2-b. Military spending (along with other public spending) is the cornerstone of Keynesian economy. It's the best way known to man to stave off deflationary spiral.
2-c. Military spending is the driver of innovation. Pretty much all of US technological dominance is rooted in military spending. Nearly all of our jobs here on HN came form that.
2-d. Projection of power brings tangible benefits to the US economy.
So 3.3% is a real bargain, all things considered.
[EDIT] Many comments ignored the benefits part of my argument. Yes, 3.3% is larger than 2%, it was not lost on me. Now consider that in exchange for the 1.3% the US managed to snag the first place in the high-tech industry with a huge lead over the rest of the world. Until just recently almost everyone who is anyone in the high-tech world was based in the US. Boeing, Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Google, Yahoo, Uber, AirBnB, the list goes on and on. It's not an accident. That 1.3% comes back many times over. And it's just one of the benefits.
Look, I dislike people-killing as much as the next guy. But you can't ignore the economic realities, especially if you want to change the status quo.
That's not true - majority of countries don't come close to speding 3.3% of their GDP on military (world's average is ~2.3%?). For example highest EU spenders are Poland with 2.2%, France with 2.1% and UK with 1.9%. Everyone else spends significantly less than 1.5%. And that's just looking at the % and ignoring the fact that USA has largest GDP in the world.
US is nowhere near "in line with other countries." Unless you count "other countries" only the handful of Middle East countries like Oman, Israel, Jordan and Iraq.
(Source: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?year_h... )
Because Europe's wars cost us dearly in the 20th century.
Economically, it's blatantly obvious. But it's not a perspective that's in anyone's interest to push.
I have no doubt that if the eagle-boner's wildest wet dreams came true and the US had to intervene on Europe's behalf, there'd be a big fat bill at the end.
The critical thing is all that debt and industrial capacity, presented with the prostrate markets of the world.
Personally, I don't see any reason to station US troops in other countries, but I'm outnumbered.
When the music stopped in August, 1945, guess who was most widely deployed, had the people and wherewithal to lead? Guess whose closest partner - the UK - was wholesale getting out of the Empire business? Disregard the industrial Golem we had.
We have entire cable channels dedicated at least partly to rerunning propaganda designed for consumption by Americans for WWII to his day.
The image of protector of Europe is probably an illusion maintained to ensure that the US can put its forward radars and anti-missile batteries in strategically superior locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile
Regardless, I'm not sure why a US base is required in Europe for the sole reason of housing a defensive ABM.
It also makes it easier to estimate the target area for each vehicle, and assign priorities accordingly.
The US and best buddy Israel have developed some incredible anti-missile and anti-artillery technologies [0][1]. While really expensive, they do ensure that a very clear and obvious act of war has to occur in order to seriously damage a defended area. A handful of guys with plausible deniability can no longer just fire some rockets and mortars over the border and expect to get away, to do it again later. The projectiles that might have killed someone are destroyed in midair, and return fire is already incoming to the original firing positions.
It is possible that the US has fielded systems on its own that are at least an order of magnitude more expensive than those shared with Israel and Europe, but are not known to have been tested by live fire, because of the increased difficulty and expense in firing missiles that can hit US territory. Iron Dome protects cities and towns. Whatever the US has probably protects whole states, if not the entire continent. The military certainly isn't spending all 3% of the whole US economy on individual soldier benefits. And not everything produces as much disappointment as the F-35. Sometimes the big expensive thing actually works as intended.
Telemetry stations in Europe are not necessary, but they are cheaper to operate than the alternatives. And they provide the PR benefit of, "Oh yeah, I guess we can provide first-strike deterrence for your country a little bit too, while we're at it."
You need only look at the recent history of the Crimean peninsula to know that your country has to have some strategic importance to the US in order for the American military (or diplomatic corps) to even attempt to defend it. The more recent additions to NATO would be wise to see to their own defenses, under the presumption that NATO is far more able to avenge than protect.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3
That is not how the world works at this time. "Citizens" are here to provide work for the state. Voting is illusory and until the masses wake up (not holding my breath), it will remain the case.
