Eh, the United States spends a lot of that tax money on the military. I don't have a problem with wealthy people making their own call on the guns vs. butter question.
Given that the US government wastes so much via corrupt deals, inefficiencies, insane surveillance, and absurd military spending- I would favor Zuckerberg directing the fund.
Wikipedia says the military is 17% of expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...
This may or may not constitute a lot, depending on who you are.
A lot is an interesting question, especially given this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...) which if you sort by percentage of GDP puts the US below Russia.
Is it that surprising that the country with far and away the highest GDP has the highest military spending in real dollars?
For example, iirc, a significant portion of NASA's budget is for military applications - spy satellites and such. Similarly, the DoD budget doesn't consider veteran's benefits owed to former soldiers, which is a large portion of the long-term obligations comprising the national debt. It also leaves out most of the national security complex (DHS, NSA, FBI), military applications in the Department of Energy, and so on.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
I'm cobbling together some more data points here. They aren't all for the same year, but are close to recent.
- Veterans Affairs: ~160B [0]
- DHS: ~65B [1]
- "non-military intelligence spending" (I assume including a solid chunk of NSA and CIA): ~55B [2]
- FBI: ~8B [3]
- retirement from Treasury (for service before 1984. The reference is interesting!) ~8B [4]
The Project On Government Oversight has a similar table [5] that includes some of my items, some additional items, and excludes some of mine. It reaches a $1 trillion "National Security" budget, which shakes out to about 28% of spending.
Thanks for the linking and push to keep digging! The "Military budget and total US federal spending" section of the article linked in the parent was a good jumping off point for me, as well.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ve... [1]: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_... [2]: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-... [3]: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/1... [4]: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB3005/index1.html [5]: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/...
EDIT: formatting
You can donate to military organizations that fund warfare directly?