29 ms·

World military expenditure passes $2T for first time

156 points by georgecmu 5y ago

sshine 5y ago
While the first graph does adjust for inflation (i.e., all years are in 2020 inflation-adjusted USD), it seems that it doesn't account for global wealth increase, i.e. while the absolute amount of money spent on war is greater than ever, so is our absolute wealth. I'm not an economist, but wouldn't it make sense to compare military spending over gdp, inflation-adjusted? Or put simpler: I'm sure there was a time in history where a relatively large amount of our total wealth was spent on war, because we generally didn't have much.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Yes, like say, World War 1 and 2.
- sbelskie 5y ago
  This graph only goes back to 2000 but even on that timescale current military spending is lower than past peaks: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Well, 2009 was when the bulk of the impact from the financial crisis hit world GDP so the peak is mostly reflecting that GDP contracted while military spending was mainly flat. You can compare the percentage of GDP figure to this one showing military spending as percentage of all government spending, where it looks like we're spending less and less on weapons: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.ZS So while total dollar amount is maybe a coarse measure, the GDP or the fraction worldwide government spending are so contingent on the details of literally every other human activity as to unusable for quick observations.
    - stingraycharles 5y ago
      This is an excellent point! As someone who’s totally not a data scientist, what approach would you take to counter this? Assuming military budget planning has a window of a few years, would a moving average of GDP be an appropriate solution? Or am I thinking too simplistic?
      - KolenCh 5y ago
        Not directly addressing this, but perhaps the point is not to create a model to address every known limitations. No models are perfect. Points are made based on a model, and a limitation/assumption is pointed out. You need to judge given the assumption/limitation if the message made still some-what make sense. I mean something X being highest right now is a pretty clear statement, it is either true or false, if X is well defined. But then your problem is you want to have Z instead, which hopefully is accounted for every other effect except for the factor you want to measure, such as inflation, GDP, etc. But the more you add, you either makes your Z definition sensitive to these other factors you’re not interested in (such as a peak comes from the denominator, not the numerator), or we really admit we can’t calculate Z for sure, and is now a statistical model (any kind of smoothing including the MA you mentioned is to admit we don’t know the true state but can only observe it with noise.) Now the statement of “Z is highest now” is no longer a true or false statement, but a probabilistic one. Certainly then P(Z is highest) = 60% or so wouldn’t make much of a headline and can be confusing. So my point was rather than trying to create a perfect model (which you can’t, and what you learn from it won’t be clear as well), sometimes just deal with the statement and methodology and judge if it is a clickbait or has some merit of truth there.
- zivkovicp 5y ago
  I agree and think it would be more useful if it was expressed as a percentage of global GDP instead.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Does inflation matter? We are largely talking about bombs and bullets here. Yes, smarter and smarter bombs but bombs nonetheless. I feel like the proper comparison point is tons of explosives. And remember: every proximity fuse antiair bullet has a vacuum tube and mini-radar in it to run the proximity fuse logic (if close to enemy, then explode). Modern weapons are smarter than that, but WW2 era weapons were still quite smart.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Warfare is much more than explosives. It’s people, equipment, information, transportation, logistics, and a lot more.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Sure, but military spending isn't necessarily war-making. Case in point: the biggest expenditure of the US Military is... Healthcare, the Veteran's Affair's department. The next biggest expenditures are Research and Development (which includes DARPA-funded projects. Technically defense, but I don't think anyone would call the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge Darpa Network Challenge a "wargame") By just looking at military spending per department, you over-estimate the amount of money spent on warmaking. ------ So defense-spending is one metric (too much money allocated), and maybe "tons of explosives" is too little. USA didn't really have that many casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan (it wasn't like Vietnam or Korea where huge amounts of injured soldiers existed). As such, the VA-department is largely handling things like COVID19, diabetes, and other "typical" ailments. While technically "department of defense" funds, I don't think it really counts as "military expenditure", not in the way the article is discussing anyway.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - kube-system 5y ago
        That’s kind of where I was going with “people”, but certainly there are many other larger costs than explosives. Labor is the largest expense for most organizations and the DoD is no exception. They are, after all, the worlds largest employer.
- fasteddie31003 5y ago
  Percent of GDP is a much better metric.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    It is, but it doesn't make headlines...
  - E4YomzYIN5YEBKe 5y ago
    Does the cost of defending a country increase linearly with GDP? Do linear increases in military spending result in a linear increase in security?
- bannedbybros 5y ago
- starwind 5y ago
  In the post-WW2 era, military spending peaked in the 1980s, and it's been (mostly) declining ever since as a percentage of global gdp
bee_rider 5y ago
Apparently there was a slowdown in terms of real growth rate (which is to say, military budgets are still increasing but the rate of increase went down in real terms) (inflation).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
matt321 5y ago
This is just inflation
xyzzy4747 5y ago
This would be news if there was a constant money supply. Too bad it grows 5-20% per year.
newaccount2021 5y ago
roenxi 5y ago
