What's REALLY Happening in Kosovo? The Independent Thinker--Critical Thinking, Activism, New Ideas

What is the war in Kosovo costing YOU?

1. Just for war materials until September, an average of $85.81 for each adult in the country.
   • Calculation: The population of the U.S. is 267,636,000. Less those under 18, it is 198,108,000 (source: StatBank). As of April 20, the government estimates that the war itself has cost $1 billion. The Congress is currently passing a bill to give the military an additional $16 billion for the war. $17 billion, divided by 198 million is $85.81 per person.

2. If you add in the operating cost of the military it is an average of $ 1,630.49 per person.
   • Calculation: Add $306 billion to the $17 billion. Divide by 198 million adults and the result is $ 1,630.49 per person. Numbers for costs are taken from an actual item by item analysis of the budget

3. If you also add in the debt in the budget because of past U.S. military interventions outside the country, for which we are still paying, it amounts to $ 3,250.88 per person.
   • Calculation: Add $321 billion, for a total of $ 644 billion. Divided by 198 million adults the result is $ 3,250.88 per person.

4. 43.2% of the taxes you pay.
   • Calculation: A retired general stated recently that 90% of the U.S. military budget is used for interventions and operations outside our country--only 10% is used for self-defense, in other words. 48% of the U.S. budget goes to the military, so 43.2% of the U.S. budget is going to pay for interventions into other countries affairs.

5. You worked 57 days--two months--for income which you gave to the government so they could bomb Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Sudan.
   • May 11 is tax freedom day--the last day of the year when you work for the government instead of yourself. That means you work 131 days of the year, or 35.9% of your time to pay government taxes. If 43.2% of your taxes go for U.S. aggression, that amounts to 57 days you work to pay for your government to kill foreigners. That means you worked the first two months of this year and gave the government your income so that they could send your neighbors' children overseas to experience the horrors of warfare and possible death.

Question: Do our government's policies affect YOU?
You just worked two months to pay for the government's policy of foreign aggression (NOT self-defense). If you are an average taxpayer, you payed $ 3,250.88 in additional taxes to fund this one policy.

If the U.S. government stopped foreign wars, $1,012.06 could be returned to every man, woman, and child in the country, every year! What do you think that could do for poverty, homelessness, education?

If the U.S. government stopped foreign wars, $270.8 billion dollars--a 65.6% increase--could be spent on our own citizens addressing poverty, homelessness, education, highways, housing subsidies, and healthcare.

MAYBE you should get involved. Take a look at my site, What you can do about Kosovo. In fact, you might want to address some other government policies... take a look at my other, more general, site, What You Can Do.

Some Other Costs of Kosovo

1. Increased inflation rate--ie., your money buys less, is worth less--sort of a tax--prices go up, retired people can no longer live on their fixed incomes.
   • Source: Michael Paernti, Democracy of the Few... "Massive military expenditures "happen to be a particularly inflation-producing type of federal spending," admits the Wall Street Journal. The Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War all produced periods of extreme inflation. Aggregate demands-- mostly government demand for military goods and payments to military personnel--far exceed supply during wartime and are not usually covered by increased taxes. Even during "peacetime," assuming that's what we have today, huge defense outlays help create inflationary scarcities, as the military consumes vast amounts of labor power and natural resources. (For instance, it is the largest single consumer of fuel in the United States.) The resulting excess of demand over supply generates an upward pressure on prices, especially since the defense budget is funded mostly through deficit spending--that is, by the government's spending more than it collects in taxes" (page 20-21).

2. The moral cost of your government killing innocent people for immoral reasons.
   • Are you innocent if you do not speak up against this war? Are you innocent because you haven't taken the time to keep up with what is really going on? Is your silence a form of approval?

3. If you have anyone in the military, you will soon be burying dead relatives.

4. A society which increasingly resorts to violence as the answer to all disagreements.
   • Increasingly school children, adults, companies, the police are using deadly violence. This behavior is modeled from the top: our leaders using violence to get their way around the world.

Please send comments to: Colby Glass, MLIS

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