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Out of every $100 spent on national defense worldwide, $40–$50 are spent by the United States. About 30% of the US Federal budget is military spending, and abo

by sethg 17y ago

Out of every $100 spent on national defense worldwide, $40–$50 are spent by the United States. About 30% of the US Federal budget is military spending, and about 13% is paying interest on money we borrowed for previous military spending.¹ Any hypothetical war that the US couldn’t win unless it spends even more coin on military hardware is not a hypothetical war that the US should be hypothetically fighting in the first place. ¹ http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spendi...

gaius 17y ago
What the US gets for that money tho' is a vast amount of tech that eventually ends up with the general public. I have two GPSs on me at the moment. Which is ridiculous but hey, they're so cheap, why not stick one in every electronic device?! There's a reason that all that comes out of the US. The EU as a whole spends about half what the US does on defence and ends up with about 10% of the capability. Hmm.
- eru 17y ago
  Your first argument would be more interesting, if you could compare it with a situation where the money remains in civilian hands. (E.g. during the Second World War a lot of new technology came out of the military, too. But that was only to expect, since all resources went into the military.)
  - gaius 17y ago
    A good example is the UK. We spend ~200Bn a year on welfare and ~30Bn a year on defence. Yet the US leads in almost every technological field.
sker 17y ago
Keep in mind that US defense contrctors are probably the most expensive in the world. How much does a Lockheed Martin engineer makes versus a Chinese contractor engineer? The US spending 40-50% of the world's defense budget doesn't say much other than the fact that a lot of people are getting very rich in America. Don't get me wrong, they are still far ahead from everyone else, but I don't think that's a valid metric unless you adjust for purchasing power.

by sethg 17y ago

gaius 17y ago

What the US gets for that money tho' is a vast amount of tech that eventually ends up with the general public. I have two GPSs on me at the moment. Which is ridiculous but hey, they're so cheap, why not stick one in every electronic device?! There's a reason that all that comes out of the US. The EU as a whole spends about half what the US does on defence and ends up with about 10% of the capability. Hmm.

eru 17y ago
Your first argument would be more interesting, if you could compare it with a situation where the money remains in civilian hands. (E.g. during the Second World War a lot of new technology came out of the military, too. But that was only to expect, since all resources went into the military.)
- gaius 17y ago
  A good example is the UK. We spend ~200Bn a year on welfare and ~30Bn a year on defence. Yet the US leads in almost every technological field.

sker 17y ago

Keep in mind that US defense contrctors are probably the most expensive in the world. How much does a Lockheed Martin engineer makes versus a Chinese contractor engineer? The US spending 40-50% of the world's defense budget doesn't say much other than the fact that a lot of people are getting very rich in America. Don't get me wrong, they are still far ahead from everyone else, but I don't think that's a valid metric unless you adjust for purchasing power.