{"id":1034,"date":"2020-01-05T12:54:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2020-01-05T13:38:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T13:38:32","slug":"if-not-on-the-military-then-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/2020\/01\/if-not-on-the-military-then-what\/","title":{"rendered":"If not on the military, then what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With regard to withholding military taxation such that it is spent on something else, a common challenge is “On what?<\/em>”<\/p>\n

On the Beeb news<\/a> it says “Australia bushfires: Fundraiser reaches A$20m in 48 hours<\/i>“.\u00a0 The Australian government spends that much on their military every 8\u00bd hours.<\/p>\n

That story also says “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called up 3,000 reserve troops to help<\/i>“.\u00a0 That is 3.7% of their armed forces.\u00a0 15% of their reserves (i.e. civilians being called away from their day jobs) and 0% of their active personnel.<\/p>\n

If 3.7% of the Australian military budget was permanently re-allocated to fire prevention (as opposed to ‘Oh shit, the whole country is on fire, maybe we ought to act now<\/i>‘), it would provide AUS$765,000,000 annually.\u00a0 Nearly 40 times what has been raised from charitable giving to help save the country.<\/p>\n

Australia spends just over AUS$1,000 per capita on militarisation.\u00a0 The fundraiser is equivalent to 20,000 people’s military expenditure, about 0.078% of the population.\u00a0 Military expenditure is 1.9% of GDP and 5.1% of government spending.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Australia should spend a bit less on battle tanks and a bit more on the land they drive around on.\u00a0 The Leopard tanks they had from 1976 to 2007 were never used.\u00a0 They currently have 59 M1A1 Abrams tanks; these have also never been used.\u00a0 They would like to increase that to 90.\u00a0 Each one costs about AUS$13m.\u00a0 Just \u2154rds of a fund-raiser each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With regard to withholding military taxation such that it is spent on something else, a common challenge is “On what?” On the Beeb news it says “Australia bushfires: Fundraiser reaches A$20m in 48 hours“.\u00a0 The Australian government spends that much … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324,283,79,244,207],"tags":[325,284,82,245,208],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-cost","category-opportunity-cost","category-social-cost","category-tax","category-waste-of-money","tag-environmental-cost","tag-opportunity-cost","tag-social-cost","tag-tax","tag-waste-of-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1039,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}