The article doesn't argue this is the reason for inequality. It's just a piece of trivia.

>Americans are used to thinking that their nation is special. In many ways, it is: the U.S. has by far the most Nobel Prize winners, the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so countries put together) and the most billionaires (twice as many as China, the closest competitor).

Fascinating. I didn't know that the US military budget is a third of what it was 60 years ago. Yet another example of the media / popular perception being basically uncorrelated with reality.

>I didn't know that the US military budget is a third of what it was 60 years ago.

It's a little over a third of what it was 60 years ago as a percentage of GDP. And this is in line with most other developed nations.

As a percentage of the federal budget, military spending accounts for 16% of the total budget, and 54% of discretionary spending. The US also spends 2-3x more per capita on the military than France, the UK, and Germany.

60 years ago we were scaling down from the largest scale military action in human history and in the process of repurposing industrial capacity from military to peacetime.

As a proportion of GDP. Adjusted for inflation, GDP has grown 600% since 1960.

Also, see NATO members who can avoid defense expenditure because US is their defacto defense force.

which nato members are you speaking of? and, do they face any credible threat?

Ask any formerly eastern-bloc NATO member how they feel about Russian annexing portions of Ukraine and Georgia.

How do they feel about what the NATO did with the Balkans?

All of them except the UK, Poland, Estonia, and Greece. The ones that face credible threats are Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and to a lesser extent Norway. The Netherlands believes they are fighting a cyber war with Russia. Trump is correct when he says that the US is subsidizing European defense. The US does benefit from this but not in a direct monetary sense.

This is not the only reason, though. The U.S. spends a higher percentage of its GDP on defense than other countries.

It can be argued this is necessary because some NATO members spend lower than they're supposed to. We basically foot their defense bill.

EDIT: Here's a chart https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/06/nato-members-def...

Makes you wonder though how despite all these collective spending, Russia with less than 10% of this budget remains a huge threat and NATO should further increase its budget to account for this. Seems more like we waste our money instead of spending wisely, doesn't it? Maybe someone should disrupt the war industry.

I think the two main considerations are the large number of countries that make up NATO allow it to seem very effective on paper, but in reality it'd be very difficult to coordinate the contributions of every country, especially considering the language and cultural barriers among members. It'd probably be incredibly inneffecient to try and lead the NATO members as a unified force. Another consideration is that even though NATO could easily win a war with Russia, member states probably want to present such an overwhelming military force that a war with Russia never breaks out in the first place.

I'm not advocating a wholesale increase in defense budget. There definitely is corruption and waste in there.

The point is that NATO members agreed in 2006 to spending 2% of their GDP equally and then didn't meet it. They agreed again in 2014 and the ball still hasn't budged.

Pledges are pledges. Whether it's a pledge to cut carbon and stop global warming or a pledge to chip in for the collective defense of everyone. Imagine if everyone decided to cut carbon and then it turned out to be all just hot air. If you don't honor your pledges it will hurt the any sort of future international effort.

It's cheaper to cause mischief than to maintain dominance. If we wanted to destabilize Chechnya, for example, we could do so for an infinitesimal fraction of the current US military budget.

> Maybe someone should disrupt the war industry

Boston Dynamics is trying to.

it's a bit complicated, because the US is also increasing the threat that those countries are under. With a military presence in 100 around the globe, the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons, the diplomacy of a punk band, and operations to de-stabilize multiple countries, there is a lot that get reflected on the allies.

why is it necessary, exactly? and who isn't putting in their fair share, in your estimation? and what threats might be so great as to justify high expenditure anyway?

I wasn't sure exactly but I know VDH is into this sort of thing so I searched "Victor Davis Hanson Nato Contribution" and snagged this result

"And when Berlin decides it will not pony up the promised 2 percent of GDP for its NATO contribution, other laggard countries follow its example. Only six of the 29 NATO members (other than the U.S.) so far have met their promised assessments." https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/nato-biggest-challeng...

3.5% versus 2.2-2.4% for UK and France. Somewhat more but not inconsistent with US commitments to NATO, Japan, and SK.

But your total defense spending should be informed by your enemies' total defense spending, not necessarily by the size of your economy. From that perspective I find the above statement pretty illustrative.

We've made a lot of enemies.

To be fair to the U.S. every powerful country makes a lot of enemies and throughout history there has always been some country that spends a large portion of their money to protect their interests and expand their power base. Egypt, Rome, China, Spain, Britain, France, Germany, The Ottoman Empire, Persia, etc. There's always someone globally at the top who needs to spend a large portion to protect entrenched interests and they inevitably fall because those entrenched interests forget that a country only states at the top if it's willing to make new and more powerful interests.

Red herring.

That's not in any way the meat of the article.

Here's the first paragraph:

> Americans are used to thinking that their nation is special. In many ways, it is: the U.S. has by far the most Nobel Prize winners, the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so countries put together) and the most billionaires (twice as many as China, the closest competitor). But some examples of American Exceptionalism should not make us proud. By most accounts, the U.S. has the highest level of economic inequality among developed countries. It has the world's greatest per capita health expenditures yet the lowest life expectancy among comparable countries. It is also one of a few developed countries jostling for the dubious distinction of having the lowest measures of equality of opportunity.

Also, it's fair to say that US has a huge economy because it spends a lot.

If it couldn't secure the global reach of its companies, it wouldn't be an empire

and two more:

The US military tends to buy things in the USA for obvious reasons. That costs more. One would expect the Chinese military to buy things made in China. That saves money, making the military effort look smaller.

The US military pays for lots of stuff that isn't really military. Consider VA hospitals for veterans. Some countries would count that sort of thing in a military budget, while others would not.

China buys a lot of of their current military from other countries, however that is changing as they seek to establish themselves. In 10-15 years they will probably be close to parity in technology, however nowhere near close in capability.

I'm not sure the US will allow China to close any type of military gap whether that's in technology or capacity. I worry the US will begin to view China as an existential threat over the next decade with a possible full scale war the decade after that.

Don't forget the US subsidizes the defense of European nations. How prosperous would they be if they had to defend themselves against foreign invaders?