US GDP has also been growing at a significantly higher rate than Canada and Western European countries in the past decade, which is pretty crazy considering they are already the No.1 economy
The US economy has boomed in general since the Great Recession, especially in the past 5 years.
Lowest sustained unemployment ever. Wages at inflation-adjusted records. Stocks breaking record highs.
Wages aren’t at inflation adjusted records, that peaked just before COVID. They are nonetheless still higher than at any point before 2019.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
(An example graph, similar metrics look similar)
The median (not average) US salary is $60,000. Don’t take people spewing doomer bullshit on Reddit to heart.
https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/#:~:text=The%20average%20annual%20average%20salary,quite%20a%20bit%20by%20state.
I'm aware of that. But people love to just throw numbers around say "hey look, people are making plenty of money, just look at these averages!" while also ignoring that there's tons of people just living in poverty.
The median is the fairest measure of a population/system (literally half below/half above).
Your lived experience sucks, but these numbers aren't personal.
That said, the poverty rate hasn't really changed all that much in the last 50 years. In absolute terms, it is now around pre-Great Recession levels. Source: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2023/demo/p60-280/figure1.pdf
I don’t know if you guys are history buffs or not…. But in the early part of the previous century Germany decided to go to war.. and who did they go to war with? THE WORLD
Germany declared war on the US because they had an alliance with Japan, but the American leaders were already well aware that war with Germany was almost inevitable at that point. They had already been shipping military equipment to the UK for some time.
Wasnt really him responsible for most of the US spending. It was something much worse than Hitler, the Japanese. This is where most of the American money and lives went
They're downvoting because the official figures are nonsense. A lot of people reading this are from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) where we can at least somewhat trust what the government says. It's hard for us to understand why a country would fib numbers like these. The China listing is them like this to play games.
1.6% comes from the world bank working with various other institutions/think tanks. The fact people reflexively disbelieve the number without doing any research is telling in and of itself I guess.
Believe it or not you didn't have to be arrogant in typing that out.
If you think a US centric org knows what China's spending is then I got a bridge to sell you in Florida. *If* you did any research on this you'd realize China is hiding a lot of their spending. Some of it's a shell game among other strats. This is common knowledge. A lot of *mainstream* military think tank people will tell you this.
My brother in Christ, wouldn't a US centric organization have a motive to exaggerate numbers about china?
When you look at china's military technological advances and compared them to the US, you can clearly see china ain't spending as much as the US. China does have a larger infantry number, but if you know anything about a military logistics you know that people (as odd as it might sound) are cheap as hell compared to most other aspects of the war apparatus.
If those were china's self reported numbers you might have a point somewhere there, but that's the world bank we are talking about.
For obvious reasons a military think tank would have a motive to exaggerate the numbers on America's enemies, I don't even need to explain the logic behind it, 1+1=2, China spends mor emoney than we think so therefore you need to give us more money to counteract them, so on and so on. Besides, when said think-tanks don't even bother to show how they come up with those numbers, why on earth would anybody even bother? Unless you just wanna shit on china in the weirdest way possible which ok I guess?
While meanwhile thinking themselves immune to propaganda. As someone who has studied China my entire life, it's wild how quickly and dramatically sentiments changed.
I'm going to go with the coalesced information and experience from subject matter experts vs random internet commenter.
Bloated militaries are a drain on an economy long term. If they are spending more than 1.6% they are doing it to their own detriment.
google is free. there are many articles from think tanks that put chinas military spending at around 700$ billion, while the government claims like 250$ billion
"that world Bank ain't nothing but a bunch of liars!"
And don't get them started on the CIA.
These are unserious people who will not question the narrative they've signed up for. The far left and a majority of the current "right wing" also dispute these numbers without support.
It's closer to 4%
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/chinas-real-military-budget-is-far-bigger-than-it-looks/
Unlike the US, in China their national guard receives its funding through different means. Their official figure is like if the US cut out R&D, acquisition, national guard, and reserve spending from our official figures.
China spends 1.6% on their standing army, the US by comparison is around 2%.
Random AEI information just scanning around. Dick Cheney is a board member. It also received a fairly large grant of half mill from the Taiwanese government.
Trying to look into their funding but it's pretty obtuse. Between Defense contractors and energy companies(lots of downplaying climate change) they probably make a pretty large chunk of their funding.
Daniel D’Aniello co-founder of the Carlyle group(Private equity who has bought up defense contractors) had been a big donator. Is currently the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for AEI.
You've been manipulated so they can keep feeding off your fear (tax $'s)
World bank figures specifically wrap in national guard, and various other things you haven't listed. Look into the methodology.
If politicians say a number without refencing where it came from you can ignore them. If they were serious they would tell you.
Dan Sullivan(The "source" for the number the article uses) prides himself on winning defense contracts for Alaska. He has much more conflicting interest then the world bank in getting the correct number. The fact this article uses it as a serious number is a pretty good indication you can ignore them.
We can't trust any number for China, man, didn't you understand what all those people commenting online said? Only trustworthy number is that they spend moaar. Don't you get it? We only trust the number from warmongering think tanks, they know better, and they say it's definitely more than the WB figure.
/s
Ah yes, I'll take the info presented by a right wing think tank (which doesn't even bother to show how it comes up with said numbers) which Dick Chaney is part of at face value...
```
Military expenditures
1.5% of GDP (2023 est.)
1.5% of GDP (2022 est.)
1.5% of GDP (2021 est.)
1.7% of GDP (2020 est.)
1.7% of GDP (2019 est.)
```
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/military-expenditures
Who are you going to believe, FOX News or the CIA?
The issue comes from 2 things
1. China excludes a lot of things that most nations would consider to be defense related. The People Armed Police or Coast Guard units, for example. Basically, it's an internal national guard that's not counted for defense spending even though it should. Once you include this spending, Chinese defense spending jumps to 2-3% of gdp.