Just old and bitter?
Citizens are allowed to vote. For the sake of this argument, lets leave out the actual process of voting. Citizens elect official.
Citizens are NOT consulted for major decisions post election of said official. Citizens can bluff and buster all they want. Elected official can do as they please.
Lobby groups have more access to decision making process than citizens, and way more pull as they control the purse strings to re-election and keeping elected official with a job.
Therefore, I posit that it is simply naive to think "citizens" could demand the US to retreat from Europe anymore than they could demand an invasion of Europe. The world simply doesn't work that way. I am not saying it can't... it is going to take a whole lot more than electing Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump or Hillary or some horrible clown to get the power into the hands of the Citizens.
The bigger question(s) are; has power EVER been truly in the hands of the masses/citizens? Why do people cling on to that as a good way forward? Leadership by committee in my experience has been horrible beyond reproach...
So, yes, citizens could stand to wake up, I agree.
He didn't advocate digging holes and filling them back up as a normal thing - he advocated it only in rare cases of economic troubles.
He didn't advocate that even in case of economic troubles. I absolutely agree with the parent. US military spending is one of the major engines that powers the American economy and the American Research University system. Quite contrary to digging ditches and filling them back up, military funding trickles down to fund advanced mathematics, fundamental science and so on: even if indirectly.
While its true that economic growth can be achieved without Keynesian economics, it is hard to sustain economic growth and prosperity at levels that the US has managed to do. While its not all because of the Military, they have had a large (although little acknowledged) hand.
I always get lost on this argument. Americans largely see socialism as evil (obvious consequence of the cold war). Yet, the argument put forward above is essentially arguing for a special form of socialism that applies only to military contractors.
America was founded against the idea of a standing army for almost all its history.
Keynes didn't advocate them at all. He did argue that something like that would be simultaneously be better than the nothing that some others advocated as a government response to a recession in the private sector, and worse than actually investing in (e.g.) useful infrastructure.
Saying that he advocated digging holes and filling them back up is like saying that a person who says that they'd rather have their arm ripped off than be decapitated is begging to be dismembered.
It just seems a shame that a country that somehow can't afford to pay for the health care of it's citizens manages to lose track of literally trillions of dollars.
France revenue: 953,000 million EUR
Military budget: 41,300 million EUR (approx)
= 4.33% of tax revenue military spending
USA revenue: 4,260,000 million USD
Military budget: 597,500 million USD
= 14.03% of tax revenue military spending
I used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... (2015 numbers)
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd...
I think I see why everyone uses GDP: tax revenue is difficult to calculate, especially when it involves 50 states and a few territories.
The article is not very clear. The money that is not accounted for is $62.4B. The reason that money is unaccounted for is because of trillions of dollars of accounting adjustments in budgets.
That trillion dollars figure is just summing up the magnitude of all accounting adjustments throughout all the records of the DoD. The moral equivalent of:
SELECT SUM(ABS(trans_amount)) FROM transactions WHERE trans_type = 'Adjustments';
Its not trillions of dollars. Its trillions of dollars of adjustments, when you count the absolute value of all the adjustments to individual accounts. But that's -- as stated in the article -- in part because not only does every error involve at least two accounts, but also because the accounts are nested, so most adjustments in a detail account also involve adjustments in several parent accounts.
If you add it all up, military spending makes up about 16% of total government spending.
Poor returns, but a huge amount spent.
http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
http://i.imgur.com/PhHo3eh.gif
"The United states spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined."
Military contests, like any other, are about the relative strengths of the opponents.
Comparing percents of GDP might tell you if you're in running with the pack or not, but the outcome of a fight between Lower Plonkova (spending 20% of the resources extracted from 2M dirt farmers and basket weavers on their military) and the United Saviors of Everything (spending 3% of the resources extracted from 400M first-world baristas and code monkeys) isn't in question.
The absolute number is absolutely relevant.
EDIT: I believe using percent of GDP is a poor measure.
Give me a percentage of your take home pay. Let me burn it in front of you in a dumpster. No worries! Its a small part of your take home pay!