On intellectually interesting thing about the current NATO-Russia conflict is it suggests that the overarching strategy is to figure out whether the stove is hot by touching it. Obviously neither Russia nor the US see a diplomatic solution, but it is happening on Russia's border so at some point someone will escalate too far. And everyone is on edge and tetchy after the the COVID response. The current world superpower is run by people who are pretty sure that the answer to economic problems involves printing money. Obviously this'll end well. Energy use is also approaching a critical point. The experiments in Europe indicate that the closing of the fossil fuel age will be unpleasant. The electricity production figures out of the UK are jaw dropping, last I saw they seem to have regressed to 1970s levels. In this environment, it is easy to see why people are ramping up military training. If it wasn't for the fact that a serious war will be apocalyptic regardless of spending I imagine they'd be ramping up faster and more enthusiastically.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  > NATO-Russia conflict Can you explain your framing?
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    I believe that is what it looks like from a Russian perspective.
    - WJW 5y ago
      To be fair, without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now. It's an open secret that NATO has been passing on intelligence from AWACS and spy satellites to the Ukrainian forces as well. There might be no NATO troops on the ground but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is purely Ukraine vs Russia.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now And without the navy Russia annexed [1], or it’s Soviet military kit, much of which was designed and built in Ukraine, Russia wouldn’t have much of a start. Ukraine repelled Putin’s forces on its own in the early days of the war, when Western intelligence was predicting another Kabul. That it later attracted sympathy is further testament to its diplomatic strength (and the Kremlin’s isolation). [1] https://tass.com/russia/724901 https://tass.com/russia/724901
BLO716 5y ago
Is this adjusted to inflation? I think the world was spending a lot of dough WWI to WWII.
- kgermino 5y ago
  It's in constant 2020 (US) Dollars
  - refurb 5y ago
    Graph only goes back to 1990. Agree with OP, even during the Vietnam War spending was higher.
    - SiempreViernes 5y ago
      Actually not, absolute spending is at an all time high: : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-total?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-tota... Probably because the equipment is more expensive these days and soldiers get better benefits.
      - pkaye 5y ago
        Does this include the Afghanistan/Iraq wars for the US? I thought it would be bigger spike in the spending.
ggambetta 5y ago
Suddenly it feels so stupid that we're spending so much money (or any money at all) in breaking things and killing each other instead of making things. What a waste. We're all close neighbors in this isolated planet, bickering amongst ourselves. Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together? Although we're facing global threats right now (climate change, pandemics...) and we can't get our sh...tuff together, so I don't have much hope in that scenario either. Makes me think of Don't Look Up. Welp, I've made myself sad now.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I've been complaining about this for 30 years (and protesting sometimes too). It feels hopeless, on some days I completely understand why some protestors immolate themselves... but younger generations have always made me feel a little better (I wish more of them would vote, but I understand why they don't).
  - 0xdada 5y ago
    There have been 14 cases of (political) self-immolation in the 2020s so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations#2020s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolat...
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      yes, notably just last week in front of the US Supreme Court for climate change inaction... some Buddhists consider it a compassionate act
- jotm 5y ago
  That's what I thought right up until Russia invaded Ukraine. I couldn't believe it happened for 3 days. Nah, as long as there's humans around, you better be armed and trained. Vicious animals, you never know when they'll decide to rape then kill you.
  - 5y ago
nanna 5y ago
SIPRI's top ten military spenders 2021, with help from Wikipedia [0] 1. USA: $801 billion 2. China: $293 billion 3. India: $76.6 billion 4. UK: $68.4 billion 5. Russia: $65.9 billion 6. France: $56.6 billion 7. Germany: $56.0 billion 8. Saudia Arabia: $55.6 billion 9. Japan: $54.1 billion 10. S. Korea: $50.2 billion [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  I think the real issue is an issue of priorities. You don't even have to compare the US to other countries but compare the US to ourselves. Approximately half of our total spending goes to our military budget[1], and we complain about spending on social programs and college funding, having people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-2022-budget-raises-military-spending-past-750-billion/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-202...
  - umeshunni 5y ago
    Who is us?
    - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
      Whoops... forgot caps. Was supposed to be the US. I'll fix it. I'm doing this while I get my caffeine ready =[
    - DaltonCoffee 5y ago
      We're #1 We're #1
  - mrep 5y ago
    Half of Discretionary spending which does not include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
    - 5y ago
terran57 5y ago
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
- gpt5 5y ago
  This is a fallacy. A strong army can also create peace and stability, which in turn feed many more mouths than the opposite. At some point you’d have to agree that we also need to invest in creating order, or would you vote to remove the police, court, and the rule of the law (which is done by force).
  - runnerup 5y ago
    I think the point is to spend the least necessary to achieve the stability required for the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.
    - jessriedel 5y ago
      That is certainly a reasonable goal, but it is not found in a straightforward reading of the Eisenhower quote. The words clearly suggest a 1-to-1 trade-off between military spending and intrinsically valuable things.
      - cwkoss 5y ago
        Lots of military action in modern times is worse than 1-to-1. Huge expense to destroy stability-enabling infrastructure, leaving the world a more dangerous place.
      - yifanl 5y ago
        You have to consider at least the minimal context of the Eisenhower quote, i.e. that it's _Eisenhower_'s quote, who in no uncertain terms could be considered anything close to a pacifist or idealist, he understands that military means are necessary.
sto_hristo 5y ago
And you can count on one hand the guys responsible for this right now. It's crazy to think that some guy with mental issues, just within a month or two, triggered a massive militarization.
bannedbybros 5y ago
azalemeth 5y ago