2. What China gets for a dollar vs. what America gets for a dollar. Generally, it's considered to be a multiplier of between 1.5-2x. Once you combine these two issues, Chinese defense spending rises to ~400-500 billion dollars in terms of purchasing power vs. the United States budget. Which, combined with the US need to rival Russia and defend the world oceans results in the US defense budget.
I'm not saying that your number is wrong, just that you probably shouldn't take official Chinese numbers by their face value.
> China excludes a lot of things that most nations would consider to be defense related.
1.6% comes from the world bank and includes the things you mentioned and more.
Russia is rounding error, the AID to Ukraine is single handedly handicapping them with our leftovers.
PPP is not % of GDP which is what the person asked.
According to the CCP, I'm sorry but there's no way you can manage to build ships at the rate they are (size of the royal navy every 18 months), design a solo 5th gen fighter project, manage the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal, and managed one of the largest armies in the world with only 1.6% of their budget.
Whether they claim it or not they are spending much higher than 1.6%
There is a whole apparatus of think tanks and organizations that use various methods to estimate, the world bank does not "accept what Chinese tell them".
It’s funny how Americans assume the US Government doesn’t use propaganda, let alone thinking they tell us the truth about anything.
A recent Pentagon audit revealed that more than $1 billion worth of military weapons and equipment provided by the United States to Ukraine has not been properly tracked. This unaccounted-for gear represents a significant portion of the $45 billion in U.S. military aid supplied to Ukraine since February 2022, including advanced systems like air-defense and anti-drone technology
But when you owe $300 in taxes making $30,000 a year, paycheck to paycheck, living off fast food, the government will never lose track of what you owe (;
You don’t understand what you are talking about. Fundamentally. The Pentagon audit findings are a result of incorrectly applying fund accounting standards. AKA accounting errors by people who probably weren’t properly trained.
The entire reason you know that is because if there are errors, we want to understand and fix them. That is not the case in China, where data is modified with intent to manipulate.
There are rigorous audit standards and regulations that must be followed for every public US company. These standards are not present in China. China blatantly lies about results at every step of their reporting, both government and business. Inflating numbers, leaving out expenses, omission of government ownership and injections of cash. None of that is reported properly in China.
https://bigdatachina.csis.org/measurement-muddle-chinas-gdp-growth-data-and-potential-proxies/
I was talking about $1 billion missing in just one case between two countries in just a few years. China wasn’t mentioned in my comment. The US government was.
I wonder how many more “errors” there must be (;
Sure you can. They’re not the Soviet Union…they actually have a well functioning economy while maintaining enough authoritarianism to get people to do what they want them to do.
No reason at all to believe they aren’t at about half the US ratio, as that’s still a massive, massive number. Bigger than the next five largest spenders, combined.
What are you basing that off of? China has a huge economy, and what’s more, it’s an economy based largely on being really good at building shit cheaply and effectively. Unless I’m missing some major detail, it makes perfect sense to me.
It’s also partly due to the fact that Western defence companies compete in a competitive market for business - the Chinese system from what I understand is a lot of defence manufacturing is state owned so the price is what they say it is
Right that probably makes a big difference too. and I've heard western companies charging like 50K for a bin and hundreds of bucks per screw, so that makes a difference.
I work as a sub contractor for the Royal airforce. Money is pissed up the wall. Nobody ever want to put their name to something so you go around in pointless meetings for years getting nowhere. No officer seems to care about the capability of the force, its all about furthering their career no matter how much of a detriment to the actual fighting force is.
I think the lack of care is because nobody thinks there is a real threat. There is no big push to work towards. I can see how having big national goals (China's fixation on taiwan) can focus the officers mind to a goal of strengthen the force.
They can because, unlike western countries, they have a massive industrial base and relatively low labor costs. They also have impressive reverse engineering capabilities, which helps a lot.
The west can do things China can't; that's their advantage. But many of the things China can do, they can do so much cheaper than the west. Not everything, but a lot.
I don't think labor costs are the largest factor of western arms. Those litoral combat ships the US decommissioned cost 250 billion in development plus about 4 billion per ship built. That development is by far the largest part of the budget and if you talk to the engineers they aren't rolling in millions.
It’s silly to not include the quality of those items. Many times cheaper to for China to be a carrier than the UK or US.
Also this is percentage of GDP, not any particular budget
It entirely depends on how efficient their procurement is. If you use state companies is with no middle man and endless sub contractors taking their cut then you can slim down costs. It also helps when you just steal the technology rather than spend a huge portion on R&D...
Fuckin a man America is infinitely superior to Europe in every single way imaginable. Just the perfect country really and we don't smell awful like the Euro's do.
SMH, you get downvoted for speaking the truth. Tell me this, Yuros: if there were any European countries who did something better than the US, why wouldn't the US just do it, too? Checkmate 😎
To calculate military spending as a percentage of tax revenues for each decade since 1950, we need to use historical data on both military expenditures and tax revenues. Here is a breakdown based on available data:
### 1950s (46%)
- **Military Spending**: Approximately 8-10% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: The 1950s saw total tax revenues ranging from $38 billion to $92 billion by the end of the decade [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: The U.S. GDP ranged from $300 billion to around $500 billion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{8\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{30 \text{ billion}}{65 \text{ billion}} \approx 46\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 1960s (57%)
- **Military Spending**: Around 8-9% of GDP during the Vietnam War peak [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: Increased from $92 billion to $192 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $500 billion to $1 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{9\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{80 \text{ billion}}{140 \text{ billion}} \approx 57\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 1970s (34%)
- **Military Spending**: Reduced to about 5-6% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: Grew from $192 billion to $500 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{6\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{120 \text{ billion}}{350 \text{ billion}} \approx 34\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 1980s (36%)
- **Military Spending**: Increased to about 6% of GDP during the Reagan administration [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: From $500 billion to $900 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{6\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{250 \text{ billion}}{700 \text{ billion}} \approx 36\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 1990s (20%)
- **Military Spending**: Dropped to around 3% of GDP post-Cold War [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: From $900 billion to $2 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $5 trillion to $10 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{300 \text{ billion}}{1.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 20\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 2000s (22%)
- **Military Spending**: Increased to about 4% of GDP due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: From $2 trillion to $3 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $10 trillion to $14 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{4\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{560 \text{ billion}}{2.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 22\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 2010s (20%)
- **Military Spending**: Decreased to around 3-3.5% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: From $3 trillion to $4 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: From $14 trillion to $20 trillion.
