Anti-Japan protests in China spread.

[the2real4mafol]

mrstickball said:

the2real4mafol said:

mrstickball said:

SamuelRSmith said:

mai said:

If you want some real comparisons, compare military spending not against GDP, but budget. Anything GDP-related just serves the aim to delude people, you need to know what exactly contributes to GDP, how exactly budget correlates to GDP, taxtion, laws... omg, my head already hurts. But if compared against budget it makes the picture not perfectly but clear enough, the US spend smth like 20-25% of budget on military, this's high. As high as Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, India, but less than UAE (your ally). Not exactly the dove of peace, lol.

You have to consider that the United States political system works very differently to most other countries. Yes, defense as percentage of Federal budget is high... but it's one of the few areas that the Federal Government is supposed to focus on. When you include state Governments, which do most of the things that most central Governments do, the numbers are different. Also, local, etc.

To be fair, we have to spend 20-25% on the military since so many other countries that we're allied with won't bother to defend themselves. If the Europeans and Japanese would bother to get off their rear end and spend at a reasonable, NATO-required level, we wouldn't need to spend as much.

You do realise Japan was forced to give up it's army, when it surrendered to the USA in 1945. I believe it still stands now.

Although, you can't say much about Europe at all. America's military budget is still rediculously for what you are saying is defending other countries. America should just let these countries do what they want

Then NATO should be disbanded. NATO membership requires 2% of GDP spent on military for the common defense of all nations. Most European countries are below that threshold. I am not against disbanding the organization, since many countries are essentially relying on the US for their defense if anything happens.

I understand the Japanese situation as well. Again, I'm all for them amending their constitution to allow for larger budgets. They certainly need it.

yeah there is need for a decent military by all nations but i feel some countries just spend far to much on the military currently

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

as you can see few nations go above 2%