Hopefully, anyone who has read part 1 of this series is now open to the idea that Humanity's belief in money is based on a false narrative. While mankind is the only species on Earth that uses money as a means for survival all other inhabitants (animals, bugs, etc.) seem oblivious to this doctrine or belief. Hopefully, people who hold fast to their faith in money help perpetuate this lie, even as it is being exposed as a mean for a small minority of wealthy individuals, organizations and corporations to control the rest of us. In part 1 I used the example of how money has impacted American life in the past and present through the military-industrial complex's justification for the many wars we have participated in or started based on "national interests". While I will expand on the ideas breached in part 1, my hope for these posts is to provide alternative ways in which to view the world and what is required to thrive within it.
My goals are to juxtapose reality (what one sees, hears and understands in their own life) with what our leaders sell us as reality, confront the biggest issues that impact most if not all of us and offer solutions when a problem or short-coming is apparent. And, though the premise of this series of posts is that money is unnecessary to our survival, I will provide ideas that can be realized within our current system, because I don't money going away anytime in the near-future. With that in mind, I offer the first step towards a solution to war that is easy to articulate, but difficult to implement: Americans need to make themselves aware of what the Government is spending their tax dollars on. The link below provides a listing of how of the revenue collected by the American Government is spent. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
The revenue in question here is from taxes that the government collects from every citizen who pays taxes. If Americans were paying attention they would realize that for the past few years over $600 billion has been spent on the American military, while the next largest amount in military spending is China which in 2015 was the equivalent of over $200 billion and Russia less than $70 billion that same year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
And if Americans were paying attention to the American budget, they might find themselves upset to discover that our Congress has just increased America's military budget by $160 billion dollars in 2018. This increase was a bipartisan decision, which means the Democratic party is as much a war-mongering party as the Republican party has been perceived to be all these years. Unlike free public college or healthcare for all, there were questions asking from where the money for this extra military would come. And in direct contrast with Democratic leadership's questioning of Trump's sanity, 60% of the House Democrats voted in favor of giving Trump an even bigger military. https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/07/14/most-house-democrats-just-voted-for-a-defense-budget-far-bigger-than-trumps/#459a7ca86ea0
As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that all links provided should only serve as starting points. Please do your own research and inform yourself as to where your government spends the money it collects from you, me and every tax-paying citizen.
As stated earlier, the first step towards a solution to war would be that Americans inform themselves about the military spending of our Government, which serves as implied consent, especially if one believes the fallacy of money as an expression of speech. Though an easy first step, given the availability
of information on the internet, it is a difficult step to take, as so few of the more than 240 million adults raise concerns about military spending, let alone the increase in military spending.
Given the fact that no other country comes close to America's military spending and the increase in poverty, homelessness, starvation, debt, wealth inequality and the failing infrastructure, it is hard to understand the logic in current American leadership's decision to increase our military spending. Not only are other countries negatively impacted by our complacency, but we are condemning ourselves to further servitude because, as the military slice of the American pie increases, the slice we are left with shrinks.
In Part 3, I will address how money impacts the sector of American society that not only impacts how we conduct our wars, but how we live our lives. . . Politicians. For now, consider these ideas: There are fewer than one thousand people in Washington D.C. that control our lives. They sit in Congress, the Supreme Court and in the White House and many have been in office for decades, overseeing the decline of our nation, while so many of us fight over which political party is correct.