I really don't know what to think about this. Military spending makes me feel very conflicted inside. I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn't make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I've never punched someone in my life. I've always loved the look of fighter jets and the fact that humans can hop in and go faster than the speed of sound in them, but I've always hated their application. The engineering is amazing; the technology brilliant and the things that are discovered along the way undoubtedly serendipitous. Unfortunately, I know that for a human population to completely disarm is to invite trouble: and armies can and do far worse things than just beat you. I once went on a trip as a fresh-out-of-college person to a firm that made "kinetic armaments"; I went in with an open mind and left, three days later and with an (unaccepted) job offer, with a very shut one. That was a career pathway that was decidedly not for me. Eisenhower's famous quote sums it up quite well. > “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
- cloutchaser 5y ago
  Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years, every gun ever made that wasn't used to feed people - was also made so that my ancestors could defend themselves against some king or dictator who wanted to invade other countries. You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor. Violence is at the root of all human existence. To deny it is to live in a fantasy land. In the end violence is what rules, because if you are weak at some point someone stronger will rule over you. That doesn't mean a violent person will always rule, because 2 peaceful collaborators can usually take down a violent ruler, but it still means that at the root of it whoever can dominate the other in some way will win. And this isn't unique to humans of course, it's how it is in nature and most tribal animals.
alexk307 5y ago
Great news! We're all so much safer now, don't you feel it! /s
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
westcort 5y ago
My key takeaways: 1. Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion 2. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent. 3. As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021 4. ‘The US Government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the US military’s technological edge over strategic competitors.’ Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border 5. Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support 6. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 7. Germany—the third largest spender in Central and Western Europe—spent $56.0 billion on its military in 2021, or 1.3 per cent of its GDP 8. United States focuses on military research and development US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020 9. US funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period
- cwkoss 5y ago
  > Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border Kind of funny to think about how the Russian military budget is roughly 1.5 Twitters.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    And despite this still being so embarrassingly pathetic in real fighting
lossolo 5y ago
The only thing that supports current rule of law around the world is might of US military. If you cut spending of US military to 0 then tomorrow we would be living in a different world. Because structure of the whole world is anarchistic, there is no police that would enforce rule of law, there is no one you can call if other country invade you. Of course because of USD hegemony as world currency, supported by its military power US gets unfair advantage but I'd rather live peacefully in the so called west under US influence than under Russian or Chinese. Thinking that we can live in beautiful world in peace without wars and military is delusional and unrealistic. There was hope in 90s that we can bring liberal democracy to all countries around the world and there would be no more wars. We all see how it went on middle east. People thought that war is unrealistic before WWI then they were super optimistic and thought the same thing before WWII. Unfortunately history proves that world is running in cycles, latest cycle is coming to the end and as it was with Dutch empire and then British empire and before with other empires, new challenger emerges that is challenging status quo, this time it's China and US is on decline as world power. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time until the clash happens.
jessriedel 5y ago
> As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021. Indeed, this is continuing a long general trend of decreased military spending by both the US and the world since the end of WW2: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a-share-of-gdp?time=1951..2016&country=USA~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a... Major buildups like Vietnam and the Cold War were in fact only mild bumps: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190312-D-ZZ999-001.JPG https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190... 2.2% seems like a very bearable price, especially in light of ~3% annual real GDP growth. Wanting/expecting military spending to be much less than a percentage point of GDP doesn't make any more sense to me than wanting/expecting similar for other expenditures on law and order like police and courts. The better criticism of our current military order is that peace largely relies on the threat of nuclear annihilation, and each year we incur a small chance of this horrific outcome, which is not reflected in spending. Naively, I'd like to see more spending on conventional weaponry insofar as it is allows us to reduce strategic nuclear weapon counts and cut down the long tail of truly terrible scenarios.
- causi 5y ago
  Interesting. I draw the opposite conclusion. Seeing that nuclear weapons are the only realistic threat against the United States, I believe a majority of our military budget should be dedicated to the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems, be they based on kinetic interception, lasers, or even nuclear interceptors.
  - jessriedel 5y ago
    Greater US investment in strategic nuclear weapons defense is compatible with everything I said above. Whether thats a good idea depends on what equilibrium it drives the world military order to. If you propose adjustments to US policy, you can't pretend that the world response is fixed. There are strong but not irrefutable arguments that strategic nuke defense spending by the US just induces the same by Russia/China, but puts us in a new nuke equilibrium with less stability than the current MAD situation. The relative stability of those two scenarios can not be figured out by you or me thinking in our armchairs. It depends sensitively on the technological and economic details.
scottLobster 5y ago
