alone according to the stockholm international peace research institute us very much sees itself as a global military power it's the only global military superpower and so it perceives security interests as encompassing the whole world in two thousand and ten the u.s. spent more on its military and the next highest countries combined both presidents bush and obama have read that the war's defense spending in the us has increased eighty one percent since two thousand and one this seems to reflect a boy. prioritization of our military conceptions of security even in the face of such difficult economic times and american earning the federal minimum wage and working forty hours a week fifty two weeks a year can expect to earn a little over fifteen thousand dollars that's here well below the poverty line they can also expect to pay more than five hundred dollars directly to the pentagon and american earning fifty thousand dollars a year will see their income. over two thousand of them go directly to america's wars although they want control of the oil fields and all of the profits back jus

but stockholm international peace research institute noted sharp increases by south american and african countries as well. by virtually every measure u.s. military leads every other nation in the dust. the $698 billion spent accounted for 43% of all the military spending in the world. six times the amount is spent by the number two country, china. military spending amount is 4.8% of the u.s. gross domestic product compared to the world average of 2.6%. next is a call from seattle. this is gary, an independent. you're on. morning.ood thanks for taking my call. host: sure. cloim i agree with some of the other previous callers. take both of profit out and pull bases out. put some of this money back in social programs back in the united states. we got enough defense spending to defend ourselves. i don't think there's any worry about that. host: when you say take the profit out, how would that work, really? caller: well, the amount -- if you look at our situation, are we defending an empire or what? i don't quite understand the level of spending to keep these bases that just don't do us any