For instance, the US maintains about 1/2 of active aircraft carriers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...
I guess the strategic problems with aircraft carriers vs missiles make them a less compelling example of capabilities, but they are a nice illustration of the spending gap.
Later: 1/2 maybe isn't the best choice for a number there, as it includes some smaller carriers that mostly support VTOL craft. On the other side of it, the US super carriers carry a lot more planes. If the next generation planes come through, the smaller US carriers do end up comparing reasonably well to the other small carriers.
At least the military budget is a) constitutional b) a reasonable expenditure for a government (as opposed to a mutual-aid society).
When us younger Americans start drawing our Social Security, it'll be that era's young whose pennies we're drawing.
Social security isn't "you pay in, you get back out what you put in" it's "you pay in for today's olds, and when you're old, young people pay in for you".
Edit: if this is a stupid question, I'd like to be looped in so I don't ask it again.
No, its not "in line with other countries", generally speaking. 2.29% of world GDP is spent on military; the US's 3.3% is quite high.
(I mean, its not Russia or Saudi Arabia high, but its nearly a time-and-a-half the global average, even after the distorting effect it has on the global average, given the US's huge share of world GDP.)
You just said the US spends 50% more on the military than France. ((3.3-2.1)/2.1= .57). That is a very large difference
You forget the amount allies spend because of US forces. Canada in particular spends much on accommodating US demands and on systems to better integrate with US forces. Does anyone here think Canada would even consider spending money on the f-35 if the US wasn't first so committed?
(Fyi, as an example of the integration, about 1/3 of the people watching things inside Cheyenne mountain are Canadian.)
Canada and the US are about the 2 closest allies you can find. Integrating with the larger US military makes sense, especially with Russia around.
No, it didn't do that in exchange for "1.3%". Both the world and the US rates of military spending right now are much lower than most of the period over which that occurred, and the ratio of US to world average share of GDP spent on the military was higher through most of the period; e.g., in 1988 (which wasn't the peak for either) world military spending was 3.4% of GDP, US was 5.6%.)
> Look, I dislike people-killing as much as the next guy. But you can't ignore the economic realities
The US government could take the share of GDP it spends above the world average on military spending, and spend it directly on civilian technology and technical infrastructure and produce more benefits in terms of the tech industry then any side benefit it gets tangentially from military spending (plus, produce more direct benefits for domestic quality of life.)
What's that quote? "The US spends more on defense than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom we list as allies".
Also, where the hell is all of our money going haha. I'm googling, some random images/sources/etc are saying that Military is ~19%, with social health/security/aid/etc being around ~60% percent. But the numbers in so many of these sources differ greatly. That, combined with your 3.3%, everything seems so drastically different.
What were you basing your 3.3% off of?
No, you're thinking of welfare/social security
Edit: anyone care to explain the downvotes? My data comes from here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/interactive-budget
Add together social security, income security, and other welfares, and you get ~40% of the budget.
The spending is still massive in comparison to pretty much any country in the world. As I said in the other post, just a handul of worlds countries come close to spending 3% of GDP on military - now couple that with the fact that USA has largest GDP in the world and you get a staggering amount of money spent.
Edit: The middle east is a mess, sure, but all the superpowers seem mostly on amicable terms, which is a big deal if you look at the last few centuries.
Is this irony? Because, the gigantic mess we have now in middle east is absolutely not the result of massives US military spendings, a little more than 13 years ago...
For perspective, compare this to the giant mess of the WW2, which was the last time the question of the world domination was up for debate. We're talking about roughly two orders of magnitude in human life cost (tens of millions vs hundreds of thousands).
For perspective on the Middle East, there is always "A Peace to End All Peace."
Biggest Air Force: USAF
2nd Biggest Air Force: US Navy
That's how much the US spends
Yep.
One of the Bush Administration's top guys was actually caught making this argument for the adventure in Iraq. My jaw dropped.
Actual people-killing is an extremely limited part of our military. As pork, it has the justification of "provide for the common defense" and generally, bipartisan support.