For those in this thread critical of military spending in general, please keep in mind that the following were/are directly or indirectly military projects 1. Global trade as we know it is possible because since WWII the US Navy has, by policy, secured the ocean for all participants in the global economy. Merchant ships generally don't need to run armed or with escorts because of this. Now we did it to produce an economic engine/alliance to fight the Soviets, but the effects on uplifting entire nations out of poverty and increasing global economic development cannot be denied. 2. The US Interstate highway system was a Cold War measure so we could move troops from coast to coast quickly if needed. Eisenhower himself was on the first coast-to-coast US Army expedition in 1919, which took 56 days and laid bare America's lacking infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_con... 3. European welfare states are indirectly subsidized by US security obligations and global trade (see point 1). If Europe had to secure their own shipping/take on Russia on their own, their military spending would have to increase an order of magnitude. 4. GPS 5. The moon landings 6. The early internet 7. Many early microprocessor designs 7. The Hubble space telescope was basically an inverted spy satellite 8. Satellite communications in general 9. Modern ship propulsion And the list goes on. Now granted there's TONS of wasted money in the military, and tons of corruption and death from needless wars, but let's just keep in mind that if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above. I know HN is pretty Silicon-Valley centric, and from everything I've heard about the valley people who work for defense contractors can still get called baby killers there in the right company, (what are we in 1973?). So I figured I'd put the alternate perspective out there: War is an ugly truth of human existence and will remain so as long as there is some combination of resource scarcity and assholes. Pacifism historically does not work long term unless the pacifists are defended by non-pacifists or have nothing of value worth taking. The world would be far less developed without modern military spending. In fact we wouldn't even be having this conversation without it. So let's take the pros with the cons.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above This is a huge logical fallacy. The US keeps playing a trick where socially useful R&D is budgeted under "military expenditure" because it's easier to justify and to privatize the benefits. Do you think in a more peaceful world people would be forced to dump research money into the ocean? If anything, the less money are spent for military projects the more can be spent on research.
vermontdevil 5y ago
My theory - similar with guns, the more we have the higher chances of it being used (guns and military). We need to have less of both, not more. But I know it won't happen. Not for a long time.
politician 5y ago
How much of this increase is due to inflation?
aaron695 5y ago
tiffanyh 5y ago
This isn't about weapons, it's about jobs. Keep in mind that a countries military is typically the largest employment organization in an entire country. More so than any private company. The US alone has an annual military budget of $801B [0] (for planes, tanks, etc AND salaries) but also employes 2.2M [1] people. If you assumed that all of the military spend went to salaries (and didn't go to tanks, planes, buildings, etc) that would be an avg salary of ~$350k/person. [0] this article [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >but also employes 2.2M [1] people And how is this beneficial to society, other than preparing/justifying wars, spending money on expensive weapons and equipment, and collecting salaries? If creating jobs is good enough, we'd better pay armies of environmentalists to finally bifurcate from our current catastrophic course.
  - tiffanyh 5y ago
    Your comments are very politically charged and I'd rather avoid participating in such discourse. But I'll just say that I'm sure Ukraine right now is very appreciative of the help they have (and continue) to receive from the same parties you're dismissing.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
      Military expenditure is nothing but political.
- was_a_dev 5y ago
  It would be really interesting to see a breakdown of military spending per employee. For the US, 2.2M employees equates to ~1.38% of the employed population [1]. For the UK, the military isn't the largest employer, the NHS is, which isn't surprising. The British Armed Forces employ 148K [2] people which is ~0.46% of the employed population [2]. Would be interesting to see the worldwide trends. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personnel-in-uk-armed-forces/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personn... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281998/employment-figures-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281998/employment-figure...
nickdothutton 5y ago
No prosperity without security.
parkingrift 5y ago
That’s almost half of what the United States spends on health expenditures. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-healthcare-spending-slowed-in-2021-after-covid-19-surge-11648497601 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-healthcare-spending-slowed-...
aroundtown 5y ago
As a US citizen, I often wonder how much value we are getting back from our military spending and what amount are we being bilked by the defense industry. I've heard all kinds of stories about the vast amounts of wasteful spending the contractors get away with in order to make their company a buck.
- pkaye 5y ago
  I don't know if things changed now but I was reading an article about when the the military funded the development of GPS and it was run on quite a tight budget with fierce competitions among competing groups. And it still funded some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists to work critical problems like how make a tiny atomic clock with low power to win in a satellite.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Spending money on new or better ways to kill each other instead of help each other is so sad. It's nationalism and egos that drive our planet apart instead of together. But what can the average person do?
AlwaysRock 5y ago
So it goes.
throw8383833jj 5y ago
And let's not forget there's a lot of defense spending hidden in other categories. For instance Veteran affairs has it's own category that isn't included under defense. dept of homeland security, dept of energy is mostly a front for defense, etc, the list goes on and on.
starwind 5y ago
Just to note that a lot of this is not actually weapons. A lot of robotic limbs and medical R&D is commissioned by the DoD and specifically DARPA. Maxar may sell imagery to the military to track Russia troop movements and the US Forest Service to monitor wildfires. DoD spends a lot of direct healthcare too
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
tomohawk 5y ago
To put this into perspective, the US spent $4.7T on social programs in 2021. https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend... Other categories were defense + veterans benefits (about $1T), general government (about $.25T) and interest on the debt (about $.35T)

