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On ISIS budgets

2015-12-16 16:28:52.514295+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments

I was listening to Planet Money: Episode 667: Auditing ISIS, and felt compelled to leave a comment over there that I'm going to duplicate here:

I was listening to this episode, and heard the stat that the security costs of the budget were forty some-odd percent of the budget, and that got me thinking. I went to my (relatively liberal San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California) city's budget, added up all of the spending line items that started "Police", and came up at about 40% ($15.7 million out of a $39.5 million budget). And then I got to thinking about "confiscations", and wondered what Asset Forfeiture revenues looked like for my town.

I know that quite often even in economic systems that look very disparate there are similarities: People find ways to pay interest on money even when a religion forbids it. How about a look at this ISIS budget relative to what a similar sized town in the United States spends, to give us a little perspective?

[ related topics: Religion Bay Area moron Space & Astronomy Law Enforcement California Culture Pop Culture Currency Economics ]

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