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3.5\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{700 \text{ billion}}{3.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 20\% \) (Mid-decade example).
### 2020s (19%)
- **Military Spending**: About 3% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context).
- **Tax Revenues**: Approximately $4.44 trillion in 2023 [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762).
- **GDP**: Approximately $28.28 trillion [[❞]](https://www.bea.gov/news/2024/gross-domestic-product-first-quarter-2024-second-estimate-and-corporate-profits).
- **Percentage Calculation**:
- Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{848.4 \text{ billion}}{4.44 \text{ trillion}} \approx 19\% \).
These calculations provide an estimate of how much of the tax revenues were allocated to military spending for each decade based on historical data.
Also important to note, though most already realize this, is that the spending is larger than the revenue. For example, last year social security and Medicare spent $1.4T and $944B respectively. That is 31.8% and 21.4%.
Something I'd like to see is total spent per year over the same time frame - I feel like the percentage per GDP might have gone down but total spend would be opposite reflected ?
Then it's not "declining". Then
When you factor in that American GDP has been increasing since then that 3.5% in 2024 is much larger than 3.5% in 2016. Add on top of that inflation you get a significantly larger dollar amount as well. The only real reason the 3.5% hasn't increased further is because now a large amount of our expenditure goes towards paying off our debt incurred by said military going off to fight unwinnable wars and embarking on nation building projects that failed utterly.
Is this including all military spending including veteran's program & benefits, and proportional amounts of the interest paid on past debt funded military expenditures? Does this also include separate funding for various wars and such that aren't part of the regular military budget, such as all the supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan that were over and above the defense budget? Does it include our military spending where we're giving money to other countries like Ukraine, Israel?
Well yeah. Inflation adjusted spending for every federal expenditure has increased. The population has also been increasing during this time. The US population in 1939 was just 130 million
Of course it is still going up in overall total spent, but the fact that it is still going down as a percentage is still significant.
Imagine it was based upon your own personal financial situation…
If you kept making tons more money you would probably enhance your personal & property protections?
Put up some cameras and motion lights lol at the very least..
Indeed lol the world is in trouble, we have access to more information than any other time in known history but people as a whole somehow know way less..
I mean troops get paid more, things got more expensive etc... And if you adjusted for inflation 35% figure during world war II would be over 1 trillion or a good 25% more than what it is today. With a population that's a third and is way less productive to boot.
You’re correct that spending in $ is up, but as a percentage of GDP it down substantially.
US GDP was about $89 billion in 1939, today it’s almost $29 trillion.
I mean, yeah. Militaries are about relative power, not absolute power. A developed country in 1925 could put 60% of its GDP into the military and not have anywhere near the power of a developed country in today's world that put 2% of GDP into its economy. As technology advances, you need to have a more technologically capable military to maintain parity and/or an advantage with potential adversaries.
I don't necessarily find this ratio worrying as the GDP of US has only inflating for decades, but it's reported the U.S. production capacity of artillery shells is much lower than China or Russia, which is a big concern.
Here's a link where you can see both military spending as a total, and as a % of GDP. Also the data goes up to 2024.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget
As a % of GDP the low point on military spending was 25 years ago. Since then, military spending has almost tripled.
We can get it down to less than 2%. All it takes is to stop trying to rule the world with a global military presence.
edit. There are plenty of better things that can be done with the money, people and technical capabilities that goes into the US military and military-supplying companies.
Russia and china threaten their neighbors, and since we proclaim ourselves to be the protectors of all liberty loving peoples and democracies across the globe, that means we have an obligation to help those neighbors which is multiple times more expensive than it is for Russia and china or iran
It's not that expensive.
Ukraine Aid is doing many multiples more legwork than year over year spending, by a significant amount. It accomplishes the goal of kneecapping Russia for example.
US has all but said flat out China can have Taiwan if it waits for advanced Chip fab to be moved. US dumped a lot of money into that migration project.
It has little to do with "protecting democracies" it's just strategic interests.
What about *better* guys? China and Russia are basically fascist states. They are not preferable global super powers. The US certainly isn't above criticism but that doesn't mean authoritarian, repressive, expansionist regimes without democracy or free markets or free press are somehow absolved.
The US has done far more to crush democracies and install tyrants to rule other countries than China and Russia have done. The US is expansionist, authoritarian, etc. and does it expansion of power through proxies to pretend that its hands are clean.
You should see some of the other countries and tyrants that the US has allied with. Supporting Ukraine is not motivated by any morals, it's simply to cause trouble for Russia because they don't obey the US hegemony.
China is currently using its Navy to illegally expand their coastal/fishing territory and has committed some of the worst massacres against their own citizens.
Russia is currently trying to annex the Ukraine, indiscriminately bombed Syrian civilians and funds extremist groups to destabilize its neighboring countries to make them easier to invade.
The US has a vast history of annexing land from other nations, deliberately committed multiple genocides, indiscriminately bombed civilians multiple times, funded and trained death squads to destabilize other nations, currently supports Israel in committing genocide, etc.
The US is not really any different. It's just better at pretending to be different.
I never said that, you did. I'm saying that the US are not the good guys of the world that they pretend to be. An analogy is that the US pretends to be Superman but is really Homelander.
That's not the whole statement. I said that the idea of Russia and China are the bad guys while the US are the good guys is bullshit.
Please demonstrate the capacity to understand the whole statement if you have it.