156 points by georgecmu 5y ago

While the first graph does adjust for inflation (i.e., all years are in 2020 inflation-adjusted USD), it seems that it doesn't account for global wealth increase, i.e. while the absolute amount of money spent on war is greater than ever, so is our absolute wealth. I'm not an economist, but wouldn't it make sense to compare military spending over gdp, inflation-adjusted? Or put simpler: I'm sure there was a time in history where a relatively large amount of our total wealth was spent on war, because we generally didn't have much.

arcticbull 5y ago
Yes, like say, World War 1 and 2.
sbelskie 5y ago
This graph only goes back to 2000 but even on that timescale current military spending is lower than past peaks: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Well, 2009 was when the bulk of the impact from the financial crisis hit world GDP so the peak is mostly reflecting that GDP contracted while military spending was mainly flat. You can compare the percentage of GDP figure to this one showing military spending as percentage of all government spending, where it looks like we're spending less and less on weapons: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.ZS So while total dollar amount is maybe a coarse measure, the GDP or the fraction worldwide government spending are so contingent on the details of literally every other human activity as to unusable for quick observations.
  - stingraycharles 5y ago
    This is an excellent point! As someone who’s totally not a data scientist, what approach would you take to counter this? Assuming military budget planning has a window of a few years, would a moving average of GDP be an appropriate solution? Or am I thinking too simplistic?
    - KolenCh 5y ago
      Not directly addressing this, but perhaps the point is not to create a model to address every known limitations. No models are perfect. Points are made based on a model, and a limitation/assumption is pointed out. You need to judge given the assumption/limitation if the message made still some-what make sense. I mean something X being highest right now is a pretty clear statement, it is either true or false, if X is well defined. But then your problem is you want to have Z instead, which hopefully is accounted for every other effect except for the factor you want to measure, such as inflation, GDP, etc. But the more you add, you either makes your Z definition sensitive to these other factors you’re not interested in (such as a peak comes from the denominator, not the numerator), or we really admit we can’t calculate Z for sure, and is now a statistical model (any kind of smoothing including the MA you mentioned is to admit we don’t know the true state but can only observe it with noise.) Now the statement of “Z is highest now” is no longer a true or false statement, but a probabilistic one. Certainly then P(Z is highest) = 60% or so wouldn’t make much of a headline and can be confusing. So my point was rather than trying to create a perfect model (which you can’t, and what you learn from it won’t be clear as well), sometimes just deal with the statement and methodology and judge if it is a clickbait or has some merit of truth there.
zivkovicp 5y ago
I agree and think it would be more useful if it was expressed as a percentage of global GDP instead.
throwaway4good 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
dragontamer 5y ago
Does inflation matter? We are largely talking about bombs and bullets here. Yes, smarter and smarter bombs but bombs nonetheless. I feel like the proper comparison point is tons of explosives. And remember: every proximity fuse antiair bullet has a vacuum tube and mini-radar in it to run the proximity fuse logic (if close to enemy, then explode). Modern weapons are smarter than that, but WW2 era weapons were still quite smart.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Warfare is much more than explosives. It’s people, equipment, information, transportation, logistics, and a lot more.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Sure, but military spending isn't necessarily war-making. Case in point: the biggest expenditure of the US Military is... Healthcare, the Veteran's Affair's department. The next biggest expenditures are Research and Development (which includes DARPA-funded projects. Technically defense, but I don't think anyone would call the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge Darpa Network Challenge a "wargame") By just looking at military spending per department, you over-estimate the amount of money spent on warmaking. ------ So defense-spending is one metric (too much money allocated), and maybe "tons of explosives" is too little. USA didn't really have that many casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan (it wasn't like Vietnam or Korea where huge amounts of injured soldiers existed). As such, the VA-department is largely handling things like COVID19, diabetes, and other "typical" ailments. While technically "department of defense" funds, I don't think it really counts as "military expenditure", not in the way the article is discussing anyway.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kube-system 5y ago
      That’s kind of where I was going with “people”, but certainly there are many other larger costs than explosives. Labor is the largest expense for most organizations and the DoD is no exception. They are, after all, the worlds largest employer.
fasteddie31003 5y ago
Percent of GDP is a much better metric.
- airstrike 5y ago
  It is, but it doesn't make headlines...
- E4YomzYIN5YEBKe 5y ago
  Does the cost of defending a country increase linearly with GDP? Do linear increases in military spending result in a linear increase in security?
bannedbybros 5y ago
starwind 5y ago
In the post-WW2 era, military spending peaked in the 1980s, and it's been (mostly) declining ever since as a percentage of global gdp

bee_rider 5y ago

Apparently there was a slowdown in terms of real growth rate (which is to say, military budgets are still increasing but the rate of increase went down in real terms) (inflation).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

matt321 5y ago

This is just inflation

xyzzy4747 5y ago

This would be news if there was a constant money supply. Too bad it grows 5-20% per year.

