Cost Of Military Jet Could House Every Homeless Person

Countries having strong armies allot most of the country's budget to their defence. What might be a jaw-dropping news though, are the facts given by some sources about how much good could have been done with the costs of some U.S. military jets.

A newest US military jet was manufactured on the cost of $400 billion. As pointed out by The Hill this fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, is seven years behind schedule and plagued with major defects like vulnerability to an outbreak of fire, could have housed every homeless person in the U.S. with a $600,000 home.

Another staggering fact put forward by Think Progress states that the amount spent per year to build the F-35 jets could easily fulfil a $16.7 billion request by the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs to save countless lives from preventable causes around the world — and then have enough left over to fund UNICEF's budget request, too. The full cost of the jets program could also fund the National School Lunch Program, which feeds about 31 million students annually, for the next 24 years.

F-35 jets exemplify what Steven Conn would consider a military budget that doesn't have much of a positive impact on everyday Americans.

"Spending our taxes on the military doesn't yield much to make our lives or our communities better," Conn, a professor and Director of the Public History Program at Ohio State University, wrote on a HuffPost blog in April. "Big weapons systems and overseas military installations, to say nothing of feckless military adventures in Vietnam or Iraq, have done very little to fix our roads, improve our kids' education, or push the boundaries of medical research."

According to data provided by the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government spent roughly 19 times more on defence and international security assistance than it did on education in 2013. A graph created by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation illustrates that the U.S. spends more on defence than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the U.K., Germany, Japan and India combined.