> 2-a. The Unites States spend 3.3% of it's GDP on the military. This is in line with other countries. Japan and EU are spending less only because they are under NATO (US) defense umbrella. France, for example, is at 2.1%, so 3.3% is hardly disproportionate.

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... )

You know why Europeans get away spending pennies, coz Uncle Sam will come to their rescue when the big bad bear attacks them!

It amuses me when Americans make this claim as if it's a badge of honor. I wonder what would they think if, say, America subsidizes Denmark's public schools so that Danish kids would pay less for textbooks than American kids.

If Americans got to choose the textbook content, they'd likely be very pleased with that arrangement.

Institutions have larger life, NATO is not dissolved after Cold-war, so we are on the same page when it comes to US should push its so called allies to pay more into NATO and do more, but for now the things are that way. It is not a badge of honor, I am stating the facts.

But, if US citizens didn't want this then the US could clearly work with Europe to transition away from being protector of Europe. So, I'm left wondering why Americans want to subsidize Europe in this regard?

Probably because it justifies having American forces stationed in Europe and ready to deploy against Russia. While not the feared enemy of the Soviet Era, Russia remains a large geopolitical adversary of the US and is the only non-western country capable of manufacturing sophisticated armaments (although China is getting there).

> So, I'm left wondering why Americans want to subsidize Europe in this regard?

Because Europe's wars cost us dearly in the 20th century.

Hardly. By any reasonable metric of post-war success, America, Germany, and Japan were the three winners of WW2. America profited massively, enjoying an enormous economic boost from the war effort, the bill for which they handed to Britain (and which was finally fully paid off in... wait for it... 2006!) and subsidizing the development of the latter two countries through the Marshall plan.

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.

America profited barely at all ( by law, war profiteering was like a ... firing squad offense, okay not quite but... ) - we'd run more debt than anyone thought possible at the time, consumer demand had been suppressed since 1929 and the thing just exploded. Eventually. After 1949-1950.

The critical thing is all that debt and industrial capacity, presented with the prostrate markets of the world.

I think people are afraid of tinkering with existing security arrangements because they seem to have worked. There hasn't been a major war between two countries in Europe for seven decades.

Personally, I don't see any reason to station US troops in other countries, but I'm outnumbered.

Because Americans used willing suspension of disbelief to transition from a nation purely interested in itself to a nation interested in the entire world.

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.

I bet $1 that it has something to do with destroying long range ballistic missiles during boost phase.

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.

I thought that there was no defence against ICBMs, it turns out that we likely do now.

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's actually probably more useful to have the big radars in Europe, for anything not specifically targeting that piece of the continent. Hitting a ballistic missile during boost phase is difficult, especially one launched by the US, Russia, or China, who are willing to pay for more and better ABM countermeasures on their launch vehicles. Having forward radars to detect and track the launch makes it easier to hit later.

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

I can tell by your posts that you're idealistic, probably young. If you think citizens of any country really have a "say" or "seat at the table" when it comes to big decisions, you are in for some good life lessons.

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.

Can I ask why you feel the need to act condescending and dismissive?

Just old and bitter?

Rather than get into a "feelings and perception" contest... let's talk about the facts.

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...

I agree about your larger question, and would enjoy exploring that. But, for this conversation I find it most interesting and relevant that the citizens don't even see the military budget as an issue. On this issue we need not even worry about my naive belief that citizen's have power, because in fact the citizens don't even see the need to change anything as they fully subscribe to the belief--put forward by the rulers--that the military budget is essential.

So, yes, citizens could stand to wake up, I agree.

Hopefully better than how it dropped the ball all around the world since Vietnam.

Thank you for posting this. I was stationed in Germany for two years.

2-b: This is not true, and is a harmful and common fallacy. Keynesian economics is not permanent government spending. It's government spending only in rare cases of overall economic depression. In fact, what Keynes would argue is that if a depression occurred, you need government deficit spending to replace the decrease in the overall economy. This has nothing to do with the normal level of government spending in the economy.

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 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.

> US military spending is one of the major engines that powers the American economy

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.

Yep. "To provide for the Common Defense" is in our Conftituion. It may be worth reading a bio of Eisenhower to see just how big a shift the pre-WWII drawdown was to the post-WWII equilibrium ( after a span).

America was founded against the idea of a standing army for almost all its history.

It makes sense when you see it from a political viewpoint. Its easier to justify spending money to keep evil at bay, to remain the superpower, for our soldiers etc. Its much harder to convince people that we should be spending more on society, for the poor etc. The rather disappointing results of the "War on Poverty" left many disillusioned with Federal government programs for societal benefits.

> He didn't advocate digging holes and filling them back up as a normal thing

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.

Apologies if I misrepresented him. As you say, he did think digging and filling holes would be good for the economy. And I think for people unfamiliar with his reasoning, that is the example that is most clear of his viewpoint: that deficit spending is good during recessions, regardless of that spending's actual value.

Just to clarify, because again you're kind of misrepresenting him: digging and filling holes is better than nothing in a depression.

3.3% of GDP but what percentage of tax dollars?

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.

Oh my. Can someone check my numbers?

    France revenue:   953,000 million EUR
    Military budget:   41,300 million EUR (approx)
    = 4.33% of tax revenue military spending

vs

    USA revenue:     4,260,000 million USD
    Military budget:   597,500 million USD
    = 14.03% of tax revenue military spending

Damn.

I used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... (2015 numbers)

https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd...

https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-france.pdf

I believe your numbers are accurate but I also don't think that they tell the whole story. Is France's subsidy of Airbus military spending? Because America's subsidy of Boeing is. Is French scientific research spending military? Because America spends its research dollars via DARPA. And so on...

