“Defense”
Proping up the vastly inflated military industrial complex*
This 100%. MIC is social welfare for republicans though so it will only ever get worse.
The US is just getting ripped off by private contractors and the rest of the military-industrial complex.
Is it me, or is their budget increasing or the others budgets decreasing?
I swear it used to be the same as the next 7 countries a while ago.
Of course, spending doesn’t actually directly translate into being able to make decent weapons. Since US relies on a privately owned military industrial complex it runs into the problem of perverse incentives. Companies want to siphon as much public money as they can from the government, and that means making expensive weapons that take a long time to produce and have high maintenance costs. This ensures you have low input costs because you’re not producing much, and that you’re able to keep sucking money out of the system for the few items you do produce. To put this into perspective, it costs ten times as much to produce an artillery shell in US than in Russia, and US is still unable to ramp up its production after a year and a half of war to match Russia.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is famous for its corruption having failed audits for 6 years in a row and is unable to account for $3.8 trillion in military assets.
All of this results in an incredibly expensive and inefficient system that isn’t actually able to produce basic things like artillery shells in large quantities. US military industrial complex is good at doing what it was designed to do, which is to divert taxes from things they’re meant for such as social services and infrastructure into the pockets of the oligarchs who own the war industry.
Yes, the US is bad, we can all agree on that. It is not a forgivable thing in a democratic country to have such an out of control oligarchy.
That said, why would the US or NATO want to ramp up production?
Look at how Russia in 2010. A major player as it had insane weapon stockpiles, nuclear capabilities and weakened but still strong alliances in Eastern Europe in Ukraine and Belarus. It had the EU by the balls through gas shipments. NATO was an irrelevant relic.
How does it look like now? It lost Ukraine as an ally, Belarus is not being helpful either. It is spending a significant portion of its weapon stockpiles on destroying a country that was one of its closest allies, while making money for the US. Every house destroyed is a contract for Blackrock, every fighter shot down is a new sale for Lockheed.
The war in Ukraine is grinding down Russia from being a major power, while the US is making bank off of it. It’s just going “Aw shucks we aren’t able to supply enough munitions to kick out Russia and stop this racket, guess you’ll need to knock out a few thousand more tanks!”
What I’m saying is that neither US nor EU are capable of ramping up production. Despite all the talk over the past year and a half, no serious ramp up in production has been seen. Meanwhile, Europe is now going into a recession and spending increasingly more money on the military is going to require more austerity which will in turn keep driving civil unrest.
Also, not sure what universe you live in where Russia is being ground down from a major power buddy. Russian economy is currently booming even according to western sources, Russian industrial production is at six year high, and Russian global trade is as big as it’s ever been. If you think Russia came out of this worse than the west then you really need to stop guzzling propaganda.
Might want to listen what a US ambassador had to say the issue just recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghvaq1AosN8
Now do healthcare and education.
This comparison caughts my attention every time. I wonder how well-spent this money really is, conceding it’s for “defense”.
This is the proof that it is a failed nation.
Plenty of successful nations spend a lot on their military, it’s just important to recoup the investment by invading other countries for resources when they get bored so they’re too busy to launch a coup
“but we need to protect our country”
And yet, they keep losing more than winning. Unless you got stocks in weapons…
If you win a conflict decisively, then the conflict is over and weapon sales dry up. Continuous, low-level, indecisive battles are what keep the weapon dealers in business.
Ah yes, the epic fail of Ukraine being able to not collapse due to American equipment propping up the armed forces against Russia.
Situations like this is why the budget is so high.
Losing more than winning?
Not saying it’s right or worth the disproportionate investment, but the true value is the threat they pose keeps other countries in line (to a degree), winning the battle before it starts.
On the other hand, I doubt China is spending $14,000 on one toilet seat, so the bloated US military budget probably doesn’t even convert to proportionate fighting capabilities. For example, all that money and the US can’t even manufacture enough artillery shells to keep Ukraine going against Russia and it’s tiny sliver of expenditure on that chart.
How much has been spent on R&D for hypersonic missiles in USA? How much was spent in Russia or China or Iran? and who has hypersonic missiles?
Russia, China, and Iran (the last of which isn’t even on that image) have hypersonic missiles, which effectively mean that aircraft carriers are now pre-sunk artificial coral reefs in a direct conflict with those countries. America does not have hypersonic missiles and keeps failing their prototype tests.