newaccount2021 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

On intellectually interesting thing about the current NATO-Russia conflict is it suggests that the overarching strategy is to figure out whether the stove is hot by touching it. Obviously neither Russia nor the US see a diplomatic solution, but it is happening on Russia's border so at some point someone will escalate too far. And everyone is on edge and tetchy after the the COVID response. The current world superpower is run by people who are pretty sure that the answer to economic problems involves printing money. Obviously this'll end well. Energy use is also approaching a critical point. The experiments in Europe indicate that the closing of the fossil fuel age will be unpleasant. The electricity production figures out of the UK are jaw dropping, last I saw they seem to have regressed to 1970s levels. In this environment, it is easy to see why people are ramping up military training. If it wasn't for the fact that a serious war will be apocalyptic regardless of spending I imagine they'd be ramping up faster and more enthusiastically.

chinathrow 5y ago
> NATO-Russia conflict Can you explain your framing?
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I believe that is what it looks like from a Russian perspective.
  - WJW 5y ago
    To be fair, without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now. It's an open secret that NATO has been passing on intelligence from AWACS and spy satellites to the Ukrainian forces as well. There might be no NATO troops on the ground but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is purely Ukraine vs Russia.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now And without the navy Russia annexed [1], or it’s Soviet military kit, much of which was designed and built in Ukraine, Russia wouldn’t have much of a start. Ukraine repelled Putin’s forces on its own in the early days of the war, when Western intelligence was predicting another Kabul. That it later attracted sympathy is further testament to its diplomatic strength (and the Kremlin’s isolation). [1] https://tass.com/russia/724901 https://tass.com/russia/724901

BLO716 5y ago

Is this adjusted to inflation? I think the world was spending a lot of dough WWI to WWII.

kgermino 5y ago
It's in constant 2020 (US) Dollars
- refurb 5y ago
  Graph only goes back to 1990. Agree with OP, even during the Vietnam War spending was higher.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Actually not, absolute spending is at an all time high: : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-total?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-tota... Probably because the equipment is more expensive these days and soldiers get better benefits.
    - pkaye 5y ago
      Does this include the Afghanistan/Iraq wars for the US? I thought it would be bigger spike in the spending.

ggambetta 5y ago

Suddenly it feels so stupid that we're spending so much money (or any money at all) in breaking things and killing each other instead of making things. What a waste. We're all close neighbors in this isolated planet, bickering amongst ourselves. Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together? Although we're facing global threats right now (climate change, pandemics...) and we can't get our sh...tuff together, so I don't have much hope in that scenario either. Makes me think of Don't Look Up. Welp, I've made myself sad now.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
I've been complaining about this for 30 years (and protesting sometimes too). It feels hopeless, on some days I completely understand why some protestors immolate themselves... but younger generations have always made me feel a little better (I wish more of them would vote, but I understand why they don't).
- 0xdada 5y ago
  There have been 14 cases of (political) self-immolation in the 2020s so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations#2020s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolat...
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    yes, notably just last week in front of the US Supreme Court for climate change inaction... some Buddhists consider it a compassionate act
jotm 5y ago
That's what I thought right up until Russia invaded Ukraine. I couldn't believe it happened for 3 days. Nah, as long as there's humans around, you better be armed and trained. Vicious animals, you never know when they'll decide to rape then kill you.
- 5y ago

nanna 5y ago

SIPRI's top ten military spenders 2021, with help from Wikipedia [0] 1. USA: $801 billion 2. China: $293 billion 3. India: $76.6 billion 4. UK: $68.4 billion 5. Russia: $65.9 billion 6. France: $56.6 billion 7. Germany: $56.0 billion 8. Saudia Arabia: $55.6 billion 9. Japan: $54.1 billion 10. S. Korea: $50.2 billion [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
I think the real issue is an issue of priorities. You don't even have to compare the US to other countries but compare the US to ourselves. Approximately half of our total spending goes to our military budget[1], and we complain about spending on social programs and college funding, having people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-2022-budget-raises-military-spending-past-750-billion/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-202...
- umeshunni 5y ago
  Who is us?
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    Whoops... forgot caps. Was supposed to be the US. I'll fix it. I'm doing this while I get my caffeine ready =[
  - DaltonCoffee 5y ago
    We're #1 We're #1
- mrep 5y ago
  Half of Discretionary spending which does not include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
  - 5y ago

terran57 5y ago

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

gpt5 5y ago
This is a fallacy. A strong army can also create peace and stability, which in turn feed many more mouths than the opposite. At some point you’d have to agree that we also need to invest in creating order, or would you vote to remove the police, court, and the rule of the law (which is done by force).
- runnerup 5y ago
  I think the point is to spend the least necessary to achieve the stability required for the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.
  - jessriedel 5y ago
    That is certainly a reasonable goal, but it is not found in a straightforward reading of the Eisenhower quote. The words clearly suggest a 1-to-1 trade-off between military spending and intrinsically valuable things.
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      Lots of military action in modern times is worse than 1-to-1. Huge expense to destroy stability-enabling infrastructure, leaving the world a more dangerous place.
    - yifanl 5y ago
      You have to consider at least the minimal context of the Eisenhower quote, i.e. that it's _Eisenhower_'s quote, who in no uncertain terms could be considered anything close to a pacifist or idealist, he understands that military means are necessary.

