{"id":4389,"date":"2011-06-15T06:56:40","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T12:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=4389"},"modified":"2018-09-21T02:06:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T06:06:02","slug":"u-s-military-spending-compared-to-everyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2011\/06\/15\/u-s-military-spending-compared-to-everyone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Military Spending Compared to Everyone Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 July, 2011 marks the deadline for the raising the debt ceiling in the United States.\u00a0 Republicans are wanting dramatic reductions in spending before they will agree to raise the debt limits.\u00a0 What you won’t hear is the United States could immediately cut its spending by cutting military budgets.\u00a0 Let’s take a look at U.S. military spending compared to everyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the close of 2010, the United States alone accounts for 43% of total global military spending!<\/a> The next closest country on the list also happens to be the world’s second largest economy, China.\u00a0 The Chinese account for a paltry 7.3% of total global military spending.\u00a0 So the U.S. spends almost 6x as much as the nearest country.<\/span><\/p>\n

In absolute dollar terms the difference is: U.S. military spending of $698 billion – Chinese military spending of $119 billion = $579 billion!\u00a0 Tell me that wouldn’t have a positive effect on U.S. economic growth if invested in U.S. innovation or debt reduction.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about Russia, who many consider to be a more imminent threat to global stability than the Chinese?\u00a0 Russia accounts for 3.6% of total military spending.\u00a0 In absolute dollar terms the United States outspends the Russian by $639.3 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The remaining 7 countries in the top 10 military spenders are countries that the United States considers to be allies.\u00a0 So total spending on the part of the U.S. and its allies totals $1,040.1 billion ($1.04 trillion), as compared to $177.7 billion by the United States’ political rivals.\u00a0 That’s a difference of\u00a0 $862.4 billion.\u00a0 Another way of putting this is that for every $1.00 that China and Russia spend, the United States and its allies spend a whopping $5.85!<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the value of any investment has to be evaluated based on return.\u00a0 Presumably that gigantic military budget on the part of the United States (and to a much lesser extent, its allies) is purchasing security and a sense of security.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet, poll after poll says that Americans feel less safe after September 11, 2001<\/a> than before.\u00a0 So what exactly is it that military spending is purchasing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 July, 2011 marks the deadline for the raising the debt ceiling in the United States.\u00a0 Republicans are wanting dramatic reductions in spending before they will agree to raise the debt limits.\u00a0 What you won’t hear is the United States could immediately cut its spending by cutting military budgets.\u00a0 Let’s take a look at U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}