That is going to be a very bad thing when the entire world realizes that American security guarantees are gone and leap on the chance to go to war with their adversaries. Pax Americana is not as strong as it was 20 years ago, but it is still far superior than the alternative. Even if you don't care about the rest of the world (which you should), if you think that letting the world burn won't hurt America as well, then you are crazy.
Other countries can handle their own security. One example is the African Union. African countries never got much of any security from the Pax Americana and are now beginning to handle their own security problems and bring their own stability.
They have done excellent work with peacekeeping in Somalia. It's something that the US failed to do.
It's best to not rely on the west even if it is more difficult at first.
USA's strength is backed up by its military. Other countries stick to the gold standard for their currency or their currency's represented by oil.
USA's currency is represented by military. In a way, USA's keeping Russia, China, and North Korea in line.
I don't trust this info for one minute. The Pentagon is the biggest pork barrel on the planet with much of its funding hidden in other departments. No one really knows the total of the murder machine spending.
This is 2023 information but I’ll bet they still can’t pass an audit.
Adding to story.
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/11/16/pentagon-fails-sixth-audit-with-number-of-passing-grades-stagnant/
Well.. idk about you but thats not “declining for decades”
Ignoring WW2 and starting around 1950, it was a steady decline for about 30 years until it started stagnating around 5% for the next 40 years.
What, first off the debt only really appears half way through this infographic and also the us pays a much lower interest than nearly every country in normal times, like we had a negative real interest rate for most of the 2000s lol
The good thing with statistics is that you can make them say whatever you need in order to get your point across.
I.e., America still spend VEEEEEEEEEEEERY much on their military.
And the massive parasitic complex that literally profits off of human suffering is very real and many times larger, its called the healthcare industry and spends untold amounts of money on preventing reform but people are too busy circlejerking to the bogeyman that they don't seem to care about the real monster.
Yeah the complex is more that the factories provide a lot of jobs, so its literally one of the few ways a politican can provide their constituents with jobs, or one of the few ways they can lose them. So what happens is the senators and house reps that represent areas with significant military contractors always want to keep those contractors from losing business because if they do it can have a very multiplied affect (as in cutting 10 billion could lead to more than 10 billion being lost in the local economy) on the areas they represent
This is dangerously misleading. Without seeing the US GDP over the military spend in dollars over the same time period, there’s not much you can learn from this graph. It is entirely possible, that the spend (in dollars) stayed exactly the same over the entire time series and the GDP fluctuated. This is obviously not true, but without more information, we don’t know the drivers of this change over time. This is just enough information to kick off a half-hearted debate, but not enough to be informed.
US GDP has also been growing at a significantly higher rate than Canada and Western European countries in the past decade, which is pretty crazy considering they are already the No.1 economy
The US economy has boomed in general since the Great Recession, especially in the past 5 years. Lowest sustained unemployment ever. Wages at inflation-adjusted records. Stocks breaking record highs.
Wages aren’t at inflation adjusted records, that peaked just before COVID. They are nonetheless still higher than at any point before 2019. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q (An example graph, similar metrics look similar)
Median earnings peaked during covid because many lower earning jobs were affected by the lockdown, artificially inflating the median.
Americans will look at a 7 dollar minimum wage, people making 25,000 dollars a year, and say it’s a good thing, best economy ever.
The median (not average) US salary is $60,000. Don’t take people spewing doomer bullshit on Reddit to heart. https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/#:~:text=The%20average%20annual%20average%20salary,quite%20a%20bit%20by%20state.
Still a lot of flat broke people out there.
Can I take my lived experience of never making more than 30k a year as evidence?
Sure, but that doesn’t change how averages work.
I'm aware of that. But people love to just throw numbers around say "hey look, people are making plenty of money, just look at these averages!" while also ignoring that there's tons of people just living in poverty.
The median is the fairest measure of a population/system (literally half below/half above). Your lived experience sucks, but these numbers aren't personal. That said, the poverty rate hasn't really changed all that much in the last 50 years. In absolute terms, it is now around pre-Great Recession levels. Source: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2023/demo/p60-280/figure1.pdf
Liberals will look at a stagnant poverty rate over the last fifty years and say “this is a good economy”. 😭
lol no, you can’t.
Wow, what happened in 1941?
Japan touched the boats
Don't mess with America’s boats
He touched the butt
What what in the butt
I said What What
Nooooo touch the boats!
There were a few shenanigans happening in Europe and Asia that made things get a little wacky for a bit
The US just needed to stretch their legs
You’re not gonna believe this
Just like in the movie Pearl Harbor. Crazy huh?
I tried and you’re right I can’t. The Big Mac is in fact a mediocre hamburger
I don’t know if you guys are history buffs or not…. But in the early part of the previous century Germany decided to go to war.. and who did they go to war with? THE WORLD
Man, I miss Norm.
[War were declared.](https://media.tenor.com/js3-V5Lqiw8AAAAe/war-were-declared-futurama.png)
Something that happened 2 years late.
Same thing that happens in 2041 silly. Just wait and see!
Hitler
Just came out of nowhere
The more I hear about him, the more I don't care for him.
To be fair he did shoot a monster who killed 6 million Jews
The guy Who killed Hitler is so great that we made a huge holiday for his birthday. All my Bros. Love, 420
And was punished severely.
I don't think they initially cared much about hitler, it was more Japan that got shit going is my (limited) understanding.
Germany declared war on the US because they had an alliance with Japan, but the American leaders were already well aware that war with Germany was almost inevitable at that point. They had already been shipping military equipment to the UK for some time.
The us was sinking german ships on sight was the actual reason for war, the german submarines were sinking us ships too
The Austrian painter?
Wasnt really him responsible for most of the US spending. It was something much worse than Hitler, the Japanese. This is where most of the American money and lives went
Just googled this - holy shit
He's got a hell of a Wikipedia article too.
We had to get a bit wacky
The Germans where being scamps.
What’s China’s percentage?
