[quote]I am aware you can't have both. That is what I am saying. There is no reason why we need to spend that much on military compared to other things that should come first. I guarantee that all that money is not being used to fund the military personal i.e. they are a large portion of the US homeless population.[/quote] Veterans are the ones who make up the homeless population, they are not apart of the active service. Unless someone put their 20 years in they aren't getting a pension. Everyone knows the veterans receive rather poor treatment, due to the VA having a slew of problems. I would say personnel cost the most old numbers but in 2012 the pentagon stated the cost for 1 soldier on duty in afghanistan was anywhere from 850,000 to 1.4 million USD. When you multiply that by however many troops are deployed it easily becomes the most expensive expenditure. Employees are always the highest expenditure in anything, thus why jobs are among the first things cut.

Interesting thought on veterans, if we spend 6-12 months teaching them to kill why cant we at least spend the same amount of time helping them to live in society after they get back. A lot of vets have trouble reintegrating into society upon return and you know since they did such a solid for us going into hell itself so that I can sit here and argue with you fine people about nonsense, we should do a solid for them and make sure they have the care and support they need to feel whole again.

Again that's the problem with the VA, veterans deserve better care and no one disagrees with that. The problem is that the organization in charge of doing that has been doing a poor job giving medical and psychological care to veterans. At this point it isnt even so much how it is funded but it's the incompetent decisions made by people working in the VA.

I would love to know why it costs so much for one person. -_-