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>give away our tax dollars to the military-industrial complex to go get the oil Two problems with that line of thinking: 1) US is a net exporter of oil, so wh
by kspacewalk2 2y ago
>give away our tax dollars to the military-industrial complex to go get the oil
Two problems with that line of thinking:
1) US is a net exporter of oil, so why engage in dastardly invasions to get it from elsewhere?
2) Talk of military industrial complex is often backed u by how much the US spends on defence. However, absolute dollar amounts are a really dumb way to compare defence budgets. They ignore country sizes, GDP sizes and purchasing power. Now, if you compare defence spending per person as a percentage of GDP, accounting for purchasing power parity, you get a much less flawed way to compare between countries. In other words, it's not enough to compare $100 of spending between US and Russia, for example, without accounting for the difference between what $100 buys in the US vs Russia, and how much of a person's annual output that $100 amounts to. US cracks the top 10 on that metric BTW, but just about.
- _heimdall 2y agoIf you want to go into that level of detail to compare relative military spending, there are going to be other factors to consider. Its a huge rabit hole trying to normalize data between countries with entirely different currencies, economics, political structures, etc. For example, the US has the benefit of printing money in ways that other countries don't. I'm not even sure how you'd adjust military spending to account for the benefit of printing fiat as the world reserve currency, its more like you're playing a game that no other country is allowed to play.