alan macleod

Have you ever wondered just how much of your hard-earned tax dollars go to funding our bloated war machine? On today’s episode of “The MintCast,” Lindsay Koshgarian lays out the staggering expense that American taxpayers fork out each year to keep the U.S. empire going.

“The average person is paying over $2300 per year for our military, plus another $700 for veterans’ [benefits]. So that’s over $3000. To put that in some other perspective, that’s more than twice what the median rent is for a two-bedroom apartment is in this country... It’s a really significant expense for individual taxpayers,” she told “Mintcast” co-host Alan MacLeod.

Lindsay Koshgarian is the Program Director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her work and commentary have been featured in “NPR,” the “BBC,” “CNN” and “The Nation,” among others.

Not only does the United States spend vastly more than any other country in the world on its military, the federal budget continues to become increasingly militarized. For the financial year 2023, $1.1 trillion of the $1.8 trillion total went to purchasing weapons or on militarizing the police or prison systems.

If you include veterans’ benefits, then the government spends more on war than anything else, even healthcare. More than $1000 of the average American’s taxes go to Pentagon contractors – four times as much as is spent on K-12 education.

Koshgarian’s report, “Tax Day 2023: Where Your 2022 Tax Dollars Went,” even notes that weapons giant Lockheed Martin received $106 per American taxpayer this year. This is compared to just $11 on anti-homeless projects or around $6 to develop renewable energy.

The National Priorities Project has proposed a modest spending cut to the military, bringing the budget down to 2018 levels. With that $100 billion saving, they calculate that the U.S. could:

-  Provide free tuition for 2 out of 3 public college students in the U.S.
- Send every household in the U.S. a $700 check to help offset the effects of inflation
- Hire 890,000 Registered Nurses to address shortages
- Cover medical care for 7 million veterans, or:
- Triple current enrollment in Head Start, from 1 million children and families to 3 million.

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Somebody blew up the Nord Stream II pipeline – that much is certain. Yet, since September last year, when the incident occurred, no one has come forward to take responsibility, and the attack has become the subject of intense international debate.

Our guest on “MintCast” is Bryce Greene, a writer, journalist, activist and media critic who has covered the issue extensively in outlets such as “Fairness And Accuracy in Reporting.” Earlier this month, Bryce was invited to speak at the United Nations Security Council to shed light on who is likeliest to have been behind the attack. His full remarks can be read and seen here. 

Greene was highly critical of the press coverage of the event, telling “MintCast” host Alan MacLeod that the media seem “almost completely incapable of examining the facts in an objective and dispassionate manner.” While the press is happy to denounce Russia for the attack, despite the lack of concrete evidence, Greene said they have, in effect, enforced an “intellectual no-fly zone around entertaining the other obvious suspects” – i.e., the United States.

Certainly, the U.S. had a lot to gain from ending Nord Stream. The attack has pushed Europe into the arms of the United States, forcing them to buy expensive American liquified natural gas rather than cheap Russian energy. Before the attack, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told the press: “If Russia invades, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 Will. Not. Move. Forward.” President Biden made similar remarks. And after the incident, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed delighted, calling it a “tremendous opportunity” for the U.S.

Therefore, it came as little surprise to many when legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh released an article claiming that U.S. Navy divers were behind the attack and that President Biden himself had ordered the pipeline be destroyed. Hersh’s claims have largely been ignored in the mainstream press, however. A MintPress study of the 20 largest and most influential U.S. news outlets found only four mentions of Hersh’s claims in the week after his report made worldwide headlines.

MintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.

Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.

Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.