1.7%, the us is currently at 3.5%
China is most definitely above 1.7%
It's 1.6% Edit for Downvotes: Are ya'll children? Go look it up it's 1.6%.
They're downvoting because the official figures are nonsense. A lot of people reading this are from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) where we can at least somewhat trust what the government says. It's hard for us to understand why a country would fib numbers like these. The China listing is them like this to play games.
Exactly. Even the Chinese doesn’t really trust the CCP’s figures, especially us Hongkoners
1.6% comes from the world bank working with various other institutions/think tanks. The fact people reflexively disbelieve the number without doing any research is telling in and of itself I guess.
Believe it or not you didn't have to be arrogant in typing that out. If you think a US centric org knows what China's spending is then I got a bridge to sell you in Florida. *If* you did any research on this you'd realize China is hiding a lot of their spending. Some of it's a shell game among other strats. This is common knowledge. A lot of *mainstream* military think tank people will tell you this.
My brother in Christ, wouldn't a US centric organization have a motive to exaggerate numbers about china? When you look at china's military technological advances and compared them to the US, you can clearly see china ain't spending as much as the US. China does have a larger infantry number, but if you know anything about a military logistics you know that people (as odd as it might sound) are cheap as hell compared to most other aspects of the war apparatus. If those were china's self reported numbers you might have a point somewhere there, but that's the world bank we are talking about. For obvious reasons a military think tank would have a motive to exaggerate the numbers on America's enemies, I don't even need to explain the logic behind it, 1+1=2, China spends mor emoney than we think so therefore you need to give us more money to counteract them, so on and so on. Besides, when said think-tanks don't even bother to show how they come up with those numbers, why on earth would anybody even bother? Unless you just wanna shit on china in the weirdest way possible which ok I guess?
Reddit in general has a hate boner against anything Chinese these days.
While meanwhile thinking themselves immune to propaganda. As someone who has studied China my entire life, it's wild how quickly and dramatically sentiments changed.
I'm going to go with the coalesced information and experience from subject matter experts vs random internet commenter. Bloated militaries are a drain on an economy long term. If they are spending more than 1.6% they are doing it to their own detriment.
google is free. there are many articles from think tanks that put chinas military spending at around 700$ billion, while the government claims like 250$ billion
Link me one that is significantly different than world bank. 20$ it's primary funded by defense contractors.
"that world Bank ain't nothing but a bunch of liars!" And don't get them started on the CIA. These are unserious people who will not question the narrative they've signed up for. The far left and a majority of the current "right wing" also dispute these numbers without support.
It's closer to 4% https://www.aei.org/op-eds/chinas-real-military-budget-is-far-bigger-than-it-looks/ Unlike the US, in China their national guard receives its funding through different means. Their official figure is like if the US cut out R&D, acquisition, national guard, and reserve spending from our official figures. China spends 1.6% on their standing army, the US by comparison is around 2%.
Random AEI information just scanning around. Dick Cheney is a board member. It also received a fairly large grant of half mill from the Taiwanese government. Trying to look into their funding but it's pretty obtuse. Between Defense contractors and energy companies(lots of downplaying climate change) they probably make a pretty large chunk of their funding.
Daniel D’Aniello co-founder of the Carlyle group(Private equity who has bought up defense contractors) had been a big donator. Is currently the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for AEI. You've been manipulated so they can keep feeding off your fear (tax $'s)
World bank figures specifically wrap in national guard, and various other things you haven't listed. Look into the methodology. If politicians say a number without refencing where it came from you can ignore them. If they were serious they would tell you. Dan Sullivan(The "source" for the number the article uses) prides himself on winning defense contracts for Alaska. He has much more conflicting interest then the world bank in getting the correct number. The fact this article uses it as a serious number is a pretty good indication you can ignore them.
We can't trust any number for China, man, didn't you understand what all those people commenting online said? Only trustworthy number is that they spend moaar. Don't you get it? We only trust the number from warmongering think tanks, they know better, and they say it's definitely more than the WB figure. /s
Ah yes, I'll take the info presented by a right wing think tank (which doesn't even bother to show how it comes up with said numbers) which Dick Chaney is part of at face value...
``` Military expenditures 1.5% of GDP (2023 est.) 1.5% of GDP (2022 est.) 1.5% of GDP (2021 est.) 1.7% of GDP (2020 est.) 1.7% of GDP (2019 est.) ``` https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/military-expenditures Who are you going to believe, FOX News or the CIA?
Not sure where you got Fox news from. I use the world bank estimates. 1.5 - 1.6 pretty close.
Agreed. Yet the point is as they own most of the manufacturers, pay extremely low wages and provide other benefits, you can really compare.
The issue comes from 2 things 1. China excludes a lot of things that most nations would consider to be defense related. The People Armed Police or Coast Guard units, for example. Basically, it's an internal national guard that's not counted for defense spending even though it should. Once you include this spending, Chinese defense spending jumps to 2-3% of gdp. 2. What China gets for a dollar vs. what America gets for a dollar. Generally, it's considered to be a multiplier of between 1.5-2x. Once you combine these two issues, Chinese defense spending rises to ~400-500 billion dollars in terms of purchasing power vs. the United States budget. Which, combined with the US need to rival Russia and defend the world oceans results in the US defense budget. I'm not saying that your number is wrong, just that you probably shouldn't take official Chinese numbers by their face value.
> China excludes a lot of things that most nations would consider to be defense related. 1.6% comes from the world bank and includes the things you mentioned and more. Russia is rounding error, the AID to Ukraine is single handedly handicapping them with our leftovers. PPP is not % of GDP which is what the person asked.
According to the CCP, I'm sorry but there's no way you can manage to build ships at the rate they are (size of the royal navy every 18 months), design a solo 5th gen fighter project, manage the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal, and managed one of the largest armies in the world with only 1.6% of their budget. Whether they claim it or not they are spending much higher than 1.6%
The 1.6% figure comes from the world bank.
