WASTEFUL AND DANGEROUS MILITARY EXPENDITURES

War between nations is an expensive proposition.  It is furthermore a wasteful proposition--in terms of lives, talent, resources, and the routine of daily life as well.  Military preparedness and national defense are similarly costly.



A SHORT HISTORY OF MILITARY SPENDING

As long ago as 1799, Austria, Britain, and the Netherlands began to levy income taxes for the purpose of funding their wars against Napoleon.  And in the mid-nineteenth century, the two segments of the United States began resorting to a similar method in order to finance their respective roles in the Civil War.  In 1903, England reported that one-third of its budget was being regularly expended upon the Boer War and its military expedition in China.  And in 1910, long before the beginnings of World War I, the United States was already burdened by a defense budget of Two Billion Dollars.

By 1913, the nations that would comprise the combatants in the coming Great War had already amassed huge standing armies, millions of trained reserves, and almost a thousand ships and submarines.  Britain increased its military budget to 29 Million Pounds; France to 754 Million Francs; and Germany's Reichstag voted to furnish the equivalent of $510 Million in 1913 U.S. Dollars for its army.

Then, the dreaded event began.  Military budgets began to be consumed in earnest.  Britain issued an estimate in May, 1915, that its expenses during the first eight months of warfare had already reached the equivalent, in 1915 American funds, of Four Billion Dollars.  Europeans were said to work from dawn until dusk, on farms and in factories, to produce food and equipment for their armies.  At home, they conserved fuel and electricity so that more could be sent to the front.  They invested what leftover income they might have in Liberty Bonds, to assist in financing the warfare.  Exports of war paraphernalia issued forth prolifically from the United States.  By 1916, it was estimated that over Five Million Dollars (in 1916 Dollars) worth of munitions were shipped each day, from the port of New York alone.

Sixty three million men were mobilized.  And when it was over, the total gross financial cost of the War was estimated at $185 Billion, in 1914 Dollars--or more than $4 Trillion, when converted to 2011 Dollars.
 (To convert from 1914 to 2011 Dollars [figures for 2012 are not yet available], I multiplied the costs in 1914 Dollars by 22.49--because the annualized Consumer Price Index [CPI] is cited as "10.0" for 1914 [see the "Historical Consumer Price Index,"--www.InflationData.com]; and, per the same source, as "224.9" for 2011.  [$185 Billion times 22.49 equals $4,160,650,000.])

Britain owed the United States $4.6 Billion ($103.4 Billion) in war loans.  France, Italy, and Russia owed Britain $6.5 Billion ($146.1 Billion).  And Germany was notified that it owed a whopping $35 Billion ($787.1 Billion) in reparations.
(These figures are also quoted in 1914 Dollars, followed by a conversion to 2011 Dollars, pursuant to the aforesaid "Historical Consumer Price Index" in the parentheses   that follow.)  It is no wonder that Europe's position in the world economy was said to have been impaired beyond recovery.

But worse, the war cost a great deal more than that in human resources.  France sacrificed one half of its male populastion between the ages of twenty and thirty-two; and other countries involved in the war suffered similar losses.  Many who might have become leaders in government or industry during the 1920s and 1930s were dead.  Almost twenty percent of Oxford's students were killed.  Furthermore, tens of millions were wounded.  Some would eventually die; many more would be forced to endure the rest of their lives as cripples.

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