Well, how many aircraft carriers did the US lose so far? I mean Russia just lost a shitton of military equipment fighting one of its former allies while the US made bank by rearming half of Europe, there must be an equivalent response from Russia then, if they are capable of it, right?
I don’t think they’ve been proven in any real sense to satisfactorily bypass the insane defences those carriers have. They’re boasted as sorta wunderwaffen at this point lol
America does not have hypersonic missiles and keeps failing their prototype tests.
I don’t know how big of a priority it is for them, considering the situation Russia, China and Iran have with aircraft carriers
This is what we have instead of health care, and boy do we have a lot of it
Not really true.
In 2022 the US spent an equivalent amount on Medicare as it did on defense ($747 billion vs $751 billion), and another $592 billion on Medicaid. US defense spending represents only 3% of GDP, and about 14% of the total federal budget.
The largest budget item is Social Security at $1.2 trillion.
Social program spending in the US massively outstrips military spending.
This is true but we should keep in mind:
When we say military spending, what it really means is: how much is the US government granting the military industrial complex for them to accept powering its military
When we say Medicaid (and others) spending, it is: how much is the US gov giving to medical insurance companies to allow a sunset of poor people to have some healthcare?
Those companies are intentionally setting outrageous prices and the US is happy to pay them.
It just came out that the true defense budget is over $1.5 trillion. So… higher than social security.
[citation needed]
This is disingenuous, there is legislation in place that prevents the government from negotiating the price of medicine, keeping it wildly inflated compared to other countries. The US effectively isn’t doing social spending with that margin* but just laundering money to health insurance companies, medicine manufacturers, and patent barons.
*3 to 10 times the cost you see in other countries is the common range, I think, though in individual cases it gets much higher and there are some ~1:1 prices.
So sincere question: why the fuck is it so god damn awful over there then? People going bankrupt over medical bills isn’t a thing in Europe, and your social care appears non existent…why the dissonance between expenditure and apparent results?
Because our healthcare is run for profit at the behest of insurance and pharmacy cartels.
Surprisingly, if healthcare is governed by the profit motive instead of an actual duty of care towards people, then the people in charge of healthcare will focus more on making profits than on providing care.
Never you fear, the disparity between America and Europe will go down. Not because America will improve - god no, it’ll get worse, even - but because the capitalists, backed by fascists, are here to loot European countries and rip the wiring out of the walls as the profitability crisis continues.
because the capitalists, backed by fascists, are here to loot European countries and rip the wiring out of the walls as the profitability crisis continues
Healthcare-wise this is already well under way, at least in France and the UK.
Shouldn’t it be adjusting for buying power? Chinese tanks are also cheaper.
Probably complicates things. If we’re taking into account the cheapness of Chinese tanks, maybe we need to evaluate the strength of American tanks and equipment vs Chinese equipment.
Spending seems like a better way to get an idea.
As we’ve seen in Ukraine and other conflicts where US equipment has been used, it’s certainly nothing to write home about.
??? Infantry in Ukraine are able to easily take out tanks if they don’t come properly supported thanks to our anti tank munitions. This is something Russia didn’t anticipate or else they wanted have gotten so many tanks destroyed. That’s such a huge impact. Also, we haven’t even provided our newest planes to Ukraine, and still Ukraine pushed Russia back quite a bit. This war has shown how big of a difference US equipment is vs Russian.
meanwhile in the real world https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-russia-canadian-forces-1.6443048
Lol what? This single story counts as statistical evidence or something?
No, this story is representative of many other stories and reports as anybody who actually has a clue would know.
Not really, wages make up a large portion of military expenditure and I don’t think there are major differences between the individual “strength” of a soldier/engineer/whatever.
wonder how much of it is just yeah this 1 doler bullet is actually 10
All of it. The US military is so bloated even the soldiers complain about the prices, and they’re not even the ones paying.
Military spending isn’t a bad thing but I wouldn’t trust numbers from China and Russia, Russia being in an active war and China rapidly expanding
And still loses to farmers.
Afghans beating British Empire, USSR and the US/NATO. Who is the madlad that goes next for it, it would be China’s turn to have a crack at it imo