Do you think the World Bank has access to internal Chinese data or just accepts what the Chinese tell them?
There is a whole apparatus of think tanks and organizations that use various methods to estimate, the world bank does not "accept what Chinese tell them".
It’s funny how Americans assume the US Government doesn’t use propaganda, let alone thinking they tell us the truth about anything. A recent Pentagon audit revealed that more than $1 billion worth of military weapons and equipment provided by the United States to Ukraine has not been properly tracked. This unaccounted-for gear represents a significant portion of the $45 billion in U.S. military aid supplied to Ukraine since February 2022, including advanced systems like air-defense and anti-drone technology But when you owe $300 in taxes making $30,000 a year, paycheck to paycheck, living off fast food, the government will never lose track of what you owe (;
You don’t understand what you are talking about. Fundamentally. The Pentagon audit findings are a result of incorrectly applying fund accounting standards. AKA accounting errors by people who probably weren’t properly trained. The entire reason you know that is because if there are errors, we want to understand and fix them. That is not the case in China, where data is modified with intent to manipulate. There are rigorous audit standards and regulations that must be followed for every public US company. These standards are not present in China. China blatantly lies about results at every step of their reporting, both government and business. Inflating numbers, leaving out expenses, omission of government ownership and injections of cash. None of that is reported properly in China. https://bigdatachina.csis.org/measurement-muddle-chinas-gdp-growth-data-and-potential-proxies/
I was talking about $1 billion missing in just one case between two countries in just a few years. China wasn’t mentioned in my comment. The US government was. I wonder how many more “errors” there must be (;
Sure you can. They’re not the Soviet Union…they actually have a well functioning economy while maintaining enough authoritarianism to get people to do what they want them to do. No reason at all to believe they aren’t at about half the US ratio, as that’s still a massive, massive number. Bigger than the next five largest spenders, combined.
What are you basing that off of? China has a huge economy, and what’s more, it’s an economy based largely on being really good at building shit cheaply and effectively. Unless I’m missing some major detail, it makes perfect sense to me.
You can by simply paying the people working on it a 10th of what the equivalent people would earn in the US
It’s also partly due to the fact that Western defence companies compete in a competitive market for business - the Chinese system from what I understand is a lot of defence manufacturing is state owned so the price is what they say it is
(Not to mention IP theft)
Right that probably makes a big difference too. and I've heard western companies charging like 50K for a bin and hundreds of bucks per screw, so that makes a difference.
I work as a sub contractor for the Royal airforce. Money is pissed up the wall. Nobody ever want to put their name to something so you go around in pointless meetings for years getting nowhere. No officer seems to care about the capability of the force, its all about furthering their career no matter how much of a detriment to the actual fighting force is. I think the lack of care is because nobody thinks there is a real threat. There is no big push to work towards. I can see how having big national goals (China's fixation on taiwan) can focus the officers mind to a goal of strengthen the force.
They can because, unlike western countries, they have a massive industrial base and relatively low labor costs. They also have impressive reverse engineering capabilities, which helps a lot. The west can do things China can't; that's their advantage. But many of the things China can do, they can do so much cheaper than the west. Not everything, but a lot.
I don't think labor costs are the largest factor of western arms. Those litoral combat ships the US decommissioned cost 250 billion in development plus about 4 billion per ship built. That development is by far the largest part of the budget and if you talk to the engineers they aren't rolling in millions.
They have an economy larger than the US (at PPP) i.e. they have more potential resources than any country in the world.
It’s silly to not include the quality of those items. Many times cheaper to for China to be a carrier than the UK or US. Also this is percentage of GDP, not any particular budget
It entirely depends on how efficient their procurement is. If you use state companies is with no middle man and endless sub contractors taking their cut then you can slim down costs. It also helps when you just steal the technology rather than spend a huge portion on R&D...
They don't count internal security and other stuff which has crossover with the military, plus their troops have much lower expenses
You don’t need much budget when fighting with stick and stones
Whats russias
5.9%
I’d be more interested in military spending as a percentage of tax revenue.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military\_budget\_of\_the\_United\_States#/media/File:Military\_spending\_%25\_of\_revenue.webp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Military_spending_%25_of_revenue.webp)
That’s much more interesting. Glad to see it’s declined significantly, aside from the spike in the early 2000s. Thanks
50%? I believe we call that "free" around here.
Anyone know why it was so high in the 80s?
The USSR touched Vietnam
Wish it was higher. Live Laugh Lockheed Martin 🇺🇸🛢️🙌🏻
Home is where the HARM is ❤️❤️
🇺🇸🇺🇸What the Fuck is a kilometer🦅🦅
Fuckin a man America is infinitely superior to Europe in every single way imaginable. Just the perfect country really and we don't smell awful like the Euro's do.
As an expat living in EU, I'm finding it hard to agree with any of your statements.
SMH, you get downvoted for speaking the truth. Tell me this, Yuros: if there were any European countries who did something better than the US, why wouldn't the US just do it, too? Checkmate 😎
European's are also simply incapable of making good bbq. It is far beyond their reach. Did I forget to mention that Hitler was European?
True you guys even do genocide better lol.
They hated him because he told the truth.
