Why is the U.S. military budget so high? Or is it?

I have always wondered about the Lefts cry about the US defense spending, lets take a look and put thing into perspective a bit shall we?

Why is the U.S. military budget so high?

Top ten military budgets. The U.S. spends the most by far, but matters aren't as lopsided as your letter suggests. The WMEAT list (in billions): (1) U.S., $281.0; (2) mainland China, $88.9; (3) Japan, $43.2; (4) France, $38.9; (5) UK, $36.5; (6) Russia, $35.0; (7) Germany, $32.6; (8) Italy, $23.7; (9) Saudi Arabia, $21.2; (10) Taiwan, $15.2. The U.S. military, therefore, spends as much as the next six countries (not 16) combined, with just about enough change to cover Greece ($6 billion). To put it another way, the U.S. accounted for 33 percent of world military expenditures in 1999, a modest increase since Cold War days (28 percent in 1986). Sorry, no breakdown on percentage of the military budget used to suppress dissidents or otherwise deal with internal security.

Now this puts a perspective on this subject, although we spend way more, we have more to spend as a % of GDP.

Military expenditures as a percentage of gross national product. The U.S. spends a lot on its military but has a lot to spend. Some other countries don't have much but spend it on the military anyway. World leader: Eritrea, which spends 27.4 percent of its $757 million GNP (world rank: 155) on the armed services, most of it presumably to fight its archenemy, Ethiopia. The balance of the top ten, with percentages ranging between 21.2 and 8.8: Angola, North Korea, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Congo, Qatar, Jordan, Ethiopia, and Israel. U.S. rank: 52nd, at 3 percent.

so if you follow the link and read the article, this will give you a better perspective on the numbers but keep in mind that as the only 'superpower' left, commitments, and the need to follow Reagan's "Peace Through Strength" goals, we are not quite the war mongers that they would have you believe.




#1 with a bullet:

[edit on 3-12-2004 by edsinger]

Well ... according to the press, the military budget is so high because every living senator and congressman is busy trying to sneak their pork into that particular budget plan. They do that because the document becomes too ponderous to really analyze the fine print due to limited time for approval. It's an old proven tactic, if you can;t get the guys to vote for something on it's own merits, sneak it into the Military Buget Appropriation vote.

I'm going to hold out on this thread and see what kind of responses are given... i will say this is something I already knew... Rest assured I'll more than likely be backing you up on this one ed...............

I'm personally in favor of a high military budget. Theres a lot of people out there that would like to kill Americans for the fun of it. Whether or not it's our fault I'll leave open to another debate. Either way the US has lot's of enemies.

BTW, edsinger are you sure about Russia's budget being at only 35 billion? I was sure it was more like 62 billion. I get back to this thread once I find my world almanac.

The Budget of Russia is dependent on the value of the dollar I would say but I do not think it was that high but I could be wrong.

CIA FAct book has it unavailable...???

thats odd....seems like something the CIA would be more than interested in....

The USA has to maintain a large military budget because it is the last remaing superpower to cut back on defense spending would invite disater.

The figures in that article seem slightly off, ed, this is what I found:

64.177.207.201...

Budget: $420.7 billion

www.cbsnews.com...

US accounts for 47% of world military spending

www.cia.gov...

CIA estimate of military spending for 2004.

Where has the discrepancy come from? Is your source quoting spending in specific areas or as a whole?

I heard recently that the U.S. spends 40% of the total Worlds defense budget..I plain English ED,that means that all the other nations in the world including the US..that's the whole 100% ,now almost half of that is spent by America ALONE..does that still sound not that much to you.....You are surely busy counting and checking what could possibely happen to such a strong economy..ah!!
but one thing remains a faact written in the history books and that's the fact the this Pres...has made a wormhole across the galaxy to your economy..he had a surplus of 6.5bil and now your where ,,I'm not sure but in the range of 4-5bil in the red ED..
I would'nt be thinking of buying any new high flying weaponary,if i was he or thee..you see what i see..