The rest of your points skirt the question. Spending on the military isn't supposed to be the driver for the economy or the engine for innovation, those are side benefits. If those really are the goals then the citizens should be demanding that money be spent directly to achieve those benefits. I find it curious that argument is never put forward.
Because the argument you're making isn't a good argument.
The perceived waste would just happen in a different "industrial complex" with the perception that security is now weaker. Right or wrong, perceptions are what they are.
But with significantly less waste of human life.
Your 44% doesn't really make sense.
2. Because it allows us to project force globally which is what actually allows us to be the one true global super power.
I've always wondered how much of the world superpower is sold to us as "to keep us safe" when the honest reality is "too feed our national ego". I do believe that the world is a safer place than it was 30 years ago. But I can't think of a conflict since WWII where U.S. efforts in the region seemed to be the stabilizing factor.
"The U.S. spends more on health care than other high-income countries but has worse outcomes." http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20...
"American Schools vs. the World: Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math" http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/america...
Yes, you could cut military expenditure and push the money elsewhere. I really think unless you change things about the way that money gets spent you are just tossing it away.
> I can't think of a conflict since WWII where U.S. efforts in the region seemed to be the stabilizing factor.
Korea First Iraq war Yugoslavia
The US presence in Europe and NATO creation during the cold war?
That sounds great, but even more than that I hope you want for them to be alive and free. Without a strong national defense, their chances of survival as free citizens are pretty low.
Where does this sentiment come from, the same as in the argument that the USA protects Europe? Do you really believe all countries would constantly try invade each other if they had less weapons? Citizens are not that eager to get killed on the battlefield, especially in developed notion with pretty good living standards at home. Maybe I am a bit idealistic but I just can not imagine the world falling apart if we had lesson weapons. I am not saying zero weapons, it is certainly not a bad idea to have some defense capabilities just in case, but being prepared to fight another world war seems over the top to me.
While I don't necessarily agree with the large US military spending, I feel better knowing we have more national defense than necessary rather than not enough/just enough.
I don't think this is an accurate statement.
People who keep supporting more military spending aren't patriots. Quite the opposite. Those that want their army to run well and effectively are the true patriots.
The #1 way to reduce waste would be to change the accounting rules. As it is, if you don't spend your full budget for the year, next year's budget will be cut by that amount. And you aren't allowed to keep a "rainy day fund".
This causes problems when you have expensive equipment that only fails occasionally. You have to budget for a possible replacement, but if you make it through the year without a failure, you've got all this money that you have to suddenly find a use for.
The answer to "why not" is lobbying, constituents, and corruption. Military spending influences the economy in literally every state. That's why they don't close bases. That's why the legislature optimizes for maximum spend rather than ROI.
Like private industry, government is huge, contains many agencies at many levels, and some of them are well run and some of them are poorly run and some of them are somewhere in between.
The "plan going bankrupt" has nothing to do with the administration of benefits, however. It's not happening because the bureaucracy is screwing up and wasting too much money -- even if they worked for free, you'd only gain 0.39% more per year. It's congress that is underfunding (or overprovisioning, or some combination of the two) -- could be fixed in two seconds with a bill cutting benefits and/or increasing taxes without any real change for SSA. Also, when it "goes bankrupt" as people misleadingly call it, they'll still be able to pay about 4/5 of the benefits currently promised. In effect, congress by doing nothing has already implicitly reduced future benefits to 4/5 of the current statutory amounts. If you just assume you'll get 4/5 of what is being promised, then it's in no way bankrupt and is self sustaining forever. 4/5 is not chump change.
I've started to realize this whole "social security is a failure" talk may be FUD being spread to get people to accept further raiding of social security because "whatever, it's already broken"
Similarly, the IRS is hugely "profitable", because its administrative costs are a tiny fraction of the money it brings in.
