Perspective on Defense Spending
Someone told me the other day that defense spending has skyrocketed in the past decade, so the sequestration's cut of $50 billion per year over the next 10 years would merely return us to the spending levels of very recent history.
While trying to verify this claim online, I came across this interesting article by Fox News which briefly compares America's pending defense cuts to the quickening military escalations of our enemies. Sounds bad, right? Well, not so much:
But others argue that even with the automatic cuts, the U.S. defense budget will still dwarf that of its adversaries and allies -- when considered as a raw amount, as opposed to a percentage of the country's economy.
"If you look at it on a global level, the overall U.S. military spending is roughly 40 percent of all the military spending in the world," said Peter Singer, a senior foreign policy fellow at Brookings Institution. "So if you imagine for every dollar spent on militaries in the world, 40 cents of it is spent by the U.S. And roughly about another 45 cents of it is spent by our allies. If sequestration happens, we go from spending about 40 cents out of every dollar to about 38 cents out of every dollar. So you decline, but not by this massive amount."
Taxpayers spent $711 billion on defense in 2011 -- the equivalent of the next 13 largest defense budgets combined.
The second largest defense budget in the world that year was China's, which officially is reported at $142.9 billion -- a sixth the size of the U.S. total.
What facts and figures would you like to add to these? What is not being said, or not being said enough, in TV news coverage of sequestration?
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Comments:
Jan '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
How much of that is spent on missiles or jet fighters, versus medical or retirement coverage for soldiers?
Note: I have no problem taking care of our soldiers. But one suggestion behind the statistics is that we're spending so much more than other countries on weaponry, even though we already overwhelm the rest of the world in weaponry.
Also, speaking from my own bailiwick, much of the defense spending is targeted to information systems (computers, networks, satellites, etc.) that are naturally more expensive, and so the fact that we spend so much more than others is hardly a sign that we're over-spending. We have to protect a vast information network that, let's face it, isn't something Belgium has to worry about.
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
I'm concerned about exactly what they are cutting. Indiscriminate across-the-board cuts will harm the military. Some argue that the missile defense budget is inadequate already and further reductions that Obama has proposed could put our homeland in jeopardy.
Redundancies need to be targeted, but the government is rarely adept at cutting its own waste.
Mar '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
This type of problem worries me:
Mar '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Which also leads to this:
Mar '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
And this:
Mar '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
It is worth keeping in mind that the number given for China is almost certainly complete fiction. A great deal of their spending is obfuscated, particularly their military spending.
That said the cuts need to begin, this is being said as someone who's paycheck comes out of the DoD budget. Massive budget cuts are needed and the DoD is hardly so efficient that it cannot use a trimming. The cuts will almost certainly be poorly implemented but Dr. Krauthammer is correct on this point,a better deal is simply not in the cards.
Edited on February 9, 2013 at 8:09pmApr '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
It's never apples to apples; when my ship was doing disaster relief, it was still "military spending."
When I pay our insurance and the DOD pays their part, that's "military spending." (Husband is on active duty from a DOD job.)
The Vietnam vet family member who just got on military disability and is being treated for PTSD (it does actually seem to have helped him a lot, although I'm not sure if it's the treatment or reduction in pot smoking or the kids being out of the house) is "military spending."
When politicians decide to do a photo op with the troops, a "fact-finding mission" or Obama goes on vacation on AF one, those operating costs are "military spending."
Those guys you see on facebook, with springs instead of legs? Keeping them alive is military spending, as is helping them get back into society.
And we do a lot more of the stuff that puts people at risk of that kind of injury.
Besides being military for Europe, enabling them to go all welfare state; think they'll take up the slack with this economy? (Now_there's_an idea for targeted cuts...Europe's apron strings.)
Dec '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
We have been a nation at war (or wars) for the past 12 years or so. Of course spending is higher.
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
From Investor's Business Daily:
Cutting waste is one thing, reducing the "tooth to tail" ratio is generally good. But he seems to be going after the "tooth" part with unusual zeal.
May '10
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Central Scrutinizer
We have been a nation at war (or wars) for the past 12 years or so. Of course spending is higher.
So why not wind down while withdrawing from Afghanistan? Why must reductions in defense spending be so sensational?
