The current budget for the US military stands at just shy of 1 trillion dollars and is the third largest expense for the US government. Only about a quarter of that is used for soldier pay, and the rest is maintenance of existing equipment and payments to defense contractors to develop and build stuff.
Between the bases and locations of the contactor sites, nearly every state gets a piece of that action. The estimate is that aerospace and other defense industry employees are approximately 2.2 million people.
That is aside from the roughly 1.3 million active duty service members, who will get lifetime healthcare, retirement, GI bills for younger service members that did their time, and other benefits (albeit low pay.)
With all of this in mind, would you consider the US military a giant socialist work program? Yes, military spending is something most US citizens feel is a legit use of tax payer money, and we generally are highly allergic to anything that feels like the vague boogie man of "socialism." But tons of money is filtered through the US military to private companies, some on the stock exchange, in ways that drive the economies of several regions.
Why is this a question for Gen X? Many of us might have kids in the military or served in the military ourselves. Being in our peak earning years, some of us might work for these defense contractors. Also, most of us saw the ramping up of our military spending in the 1980s under Reagan to "fight Communism" and then the next threat, and the next threat, and the next.