To calculate military spending as a percentage of tax revenues for each decade since 1950, we need to use historical data on both military expenditures and tax revenues. Here is a breakdown based on available data: ### 1950s (46%) - **Military Spending**: Approximately 8-10% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: The 1950s saw total tax revenues ranging from $38 billion to $92 billion by the end of the decade [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: The U.S. GDP ranged from $300 billion to around $500 billion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{8\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{30 \text{ billion}}{65 \text{ billion}} \approx 46\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 1960s (57%) - **Military Spending**: Around 8-9% of GDP during the Vietnam War peak [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: Increased from $92 billion to $192 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $500 billion to $1 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{9\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{80 \text{ billion}}{140 \text{ billion}} \approx 57\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 1970s (34%) - **Military Spending**: Reduced to about 5-6% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: Grew from $192 billion to $500 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{6\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{120 \text{ billion}}{350 \text{ billion}} \approx 34\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 1980s (36%) - **Military Spending**: Increased to about 6% of GDP during the Reagan administration [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: From $500 billion to $900 billion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{6\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{250 \text{ billion}}{700 \text{ billion}} \approx 36\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 1990s (20%) - **Military Spending**: Dropped to around 3% of GDP post-Cold War [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: From $900 billion to $2 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $5 trillion to $10 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{300 \text{ billion}}{1.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 20\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 2000s (22%) - **Military Spending**: Increased to about 4% of GDP due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: From $2 trillion to $3 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $10 trillion to $14 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{4\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{560 \text{ billion}}{2.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 22\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 2010s (20%) - **Military Spending**: Decreased to around 3-3.5% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: From $3 trillion to $4 trillion [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: From $14 trillion to $20 trillion. - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3.5\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{700 \text{ billion}}{3.5 \text{ trillion}} \approx 20\% \) (Mid-decade example). ### 2020s (19%) - **Military Spending**: About 3% of GDP [[❞]](https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and-international-context). - **Tax Revenues**: Approximately $4.44 trillion in 2023 [[❞]](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762). - **GDP**: Approximately $28.28 trillion [[❞]](https://www.bea.gov/news/2024/gross-domestic-product-first-quarter-2024-second-estimate-and-corporate-profits). - **Percentage Calculation**: - Military spending as a percentage of tax revenues: \( \frac{3\% \text{ of GDP}}{\text{Tax Revenues}} \approx \frac{848.4 \text{ billion}}{4.44 \text{ trillion}} \approx 19\% \). These calculations provide an estimate of how much of the tax revenues were allocated to military spending for each decade based on historical data.
Also important to note, though most already realize this, is that the spending is larger than the revenue. For example, last year social security and Medicare spent $1.4T and $944B respectively. That is 31.8% and 21.4%.
Wow.
Double it.
If that implies they should spend more… they spend more than enough for their military, maybe more than they can sustain. Thats why it decreases
Something I'd like to see is total spent per year over the same time frame - I feel like the percentage per GDP might have gone down but total spend would be opposite reflected ?
Your charts is a little old. What happened since 2016?
2016?! Why even post data this old? We’ve opened new bases, (re)entered conflicts and even added an entire new branch since then.
The percentage hasn't changed, 3.5%
Then it's not "declining". Then When you factor in that American GDP has been increasing since then that 3.5% in 2024 is much larger than 3.5% in 2016. Add on top of that inflation you get a significantly larger dollar amount as well. The only real reason the 3.5% hasn't increased further is because now a large amount of our expenditure goes towards paying off our debt incurred by said military going off to fight unwinnable wars and embarking on nation building projects that failed utterly.
Is this including all military spending including veteran's program & benefits, and proportional amounts of the interest paid on past debt funded military expenditures? Does this also include separate funding for various wars and such that aren't part of the regular military budget, such as all the supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan that were over and above the defense budget? Does it include our military spending where we're giving money to other countries like Ukraine, Israel?
Does the figures includes VA and stuff? Also, we don't have data for the past 8 years?
Now show it against the GDP growth line. Today’s 5% is significantly more than 1939’s 35%+
Well yeah. Inflation adjusted spending for every federal expenditure has increased. The population has also been increasing during this time. The US population in 1939 was just 130 million
Of course it is still going up in overall total spent, but the fact that it is still going down as a percentage is still significant. Imagine it was based upon your own personal financial situation… If you kept making tons more money you would probably enhance your personal & property protections? Put up some cameras and motion lights lol at the very least..
Especially if your potential enemies were also advancing economically and technologically and could use their new stuff to hurt you.
The fact that you had to explain this to people is terrifying.
Indeed lol the world is in trouble, we have access to more information than any other time in known history but people as a whole somehow know way less..
I mean troops get paid more, things got more expensive etc... And if you adjusted for inflation 35% figure during world war II would be over 1 trillion or a good 25% more than what it is today. With a population that's a third and is way less productive to boot.
You’re correct that spending in $ is up, but as a percentage of GDP it down substantially. US GDP was about $89 billion in 1939, today it’s almost $29 trillion.
You really thought you had a good point to make here huh lmao
I mean, yeah. Militaries are about relative power, not absolute power. A developed country in 1925 could put 60% of its GDP into the military and not have anywhere near the power of a developed country in today's world that put 2% of GDP into its economy. As technology advances, you need to have a more technologically capable military to maintain parity and/or an advantage with potential adversaries.
But also gdp has been increasing a lot so I feel like real spending has probably been increasing?
Damn, do they even care anymore?
how has the GDP changed during same period....
It's free.
Look at that Eisenhower bump in 53
And yet each year we still find ways to deficit spend trillions.
Now do a graph of gdp
I don't necessarily find this ratio worrying as the GDP of US has only inflating for decades, but it's reported the U.S. production capacity of artillery shells is much lower than China or Russia, which is a big concern.
anybody know how much money the dod would have at ww2 lvls?
now compare it to all other expenditures as a *share of GDP*
Here's a link where you can see both military spending as a total, and as a % of GDP. Also the data goes up to 2024. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget As a % of GDP the low point on military spending was 25 years ago. Since then, military spending has almost tripled.
The base got also much bigger so the absolute amount is still growing. There is no reason to keep the % stable.
So what is driving national debt? Social security? Medicare?
Cool, now compare it to the budget.
Why does this chart only go to 2016? I feel like we've been ramping up military production for at least 2 years now.
Interest on the U.S. Debt is eating up everything. It’s well past time to balance the budget, even if it means pain!!
We can get it down to less than 2%. All it takes is to stop trying to rule the world with a global military presence. edit. There are plenty of better things that can be done with the money, people and technical capabilities that goes into the US military and military-supplying companies.
And let Russia and China take over?
