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December 22, 2005
The Straight Dope
Mom sent email about The Straight Dope. Slug Signorino, the illustrator, lives in the neighborhood from which Mom just moved. Apparently you can sign up there to receive jokes by email. Their claim to fame:
Fighting ignorance since 1973
(It's taking longer than we thought)
The curious coincidence is that while reponding to Dad in an email discussion, I looked up the US military budget at Google... and one of the top hits was this answer from Cecil of The Straight Dope. Here's an excerpt:
Top ten military budgets. The U.S. spends the most by far, but matters aren't as lopsided as your letter suggests. The WMEAT list (in billions): (1) U.S., $281.0; (2) mainland China, $88.9; (3) Japan, $43.2; (4) France, $38.9; (5) UK, $36.5; (6) Russia, $35.0; (7) Germany, $32.6; (8) Italy, $23.7; (9) Saudi Arabia, $21.2; (10) Taiwan, $15.2. The U.S. military, therefore, spends as much as the next six countries (not 16) combined, with just about enough change to cover Greece ($6 billion). To put it another way, the U.S. accounted for 33 percent of world military expenditures in 1999, a modest increase since Cold War days (28 percent in 1986). Sorry, no breakdown on percentage of the military budget used to suppress dissidents or otherwise deal with internal security.
Cecil's source (WMEAT) "is World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, published by the U.S. Department of State," which covers 1989-1999 and was published in 2003. According to the CIA World Fact Book entry for the US, est. 2004 military spending outlays were over $370 billion.
Posted by Mark at December 22, 2005 09:29 PM
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