The accidental president, Harry Truman, bought this notion. Although Truman campaigned in 1948 as an heir to Roosevelt’s New Deal, he had a “continuing plan”. Henry Wallace was onto it, as early as: “Yesterday, March 12, 1947, marked a turning point in American history … Yesterday, President Truman proposed, in effect, America police Russia’s every border. There is no regime too reactionary for us provided it stands in Russia’s expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve as the scene of contest which may widen until it become a world war.” But how to impose this? The Republican leadership did not like the state to be the master of the country’s economic life while, of the Democrats, only a few geopoliticians, like Dean Acheson, found thrilling the prospect of a military state, to be justified in the name of a holy war against something called communism in general and Russia in particular. The fact that the Soviet Union was no military or economic threat to us was immaterial. It must be made to appear threatening so the continuing plan could be set in motion in order to create the National Security State in which we have been living for the last forty years.
What is the National Security State? Well, it began, officially, with the National Security Act of 1947; it was implemented in January 1950 when the National Security Council produced a blueprint for a new kind of country, unlike anything the United States had ever known before. This document, known as the NSC-68 for short, and declassified only in 1975, committed–and still, fitfully, commits–us to the following program: First, never negotiate, ever, with Russia. This could not continue forever; but the obligatory bad faith of US-USSR meetings still serves the continuing plan. Second, develop the hydrogen bomb so that when the Russians finally develop an atomic bomb we will still not have to deal with the enemy without which the National Security State cannot exist. Third, rapidly build up conventional forces. Fourth, put through a large increase in taxes to pay for all this. Fifth, mobilize the entire American society to fight the terrible specter of communism. Sixth, set up a strong alliance system, directed by the United States (this became NATO). Seventh, make the people of Russia our allies, through propaganda and CIA derring-do, in this holy adventure–hence the justification for all sorts of secret services that are in no way responsible to the Congress that funds them, and so in violation of the old Constitution.
Needless to say, the blueprint, the continuing plan, was not only openly discussed at the time. But, one by one, the major political players of the two parties came around. Senator Arthur Vandenburg, Republican, told Truman that if he really wanted all those weapons and all those high taxes to pay for them, he had better “scare hell out of the American people.” Truman obliged, with a series of speeches beginning October 23, 1947, about the Red Menace endangering France and Italy; he also instituted loyalty oaths for federal employees; and his attorney general (December 4, 1947) published a list of dissident organizations. The climate of fear has been maintained, more or less zealously, by Truman’s successors, with the brief exception of Dwight Eisenhower, who in a belated fit of conscience at the end of his presidency warned us against the military-industrial complex that had, by then, established permanent control over the state."
- Gore Vidal, "National Security State"
The entire essay, along with many of Vidal's other writings is highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/United-States-1952-1992-Gore-Vidal/dp...
The military industrial complex is an enormous jobs program. Some of your friends and neighbors probably have a job that supports the military in one way or another.
You can reduce spending without creating a power vacuum. E.g. reducing the budget by 10% isn't going to create a power vacuum nor shock its allies.
The reality is that their is no political will to start reducing spending on the military, nor is their desire by its civilians to do so. The question is why?
The larger question still is how did you come to the conclusion that they spend a disproportionate amount on military?
US's spending is 3,3% of GDP. That is ~40% less than Russia and ~60% more than China. That sounds proportionate. Considering that the US has the most to gain from preserving the status quo, it's perfectly reasonable to make a large effort in that direction.
http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
Also, I would argue that Russia isn't a good example to compare against because they are the cold war superpower that was overspending against the US to win the cold war, and it seems they, like the, US continue that trend.
Because most of us are too ignorant to know better, and those of us that do are trapped by a de-facto two party system that is more interested in maintaining its own power via the status quo than representing the will of its constituency (for example, DWS and the DNC).
The large military spending is supported by two factors. The first is the element of American morality that believes in righteous violence: it's not merely an unfortunate necessity but a positive moral act. The same attitude supports both individual people keeping revolvers under the pillow and a globe-spanning military.
The second it the lack of inter-state redistribution. American politics since Roosevelt is very against Keynsianism. Suggest paying people to dig holes and fill them in again and there will be outrage. Paying billions for weapons systems that are never used or equipment shipped to Iraq/Afghanistan and then destroyed new, unused? Fine.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe the military has ever successfully and accurately completed its accounting in the modern era, so probably not.
