	3/23/2005 5:38:32 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793789

Let me correct myself. The FY 2005 military budget is already over $511 billion. I forgot to include the $81.5 billion supplemental approved last week. That is nearly 7.5 times the DOD budget the year before the draft ended. And we have 1 million fewer men and women in uniform, more than 200 fewer Navy ships, and only 64% of the USAF aircraft.

To: unclewest who wrote (105513)	3/23/2005 5:41:54 AM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 793789

Interesting, I would need to do more research before throwing the cost issue to one side or the other at this point. Reason being, I would have to look at manpower costs vs equipment costs, and factor in inflation and the cost of retirees. For instance, just taking inflation into account for a moment, 70 billion dollars in 1973 would be equivalent to about 295 billion dollars today. And I would assume paying for all those retirees eats up allot more costs today when compared to 1973. In addition, I would assume sophisticated equipment is allot more expensive today as compared to equipment used in 1973. The only way to get a decent handle of comparitive costs would be to factor out those things in a logical way. I also think a person writing a paper in the Navy War College would take some of those factors in account before making a statement like that. Perhaps if I get some time I'll do some DD on my own and let you know what I turn up. Best, Mike

To: unclewest who wrote (105513)	3/23/2005 1:59:31 PM
From: MrLucky	Respond to of 793789

The all volunteer force is expensive beyond belief...I laugh everytime somebody says it saves money What was that saying by a famous American? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The cost of DOD and the government, as a whole, is beyond my belief. I am very familiar with a large civilian organization in the Fed. The people seldom work more than four-and-half hours a day! The rest of their day is breaks, lunch and "so-called briefings". And their salaries are 100K on the low end. 150K plus is not rare in this organization. Not opposed to higher pay for skilled work. Am strongly opposed to any management that knowingly allows people to "slough off". (Even if they are unionized). :-)