How Much You Pay For Defense Spending

The roughly $620 billion that the administration expects to spend on defense in FY 2008 (regular appropriation of about $481 billion plus a $140 billion war supplemental) is such a huge figure it's difficult to comprehend. Here's one way to see it, which I offer gratis to anybody who thinks it's worth repeating: Take the $620 billion and divide by the number of currently employed workers, 146 million (estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), then divide by the accountant's rule of thumb that a working person works an average of 2,000 hours per year. The result is about $2.12 per hour on average for a typical worker. That seems like a huge expense to me. How many workers would want to pay that much, if asked, for "defense"? Probably not many.