It's also not like the military leadership's major concern is accounting practices.
> Second, is a larger question. Why do US citizens tolerate spending a disproportionate amount of their financial resources on their military?
We like and have gotten used to having a military that arguably more powerful than any other in the world. That requires lots of money, but most people big enough policy wonks to understand the degree of waste.
Let's hope the transition to another empire does not happen by force.
That is, let's start with nationstates and their banks. Ie. The Fed, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, Deutsche Bank / Germany.
$62.4 billion is a rounding error for most of the "world's" banks.So let's temper the huff and bluster... I mean, its corruption and politics all the way down.
---------
Your second question is interesting. Why does the rest of the world expect the US to "do something" when bad things happen? Don't answer that because it doesn't matter.
Note that Deutsche Bank is a private, non-state-owned company. You might be thinking of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
Any congress member that suggests cutting funding to the military gets painted as not supporting the troops during his/her next election.
Also, no major party will adopt the reigning in of military spending platform because then the opposing party will constantly bring up that the unemployment rate increased due to the other party's budget cuts.
It doesn't exactly explain the citizenry (it does for those that might be left unemployed from military cuts, but I expect that's a small % of the electorate).
The US wanted to stay out of other people's wars and problems and take care of itself. The simple version is that Pearl Harbor showed the US what happens when you do that, although of course it was more complicated than that.
Ever since then, the US has decided, for better or worse, to involve itself in problems around the world. It's in the US's best interests. Many countries have smaller militaries because they are a part of NATO, which is largely backed by the US. So when you compare their military to the US's, it's not really a fair comparison.
It seems whenever I ask the question about spending the response I hear assumes the only other option is to spend next to nothing. Rather, I'm simply curious why it isn't even up for consideration to reduce spending to bring it into line with other countries, or even smaller cutbacks that would leave the US spending above all other nations. I've never ever heard that up for discussion by an American.
Because a) we spend a reasonable proportion of our GDP on defense and b) we have a really, really high GDP. Multiply a sane proportion by a big number and you get … a really big number.
One thing to consider - Eleanor Roosevelt was extremely successful in making the military an agent for social change. This, coupled with the way things worked with the Cold War draft made the military a significant social program, one with tanks and bombers.
Where Americans hold fast to Rugged Individualism in the larger economy, within the ranks of the military, we get significant lift in training, support and quality of life issues for our troops.
the second question has nothing to do with anything really. what's so magical about a military budget that isn't exactly identical to any other government agency budget? do people actually imagine if we cut defense spending the government magically hands back "unspent" money? of course not, they'll piss it away in other departments.
It's not that disproportionate. Most militaries are funded within 2%-6% of GDP. America's economy is just so enormous that the spending seems ridiculous. Yes, there is a lot of waste, a LOT OF WASTE, but it's a small price to pay to feel safe and secure from foreign militaries when one has the benefit of, as the economist put it: "friends to the north and south and fish to the east and west."
The thought that a war could ever occur on our own soil is simply something most Americans don't even contemplate, unless you've spent one too many evenings polishing your favorite firearms and rewatching "Red Dawn."
- at war, or civil war (ukraine, south sudan, iraq)
- with historical conflict with larger neighbours, and reaso to worry about it breaking out again (Pakistan, Israel)
- sitting on enough oil that GDP gets distorted anyway (saudi arabia, Azerbaijan
So yes, US military spending is way out of proportion to the rest of the world.
[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?year_h...
The global share of GDP spent on military (as of 2015) is 2.29%, and most countries are below that (the US having a huge GDP and spending significantly above that drags up the global share); the US's 3.3% is quite high.
America does often not like it when countries other than itself goes to war because it makes it hard to sell American consumer goods there, unless those goods are the weapons of war themselves.
First, who is getting fired for this and what outsider will be brought in to fix this to keep it from happening again.
Second, is a larger question. Why do US citizens tolerate spending a disproportionate amount of their financial resources on their military?