The Pentagon and the $25,000 Dog

Highly trained dogs are in high demand by border patrol units, private security firms, the U.S. military and other agencies. They can cost $25,000 apiece—and that’s before additional training that can cost a quarter of a million dollars. The military is using about 1,600 dogs to either serve alongside soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world, or help recuperating veterans. But the numbers are about 38 percent lower than at the height of the Afghanistan war, Bloomberg’s Kyle Stock reports. Most dogs in the U.S. are actually immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe.

Denmark has an enviable problem: An unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. To get people back into the labor force and spur spending, the government has proposed cutting a wide range of taxes, including income taxes and car taxes. The world’s highest tax burden (relative to gross domestic product) pays for free schools, hospitals, childcare and elder care. “We’re making it more attractive to work more and we’re ensuring that it’s more worthwhile to save up toward retirement,” Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said. The proposed cuts would lower the tax burden on Danes from about 47 percent to 44 percent.