If Every Nation Spent as Much as the US Does on "Defense"...

[rucky]

What would the world be like?


Discuss.

[Psephos]

1. broke n/t

[rucky]

2. Okay, let's make it proportional to their GDPs.

50% of the discretionary budget

[havocmom]

4. Hungry, undereducated, watching infrastructure crumble,

looking for health care...

[rucky]

5. hey, that sounds familiar. n/t

[havocmom]

10. yes indeed

TV on in other room. One of those Ra-Ra weapons shows. Amazing things they are spending billions and billions on. Pretty much all for conventional warfare. Who are we gonna fight in a conventional war anymore? Nobody can stand up to us in that sort of engagement, so nobody will be that stupid.

Meanwhile, a mostly untrained population armed mainly with small arms and improvised munitions, is holding its own against the greatest military force outside of China.

What are we getting for all the billions and billions taken away from meeting human needs?

On that note, I am calling it a night. Too damned depressing to go further this evening.

[Psephos]

12. Heh heh, sorry, I was being flip

Meanwhile, you're right, defense is about half of the US discretionary budget.

I think percentage of GDP is a better measure of national commitment to defense. The US has averaged around 4 or 5 percent for a long time (i.e., the past thirty years). It was a higher percentage before that. Current expenditures (outside of special appropriations for war) are in the middle of the 30-year trendline.

Some poorer countries with a militaristic national agenda spend a higher percentage of their GDP on defense (the old USSR was a classic example, at something like 15% or even more - and look what it got them). The social Western democracies spend considerably less.

The entire world expenditure for defense is about $1 trillion annually, which works out to about 2.5% of world GDP. The 15 countries with the highest spending account for 84 per cent of the total. US is responsible for 48 per cent of the world total, followed by UK, France, Japan and China with 4–5 percent each. India and China are, in relative terms, growing more rapidly in their outlays than other countries.

Interesting factoid: US defense outlays are almost 30 times greater than the combined outlays of the six "rogue" states (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela). BTW, that's not my rogue list. ;-)

Here are the raw historical figures for the US:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf

[Sherman A1]

14. Agreed

:toast:

[HowHasItComeToThis]

3. GOTTA KEEP THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL SHILLS GOING

THEY ARE THE TRUE THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY

[Selatius]

6. The entire world would be locked into military alliances and arms races.

All the powers of the world would grow fearful of each other's massive armies and tremendous firepower. Such an environment would lead to nothing but war in the end, and the innocent will die along with everyone else. The entire world would look like Europe in the last years before the First World War erupted.

[kas125]

7. I still don't see how they can defend all that defense spending when -

we have been at "war" for going on five years with a country who has no real weapons. They have no army, navy, ships, bomber jets, nukes, tanks, helicopters... We spend trillions on that shit and for what??

[Selatius]

8. At this point, it's simply easier to argue for the sake of maintaining military domination worldwide

Many in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill are perfectly fine with the notion of maintaining this kind of military spending for the sake of maintaining a military advantage over the entire world.

[rucky]

11. two words: Defense Contracts

it's a racket.

welcome to the DU

[sandnsea]

9. We spend so other countries don't have to

WE give them all weapons in the name of aid for fighting evildoers. If every country had the full responsibility for their militaries, we'd have more money. What would the world look like? Well if we stopped pouring weapons into these other countries and they had to decide where to spend their own money, maybe they'd decide to spend it on schools, housing and health.

[T Wolf]

13. unpopulated nt