The United States of America focuses the majority of its monetary resources on its military compared to any other country in the world. As a result of this, we have become the strongest military force in history. This comes with great advantages such as the prosperous nation in which we live today which allows us to live our lives freely and safely, along with alliance with other strong countries. However, there are tradeoffs associated with spending such disproportionally large amounts of money on only one facet of our government. Due to high spending on the military the government neglects other important institutions. Approximately 8 billion dollars have gone to funding war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else the U.S. sends military force to. All of these factors contribute towards a negative impact on the overall U.S. economy, higher taxes for the U.S. citizen, and the underfunding of various other government programs.
According to the Atlantic magazine, the united states spent less that 1 percent of its GDP on police funding. Reducing police spending to such a minimal amount raises concern for a number of reasons. First of all underfunded police departments have less staff because who would work for half the salary they could make by moving to city where they pay police officers more. Also underfunding police departments leads to having undertrained officers that don’t know how to handle situations. People such as George Floyd and Elijah McClain are victims of incompetent policing that comes from incompetent policing brought on by undertrained underpaid cops.
Another disadvantage that comes with underfunded police departments is an increase in crime rate. For example in Dallas there is an abundance of cops because we pay. our police departments well, this means that the crime rate is low. Ten years ago the crime rate in Dallas was much higher because the city was smaller and less affluent than now meaning we had less to give our police. In Puerto Rico the police department is currently underfunded and understaffed. Because of this we have a crime rate that is 47 percent higher than the United States as a whole. There is a shortage of police officers across the nation due to subpar working conditions, decreasing wages. To summarize, police officers have been undertrained, underpaid, and unhappy in a number of places due to adverse working and living conditions which leads to hostility between police officers and citizens and culminates in a strong hate for police and the negative stigma surrounding them.
To resolve the problem, we have to look at where the money that could potentially be used for funding the police and advocate to reallocate the funds. In this case, the solution could be to take from the Department of Defense’s budget and spend money on various re-education efforts in cities that have historically high crime rated. Another benefit that could come from adding to our policing budget is get more benefits such as healthcare, dental insurance, higher pay and overall better working conditions for our police.
Sources:
- https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3252968/biden-signs-national-defense-authorization-act-into-law/
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/underfunding-police-violent-crime/673314/
- https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
- https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-funded-5115578#:~:text=Spending%20on%20law%20and%20order,of%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau%20data.
I agree with you that there has to be more of a balance between military spending and other government spending. While national security is obviously really important, the US needs to allocate more money to other programs. In addition to increased police funding, which you mentioned, more needs to be invested into social safety nets, education, conservation, healthcare and more.
In general, there definitely is a discrepancy between what the government spends on its military versus other areas like healthcare which needs to be looked into. There has been a lot of controversy with the police in the U.S. and calls to defund the police which shows that there may need to be some type of reforms. I think that giving more funding to police forces is a good idea in the sense that there needs to be better training programs for potential officers which will also help the relationship between the police force and the public in the long run.
It actually blows my mind thinking about how much money goes to the military. Something that I really struggle with is looking at exactly what the military budget is being spent on. There was a video of PA Rep. Summer Lee calling out US generals for their spending that you should watch if you haven’t. The military literally spends money to buy king crab. like thousands of dollars for crab…. that money could easily pay for children’s school meals. it’s so stupid.