What Does $712 Billion Buy? Trading Defense Spending for Popular Opportunity Spending

Here’s a wild thought experiment: what if we reallocated the $712 billion American taxpayers spent in 2018 on Defense to overwhelmingly popular opportunity interventions like healthcare for kids, more pre-k, and better-paid teachers. Well, you’d have enough money to provide:

• Healthcare for 100 million kids (there are only ~50 million public school students);

• Pre-K (via head start) for 26 million kids; and

• $65,000 raise for all 3.2 million elementary school teachers (we could also higher many more).

Source: National Priorities