It’s true that USA spends the most in the world in total dollars on the military spending, but we come in at a dismal #46 by spending only $0.24 per $10 of GDP (a better measure, IMO). Imagine how more bad-ass we’d be if we were spending like those guys in Oman who spend at $1.12 per $10 of GDP.
See the complete list here: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_pergdp-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-gdp
#1 United States: $11,667,515,000,000.00
#2 Japan: $4,623,398,000,000.00
But then take into consideration our GDP. Almost 3x as much as the next leading country. Oman is like #73.
I don’t think we should base our military policy decisions on the actions of a government in a nation surrounded by belligerent aggressors.
Besides, imagine how great it would be to live here if we took every dollar spent for military and matched it internally for infrastructure, education and health care.
Good image, The Duck. I’m gonna go compare the two lists. What really surprises me is Bosnia and France. France has a big GDP for a country of it’s size, which implies heavy military spending. I’m not one of those people that cries every time the word ‘France’ is spoken, but I did assume they were generally pacifist and anti-military nowadays.
Bosnia, I thought, was mainly being administered by the UN, and was still chalk-full of foreign armies. I guess I’d need to look it up, but I reckon it’s because they have such a low GDP in the first place.
And China being on the list isn’t a surprise, but damn it scares the hell out of me.
Of course, the total defense expenditures of the United states is at #1, spending almost 5 times more than the #2 (China). According to the other options on the chart, the US spends $276,700,000,000.00, and China spends $55,910,000,000.00. The United States is only #3 when it comes to spending per capita, behind Israel and Singapore. We spend a piddling $935.64 per person per year.
What I find interesting, though, is that Russia isn’t even listed.
I think our military spending is a lot more than just $276.7 billion.
Military Spending for 2008
$812 billion:
• Military Personnel $136 billion
• Operation & Maint. $249 billion
• Procurement $111 billion
• Research & Dev. $70 billion
• Construction $10 billion
• Family Housing $4 billion
• DoD misc. $6 billion
• Retired Pay $52 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $10 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $31 billion
• Exec. Office of President $1 billion
• Veterans’ Benefits $85 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $1 billion
• plus … anticipated supplemental war spending requests of $20 billion in addition to $141 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan wars already incorporated into figures above
Our GDP (approximately) for 2007 was $13.8 trillion. As a percentage of GDP, our defense budget is 16.77%, or $1.68 per $10 of GDP. Am I doing this right? It seems like those orginal statistics are way off.
My mate reckons you’re wrong.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
“800 billion is 8% of 10 trillion, so 800 into 13 trillion must be less than 8%”
Ando, you’re right. I fucked up my math. With a GPD of $13.8 trillion and defense spending of $812 billion, defense is 5.9% of GDP. Thus, the US spends $.59 for every $10 of GDP. That’s still over double what the original chart says, though.
$.59 puts us at 11th place, right behind Iran. Woo Hoo!
Why is any faith being put in these incomplete tabulations ? are we just monkeys to their bananas ?