If Nato didn't exist its debatable whether western Europe could maintain their existing level of defense expenditure. The EU would also need to manage increased defense expenditure amongst member nations to avoid an arms race.
* Assuming that Germany remains responsible and doesn’t go NK route. Maybe that’s not reasonable.
* also assume we are talking about modern thermonuclear weapons
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rev...
Western Europe is over 40% while the US is at 27%. And the US figure include all public healthcare spending which is 60% of all healthcare in the US. So even adding private spending it’s still lower.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-a...
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...
I don't believe you. I think if you originally accounted for it, you would have known that your original value of 27% was misleading and you would have expanded on it.
If you did account for it, you wouldn't only now be saying 35%.
The alternative is to believe that you DID know, and you deliberately misled; I think that's not the case though. I don't think you're a deliberate liar; I think you've got an ego. Got one myself and sometimes I do the same thing.
You have NOW accounted for it, yes.
EU GDP per capita is 46,888 US 68,309
68000/100*27 = 18360
47000/100*40 = 18800
I was kind of surprised by this, when I ran the numbers.
Some of the examples I gave actually have a higher GDP per capita than the US.
The biggest countries (by population): Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland
All have lover GDP.
The countries with higher GDP than US (according to wikipedia): Luxembourg (pop: 638,153 ), Ireland (pop: 5,006,061), Norway (not in EU, pop: 5,457,423), Switzerland (not EU, pop: 8,717,698)
I am sure if you just take the richest few states, they are also richer than average US
It's not just about welfare though.
If they shut the plants down and something happens, what do they do? The assembly lines will have been shut down or retrofitted for something else and the experienced workers may well have gone to work elsewhere.
They already have to keep the plant available for readiness and the workers need experience building actual tanks, so they keep pumping them out.
Use the tanks we already have?
If actual combat kicks up, then tanks start getting destroyed or break down very quickly. If it takes a year to restart production, it's a very real possibility to not have enough before they start leaving the factory again.
Did you know that the Chinese state-run media is now hyping up nukes in preparation for a potential US war over COVID? [0] If they are actually working on increasing their nuke stockpile, they are definitely also working on increasing total military readiness.
If the US and China got into a conventional war, how long do you think the current tank stockpile would last? The US isn't going to take that chance and the very fact that they have a constant stream of available tanks is one more reason for China to avoid war.
On the whole, I'd rather pay a few dollars to help deter war rather than spend a bunch of lives fighting that war and in case the deterrent fails, at least we are ready.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/china-state-media-says-country-must...