Originally posted by Horus_Re
I heard recently that the U.S. spends 40% of the total Worlds defense budget..I plain English ED,that means that all the other nations in the world including the US..that's the whole 100% ,now almost half of that is spent by America ALONE..
I would'nt be thinking of buying any new high flying weaponary,if i was he or thee..you see what i see..

Well it is still 10E9*0.04.5 = $450 Billion

If that is ~50% of the worlds spending then I guess our economy is that much bigger.

Looks to me that no one will defend us anyway so we had better be able to do it ourselves, it is not like Europe would help, hell they cant even defend themselves. The Balkan wars was a good example of this, even in its own backyard. I will grant that the main problem was a logistical one but the deficiency was there nonetheless.

It is likely the US military budget is bolstered by the laundered money from the CIA drug trade, primarily through Root and Brown, a subsidiary of Halliburton. They can also use PROMIS software to skim off bank accounts and move it into defense spending. One recalls the millions of dollars that "disappeared" from the Iraqi oil ministry profits after the occupation was well underway.

I don't think it's so much that lefties are crying about defense spending (aside from Reagan style $800 toilet seats) but merely forced to constantly remind you of it when you people have a frailin' conniption over something like $40 million for Food Stamps.

I'ts like you'll give your right nut to spend BILLIONS to defend a private corporation's oil transfer truck on foreign soil or liberate and feed another nation, but not one red cent for needy Americans.

Then you go off with the OxyContin induced delusions of the whole thing being some damn doctrine handed down by Jesus himself to make war, not bread and get all goofy with the revisionist Christo-Capitalism to the point you're all defending monopolies, outsourcers and drug companies to your own demise. :shk:

I'm not going to argue with any of you about the damn defense budget. It doesn't matter at this point if it's a nickel or a trillion dollars. We've got bigger problems.

Originally posted by RANT
I don't think it's so much that lefties are crying about defense spending (aside from Reagan style $800 toilet seats)

I remember the seats, hey back in the 80s when the budget for the defense included fixings on military installations, I was with my husband on Quatico VA. The entire base facilities were redone, and the toilet's seats at the officer's club had Marine Corp emblems on them emboss in gold.

It became the joke on the base. What a waste.

Hey if somebody wants to know why the budget is so high I suggest you ask the Carlyle group they are the ones that "manage our defense budget"

Originally posted by marg6043

Originally posted by RANT
I don't think it's so much that lefties are crying about defense spending (aside from Reagan style $800 toilet seats)

I remember the seats, hey back in the 80s when the budget for the defense included fixings on military installations, I was with my husband on Quatico VA. The entire base facilities were redone, and the toilet's seats at the officer's club had Marine Corp emblems on them emboss in gold.

It became the joke on the base. What a waste.

Hey if somebody wants to know why the budget is so high I suggest you ask the Carlyle group they are the ones that "manage our defense budget"

Well I might know a little about the budget in that sense and some items are pure watse no doubt, the government is the biggest waster of dollars in the world, but sometimes, sometimes there is a legit reason for some of this..........

But leftists would rather buy plane tickets for Carter to go see his buddies in Havana and Venezuela. Thank God they are not in charge....



[edit on 26-1-2005 by edsinger]

This thread may be nearly 20 years old, but I found a recent item online that uses interactive graphs and pie charts to explain why the US spends more on defense than its US allies in Europe, Asia, and Middle East, as well as Russia and China combined:
www.pgpf.org...

As noted in this blog item, the Congressional Budget Office projects that US defense spending as a share of America's GDP will fall to 2.7 percent by 2032, far lower than the 50-year average spending on defense of 4.3 percent of GDP. To achieve this target, defense policy makers at the Pentagon may have to be resourceful about how many B-21 bombers and Sentinel ICBMs will be built, and they may temper expectations about the number of NGAD jet fighters to be procured and the number of B61-12 warheads to be fabricated, given that the a few B61 variants will become the only remained strategic nuclear bombs in service when the B83 is retired.