Defense spending chart
 

I hope this isn't a repost. The U.S. is, of course, the bar on the left.
http://www.adbusters.org/home/images...01/30chart.gif

Costs alot to be top dog.

Cost a lot to defend nations that cant defend themselves.

Also costs a lot to have the best equipment in the world.

France spent about $250 million (I think, or somewhere close to that, anyway, an official shitload) developing this brand new fighter jet. Head-to-head, an F-14 is almost equal, a F-16 is superior, and a F-22 is just plain dominating against it.

Actually it costs alot of money so that other nations don't have to have a standing army comprable to our own, thus establishing us as the sole hyper power.

somebody tell the US govt that the cold war is over!

I'm all for defense spending, but a vast quantity of that money is being spent for useless causes (like the bases we operate around the world)

I don't see the point of that chart other than to undermine the reason for the commitment to the US military. Can you tell us the context of this chart?

I still can't find a use for an army owned by a single country, besides maybe for humanitarian reasons.

I mean who is there to fear seriously, countries don't attack each other nowaday, well besides the US of course, it's all groups and organizations operating internationnally, therefor the use of an international force.

I know i'm not making friends here posting that :)

First - The best way to insure peace is to prepare for war

Second - If we can convince North Korea, China, terrorists, etc, that killing us is a bad thing, then we can spend less

Third - $390 Billion out of a $2,229 Billion Federal Budget. That's 17% of the budget to defend the citizens. I think that's a fair amount. Defense IS one of the primary responsibilities of the ferderal government.

Actually, I believe a majority of the money is spent towards soldiers. Pay, housing, food, soldiers are our number one expense.

That is the only argument that holds water. Still imagine what we could do if we used 15% on the budget on defense.

We would have to cut stuff.

For someone volunteering their life to protect mine, I'll gladly give up that 2%.

If anything, we should increase the spending so we can give those soldiers the pay raise they deserve.

Why do you think I'm undermining the reason for our military commitment? By posting a chart? People can draw their own conclusions. I posted this chart neutrally, I just thought it would be interesting to see how people would find a way to debate about it. Some of the responses are thought-provoking, from both sides.

edit: on a personal note, I am new to the politics board. I thought this would be a way to test the waters.

Does anyone have stats like this for other countries? I think it'd be interesting.

I'd say more than half of it is waste & pork.
My time in the DOD proved that to me.

They need to get it under control.
Unfortunately, the foxes look after the henhouse.

Sure:

China-purchasing power parity - $5.7 trillion (2002 est.)
Defense:$55.91 billion (FY02)
% of GPD:4.3% (FY02)

France-purchasing power parity - $1.54 trillion (2002 est.)
Defense:$46.5 billion (2000)
% of GPD:2.57% (2002)

England-purchasing power parity - $1.52 trillion
Defense:$31.7 billion (2002)
% of GPD:2.32% (2002)

Germany:purchasing power parity - $2.184 trillion (2002 est.)
Defense:$38.8 billion (2002)
% of GPD:1.38% (2002)

Israel:purchasing power parity - $122 billion
Defense:$8.97 billion (FY02)
% of GPD:8.75% (FY02)

India:purchasing power parity - $2.66 trillion (2002 est.)
Defense:$11.52 billion (FY02)
% of GPD: 2.3% (FY02)

You can find tons of stuff at
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

I find that incredibly hard to believe, considering that we have billion-dollar aircraft.

This is great proof that the nations listed on the right need to "pitch in" on the cost of defending their nations. We spend so much so they can spend so little. I'm not saying we should but, if the US pulled out of NATO, told the nations of asia, the middle east and europe that they were on their own, in ten years you would see a much different chart.

Granted this is FY02, but this gives you an idea:

According to Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Dov Zakheim, the DOD budget is broken up as follows:

-- Procurement, $61.6 billion;
-- Operations and maintenance, $125.7 billion;
-- Research and development, $47.4 billion;
-- Military personnel, $82.3 billion; and
-- Other, $10.6 billion.

So about 25 percent of the budget is manpower.

By the way, Gephardt wants to spend over twice the amount we spend on defense ($900 billion) on a national health-care system. :D

Thats the catch, we do this so that they don't have standing armies anywhere near comprable to our own. Thats why we do many things such as police the middle east, remain in Nato, and have a military presence in S Korea. It appears the strategy is working.

Hey, is "procurement" all those recruiting ads that I see in the theaters more and more these days?

I don't think so. Procurement is the money the military spends money to buy things, like planes and bombs and uniforms, etc. I think the money for recruitment comes from the personnel part of the budget.

I think it's interesting to hear us debate the amount of money we spend on the military. Sure it's a lot of money- much more than any other country spends, but it's far less than we spend on education. And, while our military is undisputably the best in the world, our education system lags woefully behind the rest of the developed world. Because the figures for the amount of money we spend on education are buried deeply in 50 different state budgets, nobody rags on that spending. Wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere? Or better yet, given back to the people from whom it was extorted, the taxpayers?

I'd rather have most of my share of military spending back.

And the question beckons: why bother defending the rest of the world?

On the one hand you want to intervene and feel its a must, then the other side you don't want to so we're left alone in the 'bullshit' everyone cries about.

So what will it be? Can't have both here.

Soviet America. No, I don't like the ring of that. I think what we have now is fine.