Why is the U.S.’s military so high and why is it so hard to bring it down to numbers similar to other counties?
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The money doesn’t compare. There was just a r/bestof or r/depthhub about this very exact thing, which I can’t bother to find for you but I’ll just embarrass myself by paraphrasing extremely poorly.
Something like half the defense budget goes to salaries. Compare this to Russia who conscripts their soldiers and pay them dick.
The costs of provisioning isn’t the same, either. We outsource to government contracts to supply our military whereas other countries will use state owned means of production to keep costs down.
In all, if you adjust for these disparities in economies backing these militaries, you’d see we’re kind of competing on a similar level. The Russians develop a new plane, we develop a new plane, they’re very comparable in their role and mission profile, and the economic impact the R&D, maintenance, and operation of that plane has the same *relative* economic impact, even though such a thing would cost billions of dollars here and 7 rubles there.
But don’t forget it is in our economic and political interest to be as involved in global politics as possible. It’s modern imperialism. Instead of ruling them with an iron fist, we do what we can to enable them, to empower them, but to make it seem like life without us supporting them is untenable. When we are asked for help, we need to be able to mobilize and help. That means we need strategic deployments all around the world that can get what we need where we need it in time. And yes, that costs a lot of money. Better us than a political rival. Do you want to be subject to China or Russia having global political sway?
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