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Date: March 04, 2025 08:08AM

The US spending is always skewed. They have a higher spend per GDP than almost anybody except I think Poland, and always have done.

The main difference between the US and (most of) the other countries though is it's self serving to spend on their own military. It's one of, if not the, largest employer in the country. It's basically a form of social welfare. The military industrial complex creates more jobs and more profits than anything else in the country. This keeps people employed, and paying taxes; and a lot of those people would have no chance at other forms of career. It keeps large companies profitable, which also helps investment firms, banks, retirement funds etc, which also helps prop up the economy and reduces reliability on the government to step in and help fund pension programs.

I know it doesn't pay for itself; but it DOES help offset some of the higher spending. I also know it's a very simplistic way of looking at things, but all I'm saying is it's not as black and white as it first appears and the benefits of spending more per GDP than the others directly helps the overall economy when you control the supply and manufacture of a lot of the equipment that's used (and similarly, pushing others to buy more means typically they'll buy more US equipment, so it's self serving also to push that line).

I do agree that everyone should pay their way though.