Global Militarism Index - US Ranks 30th

Not just related to GNP. As a percentage of the US federal budget, military spending has dropped steadily since the late 1960s; that includes the latter part of Vietnam, the so-called "Reagan buildup," the Gulf-WarI, Bosnia, and the WoT. Of course, none of these facts will stop internationalists from crying about our "Military-Industrial-Complex."
 
2idsgt - As a percentage of the US federal budget, military spending has dropped steadily since the late 1960s

Strange, that. It's not as if, for example, other elements of Federal spending might have increased more sharply over that period.
 

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It would be far more useful to plot military spending and other federal spendinghs each against total US GDP and foreign trade, rather than against each other within the federal budget. Some libertarians would prefer the total federal budget to be infinitesimal, and consist roughly 100% of military spending.
 
LowObservable said:
2idsgt - As a percentage of the US federal budget, military spending has dropped steadily since the late 1960s

Strange, that. It's not as if, for example, other elements of Federal spending might have increased more sharply over that period.
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I think 2IDSGT took for granted that people who were familar with the US budget knew this analysis was obviously included in his statement. In the US the defense budget seems to always take the brunt of "what we have to cut' to balance the budget. Yet it makes up a smaller portion of both the federal budget and as a percentage of GDP over the last 50 years with some exceptions.

And for the sake of analysis percentage of GDP, or the national annual 'wealth' production, is really the only true way to assess affordability.

Its like the person who makes $25k/year buys a $12.5k car and the guy who makes $1 million/year buys a $125k car. Sure he spent 10 times as much but that car was much more affordable to him than the other gentlemen who spent 50% of his income.

I found this report interesting because it was looking at other factors to determine a country's overall militarization by basing it on alternative measures, subjective yes, but interesting.
 
Orionblamblam said:
chuck4 said:
Some libertarians would prefer the total federal budget to be infinitesimal, and consist roughly 100% of military spending.
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That... would be spectacular.
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It would be awesome. Would work with my Twitter hashtag #OneTrillionforNationalDefense :D
 
bobbymike said:
LowObservable said:
2idsgt - As a percentage of the US federal budget, military spending has dropped steadily since the late 1960s

Strange, that. It's not as if, for example, other elements of Federal spending might have increased more sharply over that period.
Click to expand...
I think 2IDSGT took for granted that people who were familar with the US budget knew this analysis was obviously included in his statement.
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That was pretty much a given. LO's pedantic whining notwithstanding, there are other, more-subtle ways to gauge militarism as well. For example, how often does the typical citizen of a given country actually see armed military personnel... in person?
 
2IDSGT said:
That was pretty much a given. LO's pedantic whining notwithstanding, there are other, more-subtle ways to gauge militarism as well. For example, how often does the typical citizen of a given country actually see armed military personnel... in person?
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According to the actual report the indicies they use are:

the comparison of military expenditures with its gross domestic product (GDP) and its health expenditure (as share of its GDP);
the contrast between the total number of (para)military forces and the number of physicians and the overall population;
the ratio of the number of heavy weapons available and the number of the overall population.
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Which strikes me as somewhat simplistic just comparing military and health budgets and measuring heavy weapons tilts the index towards industrialised countries. I would imagine a stronger measure would be looking at how much of a role in civil government the military has and how deployed into the community the military force is. Which would show up just how militarised many third world countries are that may have low numbers of heavy weapons per capita and low cost military budgets.
 
Abraham Gubler said:
Which strikes me as somewhat simplistic just comparing military and health budgets and measuring heavy weapons tilts the index towards industrialised countries. I would imagine a stronger measure would be looking at how much of a role in civil government the military has and how deployed into the community the military force is. Which would show up just how militarised many third world countries are that may have low numbers of heavy weapons per capita and low cost military budgets.
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It would be pretty easy in America to go one's entire life without seeing a single armed & uniformed member of the military, except on TV. I remember how the CO of one of the other companies in my unit (or maybe it was a whole different battalion) once thought it would be cool to conduct a road march that passed through downtown Colorado Springs at around 0300 or 0400 in the morning. The sight of fully equipped infantrymen on the street set people to freaking-out and calling the police, thinking that something catastrophic had happened... and this was in a military town.
 
Your silly insults aside, Sgt, the fact is that you picked the measure most likely to understate the economic impact of the military.

"Armed and uniformed" is pretty selective as well.
 
This can't be right. Everybody knows 'Murica is a land of cigar-chomping war-mongers. I mean they spend more money on defense than the next 372 countries put together.
 
Im pretty sure by per capita population/people in uniform North Korea and Eritrea(!) are the top dogs.
 

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