> They’d much rather have America sink into debt than touch the sacred cow of EU social spending.

Didn't Germany, Denmark, Romania, Austria (and possibly others I'm forgetting) already announce increases in military spending?

The trend is very much in the opposite direction. This is a tiny blip on the radar compared to the overall trend of defunding and downsizing European militaries.

You're right looking back, but this might just be the turning point. The German chancellor just announced an increase of military spending to exceed 2% of annual GDP, as requested by NATO allies for a very long time; to supply weapons to Ukraine; and to support the EU buying weapons for Ukraine.

As a German, each one of those points is really far out of what used to be the political mainstream for many, many decades, and has broad support. It feels like things really are shifting.

Yes, and comparable announcements have happened before. They have never lasted very long. Things might be changing, but they also might not. You're just making a proclamation of faith, here.

Yes, they increased from "hiring enough people to give Putin directions on the way to Berlin" to "way smaller than you'd expect with a lunatic next door". Germany announced an increase to 2% of GDP. For the three decades prior to the fall of the Soviet Union it averaged 3.5%.

> They’d much rather have America sink into debt than touch the sacred cow of EU social spending.

The US isn't sinking into debt (just) because of the military...

The US is choosing to overspend to help grow its economy and maintain a very lavish lifestyle for its population. It's banking on its currency being a global reserve currency.

The US population is in debt. Decreased military spending could go into 10x’ing the number of doctors/nurses/hospitals, but our system has instead 10x’ed the number of weapons/soldiers.

The US doesn't need 10x the number of doctors, nurses and hospitals. It needs to reduce costs in its existing healthcare system by a minimum of 1/3 to match other affluent peers. By doing so it could instantly expand Medicaid at little to no cost to around 40% of the population; it would make it a lot cheaper to backstop people with guaranteed coverage (no job, you're guaranteed Medicaid coverage, etc); it would make Medicare cheaper, which would reduce the deficits (now and in the future); and it would save households a lot of money on their health bills. The US has to shift further to a rationing care model (which is resisted in the US), as with all universal systems, to slash costs.

The US already has by far the world's most expensive healthcare system. Building a lot more hospitals would be a cost nightmare that would further drown the system.

US households are in excellent financial shape in terms of debt at both the median and the average, better than many of its peers (if you want to see horrific household finances, check out Scandinavia). US household monthly debt costs as a share of disposable income remain near the lowest levels in 40-50 years.

You could immediately reduce US military spending by $300 billion and it wouldn't make any consequential difference in the deficits problem the US is facing over the next 30 years, because it's overwhelmingly caused by required entitlement spending. There is no scenario where the US doens't run perpetual trillion dollar deficits, unless entitlements are reformed or taxes go way way up. We could already entirely get rid of the military and we'd still be facing enormous deficits in the coming decades, that's how bad it is.

entitlement spending is tied into medical and other prices that are out of control. A lot of that wealth would be much better spend by the poor and middle class than by the wealthy hoarding it away.