@codinghorror It's difficult to compare spending between countries. My understanding is that the US tends to file more expenses under defence budget than other countries (e.g.FEMA is part of US defence budget, but THW in Germany is not). US military also tends to supports private companies more: both Boeing and Airbus get state money, but in the EU it's not the defence budget.
Overall, it could be a combination: the US does spend a lot on military; but it also counts expenses that others don't.
@codinghorror It's not that bonkers when you realize that wars often happen because one or both sides believe they can achieve an overwhelming, easy victory.
Usually at least one side is wrong, often all sides are wrong (see August, 1914). One way to avoid this is to create a military policy where there is simply no possible mechanism for military victory over the USA under any circumstances.
Counterintuitively, this is how the world's most isolationist empire keeps the peace
@codinghorror Nonsense comparison, because of the concept of purchasing power parity. The same amount of stuff, including people's time, costs more in the US than in poorer countries. Ridiculous that many otherwise smart people take that kind of comparison seriously.
@codinghorror you really need to look at the numbers using the Big Mac index. That better represents the buying power of dollars in the respective areas.
@codinghorror And here's a mind blower: It's dwarfed by what we spend on Healthcare. We should have the best healthcare in the world where any citizen can walk in for free point-of-service care for what we put into healthcare... and yet people are dying because of inability to pay. But it's the biggest chunk of our budget. #latestagecapitalism
@codinghorror When I see things like this I wonder how much money some of the other countries, such as China for example, would have spent for the RDT&E and production of the same defense systems, maintenance, and infrastructure (I'm excluding other costs of military operations here including personnel related costs). But the point is, in the profit-oriented U.S. defense industrial base, I assume we pay at least 10 to 100 times as much $ for a given system compared to another country.
@codinghorror@glennf Remember this image if you ever wonder why public higher education in the US costs so much. Republicans won’t defund the police or the military but they are happy to systematically defund public education.
@codinghorror but if you stop pumping money into arms manufacturers then the national pastime of shooting school kids with AR-15 assault rifles may be affected
@codinghorror also this is from 2021, way before Russia invaded Ukraine, which was wake up call for European countries (and to some extent the rest of the world) that Fukuyama's "End of History" was BS, shooting wars can and will still happen. So most of Western Europe is re-arming themselves again, after they almost completely disarmed themselves in the wake of USSR's collapse. UK almost doubled their defense spend in last couple of years. Eastern Europe never stopped considering Russia a clear and present danger, but now they're really freaked. Poland boosted its already high spending even more and went of armor shopping spree. Baltic states have tripled their spending.
On the other side of the world, Japan +27% budget increase YoY, +50% one time rearmament boost.
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