If I understand your process, you multiplied US GDP by average tax burden, which makes sense, but here's another source that added other sources up: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/total_revenue_2015USrn and got ~6,500 billon USD for USA Revenue. Using the same military budget, that makes = 7.69% of tax on military budget.

I think I see why everyone uses GDP: tax revenue is difficult to calculate, especially when it involves 50 states and a few territories.

Largely inconsequential.

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';

In an imaginary accounting DB. The $62.4B figure was the same thing minus the "ABS()"...

> 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.

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.

US revenue (Primarily taxes) for FY2014 was $3.02 Trillion, while defense spending was ~$640 Billion, so you could guesstimate roughly 20% of tax dollars for defense. That ~$640 Billion is out of a ~$1.1 Trillion discretionary spending by the US, while non discretionary (mandatory, things like social security and medicare) spending is over $2.4 Trillion.

If you add it all up, military spending makes up about 16% of total government spending.

Well, it didn't lose track of trillions of dollars, it lost track of tens of billions. Which is still awful, don't get me wrong, but the Army doesn't have trillions of dollars to lose.

We pay alright, social security & healthcare are nearly 50% of the federal budget.

The US spends a huge amount on healthcare too.

Poor returns, but a huge amount spent.

I disagree that our military spending is reasonable, or a bargain.

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."

That's in absolute dollars though. A percentage of GDP is a much more fair comparison.

I disagree.

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.

Well-put. I've heard the GDP argument so many times and never seen anyone call attention to this vitally important point.

It's not though; it's still a poor way to spend taxpayer dollars with entitlement liabilities accumulating, that are unfunded, while we continue to poor money into military waste, regardless of the percentage of GDP.

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!

I wasn't commenting whether it's right or wrong to be spending that much, merely that if one is going to do a comparison, it should not be misleading.

The absolute spending numbers will translate into capabilities though.

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.

We already have a portion of our take home pay burned in front of us. Do you see that Medicare and Social Security deduction on your pay stub? Yeah......

I wonder if all the folks downvoting you honestly believe that they will see a single penny of the Social Security they've been paying all these years?

At least the military budget is a) constitutional b) a reasonable expenditure for a government (as opposed to a mutual-aid society).

Of course you won't see a single penny that you put in, because that's not how Social Security works.

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".

I didn't actually down vote, but yes, I expect to see money from social security and Medicaid. I also see my parents retiring and using the money I'm contributing right now. I really don't feel like my money is being lit on fire in this case and he didn't make any argument to convince me I should.

That's called "paying for civilization" versus "lets bomb another 100k innocent civilians with precision guided munitions".

Hard to argue with that logic... wow.

Why? Does the difficulty of military protection (where it would make a difference) scale with GDP? Otherwise, you're just grabbing an arbitrary big number as divisor.

Edit: if this is a stupid question, I'd like to be looped in so I don't ask it again.

Devil's advocate here: That's a nice sound byte, but the US also has a MUCH higher GDP than any other country. China is the only other one even past $10T. Not including China, eyeballing the numbers the US has a higher GDP than the rest of the top 10 countries combined.

> 2-a. The Unites States spend 3.3% of it's GDP on the military. This is in line with other countries.

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.)

>France, for example, is at 2.1%, so 3.3% is hardly disproportionate.

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

>> Japan and EU are spending less only because they are under NATO (US) defense umbrella.

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.)

No, we would have just bought new F-18s from the US.

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.

> 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

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.)

2a - Relativity. France is at 2.1%, US 3.3%. In other words the US is spending fifty seven per cent more than France. How is that "hardly disproportionate"?

What's that quote? "The US spends more on defense than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom we list as allies".

It is 3.3% of GDP but it accounts for 16% of our total federal spending in 2015. Percent of GDP is a good metric, but it needs to be tempered with the amount we reap in taxes. I'm sure it's an easy calculation/google search, but I need to work now.

Holy cow, i thought something like %40 of the US economy went towards military? I have obviously never researched that, if anything i'm saying this because i believe my belief is somewhat common. Why do so many believe military/defense is so highly spent?

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?

> Holy cow, i thought something like %40 of the US economy went towards military

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.

No one likes to hear the truth. I gave you an upvote because saying that medicare, social security waste, and welfare are more expensive that the military ruins the little utopia's HN'ers have built up in their minds.

He's quoting % GDP of USA, not % of budget. I think that is a discrepancy.

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.

3.3 from GDP. 19% from Federal budget.

3.3% of GDP. The ones where military is a huge share as are SS/medicare is the federal budget.

2-e. Global stability & peace for 3.3% of GDP, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

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.

> 2-e. Global stability & peace for 3.3% of GDP, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

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...

The Iraq war was a giant mistake and is still a giant mess. Yet isn't nearly as big it used to be.

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).

WWII killed 4% of all humans on the planet. Perspective, please...

For perspective on the Middle East, there is always "A Peace to End All Peace."

2-a reminds me of something:

Biggest Air Force: USAF

2nd Biggest Air Force: US Navy

That's how much the US spends

3rd biggest: The US Navy's Army's Air Force...

"...is the cornerstone of Keynesian economy".

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.

2-a. 2.1% to 3.3% is a 44% difference. So, yes, I'd argue that is disproportionate. The difference is compounded by the fact that the US is the largest economy. So, I think disproportionate is the right term.

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.

Sadly directly funding basic research or even translational research is not nearly as popular politically as funding military research. Basic research is often deemed wasteful by the public.

> 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.

> The perceived waste would just happen in a different "industrial complex"

But with significantly less waste of human life.

The US spends 57% more on military than France. France spends 36% less on their military than the US.

Your 44% doesn't really make sense.

The percentage difference between 2.1% and 3.3% is 44%.

That doesn't mean anything.