sto_hristo 5y ago

And you can count on one hand the guys responsible for this right now. It's crazy to think that some guy with mental issues, just within a month or two, triggered a massive militarization.

bannedbybros 5y ago

azalemeth 5y ago

I really don't know what to think about this. Military spending makes me feel very conflicted inside. I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn't make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I've never punched someone in my life. I've always loved the look of fighter jets and the fact that humans can hop in and go faster than the speed of sound in them, but I've always hated their application. The engineering is amazing; the technology brilliant and the things that are discovered along the way undoubtedly serendipitous. Unfortunately, I know that for a human population to completely disarm is to invite trouble: and armies can and do far worse things than just beat you. I once went on a trip as a fresh-out-of-college person to a firm that made "kinetic armaments"; I went in with an open mind and left, three days later and with an (unaccepted) job offer, with a very shut one. That was a career pathway that was decidedly not for me. Eisenhower's famous quote sums it up quite well. > “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

cloutchaser 5y ago
Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years, every gun ever made that wasn't used to feed people - was also made so that my ancestors could defend themselves against some king or dictator who wanted to invade other countries. You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor. Violence is at the root of all human existence. To deny it is to live in a fantasy land. In the end violence is what rules, because if you are weak at some point someone stronger will rule over you. That doesn't mean a violent person will always rule, because 2 peaceful collaborators can usually take down a violent ruler, but it still means that at the root of it whoever can dominate the other in some way will win. And this isn't unique to humans of course, it's how it is in nature and most tribal animals.

alexk307 5y ago

Great news! We're all so much safer now, don't you feel it! /s

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

westcort 5y ago

My key takeaways: 1. Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion 2. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent. 3. As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021 4. ‘The US Government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the US military’s technological edge over strategic competitors.’ Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border 5. Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support 6. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 7. Germany—the third largest spender in Central and Western Europe—spent $56.0 billion on its military in 2021, or 1.3 per cent of its GDP 8. United States focuses on military research and development US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020 9. US funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period

cwkoss 5y ago
> Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border Kind of funny to think about how the Russian military budget is roughly 1.5 Twitters.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  And despite this still being so embarrassingly pathetic in real fighting

lossolo 5y ago

The only thing that supports current rule of law around the world is might of US military. If you cut spending of US military to 0 then tomorrow we would be living in a different world. Because structure of the whole world is anarchistic, there is no police that would enforce rule of law, there is no one you can call if other country invade you. Of course because of USD hegemony as world currency, supported by its military power US gets unfair advantage but I'd rather live peacefully in the so called west under US influence than under Russian or Chinese. Thinking that we can live in beautiful world in peace without wars and military is delusional and unrealistic. There was hope in 90s that we can bring liberal democracy to all countries around the world and there would be no more wars. We all see how it went on middle east. People thought that war is unrealistic before WWI then they were super optimistic and thought the same thing before WWII. Unfortunately history proves that world is running in cycles, latest cycle is coming to the end and as it was with Dutch empire and then British empire and before with other empires, new challenger emerges that is challenging status quo, this time it's China and US is on decline as world power. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time until the clash happens.

jessriedel 5y ago

> As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021. Indeed, this is continuing a long general trend of decreased military spending by both the US and the world since the end of WW2: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a-share-of-gdp?time=1951..2016&country=USA~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a... Major buildups like Vietnam and the Cold War were in fact only mild bumps: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190312-D-ZZ999-001.JPG https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190... 2.2% seems like a very bearable price, especially in light of ~3% annual real GDP growth. Wanting/expecting military spending to be much less than a percentage point of GDP doesn't make any more sense to me than wanting/expecting similar for other expenditures on law and order like police and courts. The better criticism of our current military order is that peace largely relies on the threat of nuclear annihilation, and each year we incur a small chance of this horrific outcome, which is not reflected in spending. Naively, I'd like to see more spending on conventional weaponry insofar as it is allows us to reduce strategic nuclear weapon counts and cut down the long tail of truly terrible scenarios.

causi 5y ago
Interesting. I draw the opposite conclusion. Seeing that nuclear weapons are the only realistic threat against the United States, I believe a majority of our military budget should be dedicated to the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems, be they based on kinetic interception, lasers, or even nuclear interceptors.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  Greater US investment in strategic nuclear weapons defense is compatible with everything I said above. Whether thats a good idea depends on what equilibrium it drives the world military order to. If you propose adjustments to US policy, you can't pretend that the world response is fixed. There are strong but not irrefutable arguments that strategic nuke defense spending by the US just induces the same by Russia/China, but puts us in a new nuke equilibrium with less stability than the current MAD situation. The relative stability of those two scenarios can not be figured out by you or me thinking in our armchairs. It depends sensitively on the technological and economic details.

