China's population is 4.2x larger than the US. If they concentrate in developing their own country and creating an internal market, they'll do well. Meanwhile,

China's population is 4.2x larger than the US. If they concentrate in developing their own country and creating an internal market, they'll do well. Meanwhile, US development strategy post-WW has been 100% based on projecting military [1], political [2] and economic [3] power on a global scale. So war isn't just "spending", but trading off investment on your own country vs. extracting value from somewhere else. That's how you get large defense funding but not public health care. [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-known-u-s-military-base-overseas/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-known-u-s-mili... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system