$708 BILLION

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I'm posting this at a few places to assess how opinions vary...

Obama Seeks $44B Increase for Pentagon; $5B for Nuclear Arsenal

President Obama is unveiling a record $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 today. The budget would boost war spending while trimming domestic expenditures. Obama is seeking a $44 billion increase in the military’s budget. If approved, this will bring the Pentagon’s budget to $708 billion. The Obama administration is also asking Congress to increase spending on the US nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years. Obama is seeking the extra money despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world. The Obama administration argues that the boost in spending is needed to ensure that US warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages.

http://www.democracynow.org/

Source

Now check my math here please, but that figure blows my tiny mind..

For reference:

There are two systems for naming large numbers: the long scale and the short scale.
The short scale is employed in the USA, the UK and many other countries prefer the long scale. In the USA, a billion denotes one thousand million:
1 000 000 000 or 10 to the power of 9
The long scale is employed elsewhere, and so a billion equals a million million:
1 000 000 000 000 or 10 to the power of 12

So, the amount looks like this:

$708,000,000,000 = $708 thousand million

Let's divide that by the number of days in a non-leap year:

$708,000,000,000 / 365

= $1,939,726,027 plus change

So to make it simpler, let's just say $2 Billion a day.

The cost to each American citizen (roughly estimated at 305,000,000) is therefore $6 (plus change) per person per day.

How Much Is A Billion? A Trillion?

One example:

If we wanted to pay down a billion dollars of the US debt, paying one dollar a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. To pay off a trillion dollars of debt, at a dollar a second, would take about 32,000 years.

Source

So the 2011 budget for the Pentagon, if approved, will cost $6 per US citizen per day.

Obviously the total population of America is MUCH higher than the total of the employed population, therefore the cost to the working citizens of America will be much higher than a 'measly' $6.

Does this strike anyone else as insanity?

Please do not take this wrong, I do not mean to invalidate your topic or ridicule you. What you say here is a very valid topic.
BUt its old news..
And your math is wrong. Its $1,505 per person in 2008

Please continue....