scottLobster 5y ago

For those in this thread critical of military spending in general, please keep in mind that the following were/are directly or indirectly military projects 1. Global trade as we know it is possible because since WWII the US Navy has, by policy, secured the ocean for all participants in the global economy. Merchant ships generally don't need to run armed or with escorts because of this. Now we did it to produce an economic engine/alliance to fight the Soviets, but the effects on uplifting entire nations out of poverty and increasing global economic development cannot be denied. 2. The US Interstate highway system was a Cold War measure so we could move troops from coast to coast quickly if needed. Eisenhower himself was on the first coast-to-coast US Army expedition in 1919, which took 56 days and laid bare America's lacking infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_con... 3. European welfare states are indirectly subsidized by US security obligations and global trade (see point 1). If Europe had to secure their own shipping/take on Russia on their own, their military spending would have to increase an order of magnitude. 4. GPS 5. The moon landings 6. The early internet 7. Many early microprocessor designs 7. The Hubble space telescope was basically an inverted spy satellite 8. Satellite communications in general 9. Modern ship propulsion And the list goes on. Now granted there's TONS of wasted money in the military, and tons of corruption and death from needless wars, but let's just keep in mind that if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above. I know HN is pretty Silicon-Valley centric, and from everything I've heard about the valley people who work for defense contractors can still get called baby killers there in the right company, (what are we in 1973?). So I figured I'd put the alternate perspective out there: War is an ugly truth of human existence and will remain so as long as there is some combination of resource scarcity and assholes. Pacifism historically does not work long term unless the pacifists are defended by non-pacifists or have nothing of value worth taking. The world would be far less developed without modern military spending. In fact we wouldn't even be having this conversation without it. So let's take the pros with the cons.

goodpoint 5y ago
> if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above This is a huge logical fallacy. The US keeps playing a trick where socially useful R&D is budgeted under "military expenditure" because it's easier to justify and to privatize the benefits. Do you think in a more peaceful world people would be forced to dump research money into the ocean? If anything, the less money are spent for military projects the more can be spent on research.

vermontdevil 5y ago

My theory - similar with guns, the more we have the higher chances of it being used (guns and military). We need to have less of both, not more. But I know it won't happen. Not for a long time.

politician 5y ago

How much of this increase is due to inflation?

aaron695 5y ago

tiffanyh 5y ago

This isn't about weapons, it's about jobs. Keep in mind that a countries military is typically the largest employment organization in an entire country. More so than any private company. The US alone has an annual military budget of $801B [0] (for planes, tanks, etc AND salaries) but also employes 2.2M [1] people. If you assumed that all of the military spend went to salaries (and didn't go to tanks, planes, buildings, etc) that would be an avg salary of ~$350k/person. [0] this article [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>but also employes 2.2M [1] people And how is this beneficial to society, other than preparing/justifying wars, spending money on expensive weapons and equipment, and collecting salaries? If creating jobs is good enough, we'd better pay armies of environmentalists to finally bifurcate from our current catastrophic course.
- tiffanyh 5y ago
  Your comments are very politically charged and I'd rather avoid participating in such discourse. But I'll just say that I'm sure Ukraine right now is very appreciative of the help they have (and continue) to receive from the same parties you're dismissing.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    Military expenditure is nothing but political.
was_a_dev 5y ago
It would be really interesting to see a breakdown of military spending per employee. For the US, 2.2M employees equates to ~1.38% of the employed population [1]. For the UK, the military isn't the largest employer, the NHS is, which isn't surprising. The British Armed Forces employ 148K [2] people which is ~0.46% of the employed population [2]. Would be interesting to see the worldwide trends. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personnel-in-uk-armed-forces/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personn... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281998/employment-figures-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281998/employment-figure...

nickdothutton 5y ago

No prosperity without security.

parkingrift 5y ago

That’s almost half of what the United States spends on health expenditures. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-healthcare-spending-slowed-in-2021-after-covid-19-surge-11648497601 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-healthcare-spending-slowed-...

aroundtown 5y ago

As a US citizen, I often wonder how much value we are getting back from our military spending and what amount are we being bilked by the defense industry. I've heard all kinds of stories about the vast amounts of wasteful spending the contractors get away with in order to make their company a buck.

pkaye 5y ago
I don't know if things changed now but I was reading an article about when the the military funded the development of GPS and it was run on quite a tight budget with fierce competitions among competing groups. And it still funded some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists to work critical problems like how make a tiny atomic clock with low power to win in a satellite.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Spending money on new or better ways to kill each other instead of help each other is so sad. It's nationalism and egos that drive our planet apart instead of together. But what can the average person do?

AlwaysRock 5y ago

So it goes.

throw8383833jj 5y ago

And let's not forget there's a lot of defense spending hidden in other categories. For instance Veteran affairs has it's own category that isn't included under defense. dept of homeland security, dept of energy is mostly a front for defense, etc, the list goes on and on.

starwind 5y ago

Just to note that a lot of this is not actually weapons. A lot of robotic limbs and medical R&D is commissioned by the DoD and specifically DARPA. Maxar may sell imagery to the military to track Russia troop movements and the US Forest Service to monitor wildfires. DoD spends a lot of direct healthcare too

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

tomohawk 5y ago

To put this into perspective, the US spent $4.7T on social programs in 2021. https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend... Other categories were defense + veterans benefits (about $1T), general government (about $.25T) and interest on the debt (about $.35T)