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LostInParadise's avatar

What percentage of the economy goes to maintaining security?

Asked by LostInParadise (31905points) August 9th, 2011

Leaving out the military, security would include the following:

police,
security guards,
criminal courts,
prisons,
locks,
safes,
burglar alarms,
background checks,
passwords,
encryption/decryption,
firewalls

Do you think this comes to 10%?

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2 Answers

Judi's avatar

You forgot to include military on your list.

tedd's avatar

The answer would vary by state. Prisons are very expensive to operate (especially when they’re on a “punishment” rather than “rehabilitation” guideline). States with more prisoners, would spend more on this.

I would suspect in an average state the total cost of all that security does not come to 10%, but I have no numbers to back that up. I also wouldn’t be surprised if its at least 5%.

For some comparison; You said to leave out military spending, but its worth noting that the US military is roughly 15–18% of our nations total budget. As a comparison to total national GDP…. 15–18% is of roughly 3.5 trillion (our current annual budget), and our GDP is 14.2 or so trillion.

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