Democrats Vote To Give Trump Obscene $717 Billion Mílítary Budget

[numberwang]

Hiku said:

numberwang said:

The Chinese military for example has about twice active personnel compared to the US (2.2M vs 1.3M ) which is obscured by exchange rate magic comparisons.

Flag	Country	Active military	Reserve military	Paramilitary	Total	Per 1000 capita (total)	Per 1000 capita (active)
	China[34]	2,183,000	510,000	660,000	3,353,000	2.4	1.6
	India[71]	1,395,100	2,142,800	1,403,700	4,941,600	3.9	1.1
	United States[166]	1,347,300	865,050	14,850	2,227,200	6.9	4.2
	North Korea[115][Note 9]	1,190,000	6,300,000	189,000	7,679,000	305.7	47.4
	Russia[131][Note 11]	1,013,000	2,500,000	710,000	4,223,000	29.7	7.1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel

The US would also outspend most following countries combined in social spending if you take a total Dollars exchange rate as a base of comparison.

Hold on, are you suggesting that the defense budget is primarily made up of soldier salaries?

Just a few weeks ago it was announced that USA finished R&D on some pointless military aircraft for obscene amounts of money. It was calculated that instead of that plane, that money could have covered everyone in the country for both healthcare and college for one or two years? I forget. I can look it up but it's not the first time their hyper expensive toys have made the headlines.
The development of these weapons are likely eating the majority of that budget. Of course, maintaining bases around the world is also very costly, but those countries provide US with trillions of dollars in exchange, and it's not as if those bases aren't of strategic value to the US. They're not just there out of the goodness of their hearts.

Every local service is much cheaper in China and India than the US, that is why you can't compare prices/wages in nominal Dollars.

The US spends nearly 3 Trillion Dollars annually on social services, 4x as much as the military. There is no other country that comes close to that in total nominal Dollars (and yet that number is equally misleading as some countries spend more as proportion of GDP).