The United States Defense budget for 2020 is $738 billion, which is an astonishing amount of money, for the "defense" of the United States and its interests. Further to the point, as in all budgets that are opaque, obscure, and functionally non-transparent, the amount of monies allocated to the defense budget for this country, in all probability will well exceed that budget of $738 billion. It would be one thing, if all these billions upon billions of dollars spent, actually accomplished somehow in bringing forth a world of peace, justice, and safety, but apparently this is not ever the case, because year after year, huge defense budgets are approved by our congressional legislature, indicating that whatever monies that have been spent, doesn't ever resolve the issues at hand, successfully.
As might be expected, since this is a government of the people, that this so signifies that it is the people of this great nation, that must thereby foot the bill for all of our national governmental spending, including, in particular, the defense budget. So then, excessively large defense budgets are a particular nefarious tax upon the people, of which, they are the ones collectively responsible for the paying of the bill, in which, the return from that spending seems well nigh suspect; especially in consideration, that America has no enemies contiguous to its borders, nor does it appear to be in any imminent danger of any attack by any nation in the foreseeable future; yet, the military budget of the United States, is so gargantuan, that there is not a single country, with the exception of China, that spends even $100 billion on their defense, and China spends just $237 billion.
So then, what has happened is that billions upon billions of dollars have left the laboring taxpayers pockets to be spent on the national defense of this country, in which in the scheme of things, what has actually occurred is that, the defense budget has extracted a very large tax upon the people, of which, the benefits of that tax to the people, is at best, questionable; and the winners of this tax, is quite obviously the technology-military-industrial complex, that takes in therefore revenues of billions upon billions of dollars from the national government, in which those governmental contracts are exceedingly profitable and secure for those large corporations and hence the wealth of those that work tirelessly, has been transferred to these defense contractors for their profit, at the expense of the average American.
In America, there is always talk of the rightful need for the redistribution of wealth, in which, one of the ways that theoretically this occurs is through our progressive tax system, of which, those that make more income pay a higher percentage of their income via taxation. In reality, defense companies make inordinate amounts of profits from the contracts so received via the national government, and then these massive corporations, are thereby very skilled at lobbying for, and subsequently having reduced or deferred their national tax liabilities in a manner in which their effective tax rate is often far less than what it should be, and typically is effectively far below what a middle class taxpayer so pays. This thus means that large defense budgets suck money from the pockets of the laboring class, effectively redistributing that money and wealth into the hands of the technology-military-industrial complex.