The General US Politics Thread

Socialists.

When you get down to it the army gets a lot of perks and benefits that they probably don't even think about. Not to disparage them but they seem to feel pretty entitled from what I can tell.

edited 7th Oct '12 12:25:45 PM by Kostya

The American military budget is larger than than the 13 countries below us on the list combined.

If you think about it the army is one of the most socialist institutions in the world.

Cenk Uygar even acknowledges it.

But it makes up less than 5% of our GDP spending.

edited 7th Oct '12 12:37:55 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Does anyone know if it's true that Michelle Obama spent millions of dollars on vacations this year? My mother seems to believe this, but she's a tad biased towards the right.

Is that including or excluding discretionary spending?

5% of GDP is fucking huge

Particularly when you consider how large the American economy is-and thus, how large our GDP is.

I'll note that there are countries out there with larger spending on the military as a percentage of their GDP, but their economies are substantially smaller. I don't see why you'd expect military size to grow proportionally with the size of the economy.

Spending per capita might be a bit better of a measurement, though even then, I don't know that you need 1 soldier for every 100 citizens or something like that-the ratio doesn't seem like it should be constant.

It's a slight of hand. 5% of GDP spending has nothing to do with a percentage of the US Budget-it means, of every dollar spent in the US, 1 in 20 is spent on the US military.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:03:46 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

So what if she did?

Well tax payers probably don't want to be footing the president's vacation bills.

Uh...no reason.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:26:59 PM by Morgikit

Thank you, Tomu.

I found a global comparison chart, and our closest serious competitor in that respect is apparently Russia, at almost a full point lower. China, which everyone is just 2 points. More importantly, neither of them have any feasible means nor motivation for invading us at this point in time. There's no reason to 'gear up' for war except maybe insofar as we can benefit from the easy employment to soldiers and related job fields.

I get that a high four to five percentish sounds small, but when you look at the closest meaningful comparisons it doesn't seem very pretty.

Well, I suppose for people who actually WANT to invade Iran because Israel says they have nukes....

I cannot fathom that mindset, though. Not after Iraq and Afghanistan.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:29:07 PM by Karkadinn

Well according to this, Saudi Arabia spends more as a percentage by a wide margin.

I was under the impression that SA was still our ally?

What is this about Something Awful?

Edit: oh wait you're talking about Saudi Arabia.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:40:51 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

I was just saying, we're not the only country that spends a large amount on military spending. But, % of GDP is not really that great a measurement, IMO.

And how would you measure it?

@Morgkit

According to what I fund she has spent around 1 million on vacation fees.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:52:31 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Well, spending per capita is one way of measuring it, but I would expect that there are economies of scale involved, and don't think that that ratio should hold constant at higher levels of population size.

We also spend a ton of money on things that don't work when we invest in NASA. I don't really find the "useless government spending" thing a particularly compelling argument.

Granted, I'm fine with shifting military money to other areas (education and R&D, namely), but slashing it entirely isn't the smartest thing in the world.

Well tax payers probably don't want to be footing the president's vacation bills.

If they're using taxpayer money. I don't know. Just thought I'd see if anyone here knew what she was talking about. But I don't think I'll be making that mistake again though. Damn.

Thanks. That's disappointing.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:56:05 PM by Morgikit

Definitely: while military spending should be on the table, we shouldn't be cutting public sector spending while we're still in a slump, even if it is the military. But that being said, overseas spending isn't exactly giving us a very good return.

SO THEM MILITARIES.

IIRC, the US Dept for Defence is the world's largest employer. Singularly. Larger than the NHS, which is the world's third-largest employer.

... Which means that the US state (or whatever you Americans call the non-government part of government) is the world's largest employer.

0_0

On the subject, I'd suggest reform of the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations — it's something that has caused the US quite a few problems, made countries (even close allies) not buy US products and caused a falling out with Britain and Australia in the F-35 program.

If only we could funnel most of that money into NASA...

NHS?

National Health Service (British)