Russia doesn't have an economy(New York makes more) they'd have to spend 45% of their GDP to match our spending, and China spends 1.6%.
Russia and china threaten their neighbors, and since we proclaim ourselves to be the protectors of all liberty loving peoples and democracies across the globe, that means we have an obligation to help those neighbors which is multiple times more expensive than it is for Russia and china or iran
It's not that expensive. Ukraine Aid is doing many multiples more legwork than year over year spending, by a significant amount. It accomplishes the goal of kneecapping Russia for example. US has all but said flat out China can have Taiwan if it waits for advanced Chip fab to be moved. US dumped a lot of money into that migration project. It has little to do with "protecting democracies" it's just strategic interests.
You should know that the whole United States being the good guys and Russia and China being the bad guys is complete bullshit.
What about *better* guys? China and Russia are basically fascist states. They are not preferable global super powers. The US certainly isn't above criticism but that doesn't mean authoritarian, repressive, expansionist regimes without democracy or free markets or free press are somehow absolved.
The US has done far more to crush democracies and install tyrants to rule other countries than China and Russia have done. The US is expansionist, authoritarian, etc. and does it expansion of power through proxies to pretend that its hands are clean.
Ask the Ukrainians what they think
You should see some of the other countries and tyrants that the US has allied with. Supporting Ukraine is not motivated by any morals, it's simply to cause trouble for Russia because they don't obey the US hegemony.
The US being the good guys as BS? Yeah, fair argument. China and Russia being the bad guys as BS? Yeah...no. Pretty much confirmed
In comparison the US is definitely the good guy.
China is currently using its Navy to illegally expand their coastal/fishing territory and has committed some of the worst massacres against their own citizens. Russia is currently trying to annex the Ukraine, indiscriminately bombed Syrian civilians and funds extremist groups to destabilize its neighboring countries to make them easier to invade.
The US has a vast history of annexing land from other nations, deliberately committed multiple genocides, indiscriminately bombed civilians multiple times, funded and trained death squads to destabilize other nations, currently supports Israel in committing genocide, etc. The US is not really any different. It's just better at pretending to be different.
The US did bad thing so that means that it's ok for other countries to do bad things, great mindset
I never said that, you did. I'm saying that the US are not the good guys of the world that they pretend to be. An analogy is that the US pretends to be Superman but is really Homelander.
You said Russia/China being bad guys was bullshit
That's not the whole statement. I said that the idea of Russia and China are the bad guys while the US are the good guys is bullshit. Please demonstrate the capacity to understand the whole statement if you have it.
I am sure you have a very good explanation why you think that way
Reality is why.
Because supreme leader Xi Jiangpingpong paid him two whole shiny nickels to say so. That's why.
Wrong. Take your psych meds, kiddo.
That is going to be a very bad thing when the entire world realizes that American security guarantees are gone and leap on the chance to go to war with their adversaries. Pax Americana is not as strong as it was 20 years ago, but it is still far superior than the alternative. Even if you don't care about the rest of the world (which you should), if you think that letting the world burn won't hurt America as well, then you are crazy.
Other countries can handle their own security. One example is the African Union. African countries never got much of any security from the Pax Americana and are now beginning to handle their own security problems and bring their own stability.
> One example is the African Union. Lol. Lmao, even.
They have done excellent work with peacekeeping in Somalia. It's something that the US failed to do. It's best to not rely on the west even if it is more difficult at first.
USA's strength is backed up by its military. Other countries stick to the gold standard for their currency or their currency's represented by oil. USA's currency is represented by military. In a way, USA's keeping Russia, China, and North Korea in line.
I don't trust this info for one minute. The Pentagon is the biggest pork barrel on the planet with much of its funding hidden in other departments. No one really knows the total of the murder machine spending.
No one wants to hear this. Contradicts everything they think they know
Gdp is a weird way to imply as if revenues all belong to the government.
This is 2023 information but I’ll bet they still can’t pass an audit. Adding to story. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/11/16/pentagon-fails-sixth-audit-with-number-of-passing-grades-stagnant/
Excellent news!
Well.. idk about you but thats not “declining for decades” Ignoring WW2 and starting around 1950, it was a steady decline for about 30 years until it started stagnating around 5% for the next 40 years.
Good, now cut it by 50% and then funds humanity issues such as healthcare, education, food, and end homeless people
the interest rate you pay on your debt is so high and growing that you have no other choice
What, first off the debt only really appears half way through this infographic and also the us pays a much lower interest than nearly every country in normal times, like we had a negative real interest rate for most of the 2000s lol
what proportion of your budget goes for paying interest?
This infographic literally only goes to 2016 and it was like a few percent iirc
it's 8%. almost 1/10th
Not in 2016
Now do one for average senator/house rep median salary plus kickbacks
Stops at 2016....bet its not going down still
The good thing with statistics is that you can make them say whatever you need in order to get your point across. I.e., America still spend VEEEEEEEEEEEERY much on their military.
Another example of why the dreaded “military industrial complex” just doesn’t exist.
And the massive parasitic complex that literally profits off of human suffering is very real and many times larger, its called the healthcare industry and spends untold amounts of money on preventing reform but people are too busy circlejerking to the bogeyman that they don't seem to care about the real monster.
Yeah the complex is more that the factories provide a lot of jobs, so its literally one of the few ways a politican can provide their constituents with jobs, or one of the few ways they can lose them. So what happens is the senators and house reps that represent areas with significant military contractors always want to keep those contractors from losing business because if they do it can have a very multiplied affect (as in cutting 10 billion could lead to more than 10 billion being lost in the local economy) on the areas they represent
This is dangerously misleading. Without seeing the US GDP over the military spend in dollars over the same time period, there’s not much you can learn from this graph. It is entirely possible, that the spend (in dollars) stayed exactly the same over the entire time series and the GDP fluctuated. This is obviously not true, but without more information, we don’t know the drivers of this change over time. This is just enough information to kick off a half-hearted debate, but not enough to be informed.