As I have said many times on Ricochet, our country is the most influential in the world, so we also have the most enemies and most national interests in need of protecting. We need a stronger and more versatile military than any other nation, so leading in defense spending by sheer numbers is acceptable.
But you know how Democrats always pretend general budget cuts require laying off firefighters and policemen first or ending medical assistance for senior citizens first? That is exactly what is happening now with the recall of that aircraft carrier and many of these other arousing changes.
Exactly. The amount being cut from the defense budget isn't the problem. The problem is where those cuts are being made.
Transfer all UN funding to the DoD. What savings!
Dec '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Aaron Miller
Central Scrutinizer
We have been a nation at war (or wars) for the past 12 years or so. Of course spending is higher.
So why not wind down while withdrawing from Afghanistan? Why must reductions in defense spending be so sensational?
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Actually, it costs a lot of money to come home, but, yes, DoD war spending can be expected to decrease in time as personnel and equipment come home and as stockpiles are replenished and refurbished. There is plenty of room for cuts at DoD (assuming a commensurate reduction in mission), but sequestration is not a good way to go about it (particularly that reduction in mission part).
Jun '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
One of my concerns is that a comparison of XXX dollars for China to YYY dollars for the US, ignores the vast difference between the salary of a member individual in Chin and in the US, and then this continues across all fixed costs in the countries as well. The only way to compare realistically would be to establish a capability scale, where the dollars buy units of capability, then compare the result in the capability scale, since direct comparasions across Chinese and US currencies cannot be made (One can convert one currency to the other, but the result canno0t be compared in terms of capability due to the vast differences in what a given amount of capital will buy in the two economies..
Based on this, I am always afraid that their much lower budget is really increasing their capability much faster than our spending is maintaining/improving ours. I know from my dynamic modeling work in system engineering that establishing such a capability scale is the hard part of doing effective dynamic modeling, and the results are very heavily dependent on ones assumptions.
Is someone aware of such a scale effort publicly available?
Jul '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
There's a reason why our spending is so many times other countries' spending, combined - it's because we're defending them. Much of Europe's "progressivism" has been paid for out of US DoD spending - meaning France wasn't exactly covering its own defense concerns out of its own spending, it was relying on US spending on defense to make sure a Soviet Union didn't decide that a little more than Eastern Europe would be to their liking.
It's pretty clear that Barry doesn't want America to project power anymore. That means reductions in nuclear weapons and in carrier battle groups. In other words, he wants to ditch a policy that has more or less been in place since WW2, which is the ability (or close to it) to fight two major wars on two different sides of the planet at the same time.
It can readily be argued that we haven't actually done this, and/or that it's unnecessary. But I would argue if all the other gov't spending is stimulative, as we're told, why would you want to cut stimulus spending in the DoD?
Jul '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
(cont): They really are talking out of a 3rd mouth at this point. I'm guessing drone programs won't be cut, since Barry likes those. Tanks, maybe, he's not so much in favor of. Jet-things, well, didn't Bush fly those, so they must be bad. Let's just give those away to "largely secular" humanists who happen to run Egypt now.
Barry upped the spending in the first term. He's going to continue this in the second, but for the extra flava he's searching for, he'll grind DoD spending down and simply transfer those dollars to domestic spending, call it whatever he wants, then kick back for a late 9 holes somewhere on someone else's dime, and have them worry about the math.
It's good to be the Emperor of Nowhere.
Mar '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
It is even more misleading than that. Consider: the United States is a Pacific and Atlantic power, the budget you see reflects a global commitment and ability to respond to events anywhere on Earth. For other nations that is simply not the case but it is also not a concern.
A nation such as China can spend a fraction of what we do and still achieve all its strategic objectives within their sphere of concern, after all no one in Afghanistan is spending the costs of even a single cruise missile but they do not have to in order to tie us down for years.
Edited on February 10, 2013 at 12:42amAug '10
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
A couple of disparate points that create a possible conclusion.
- We have a president that thinks he and the Atty General can conduct the war with drones from Washington.
-A Navy with more admirals than ships
-A president willing to appoint a total doofus to SecDef,and one who sleeps with the enemy if we agree the enemy is Hamas, among others
-An assembly of military men who are trained to kill not administer or manage systems otherwise creates massive waste if there are smart people looking to skin them ( and us). i have personal experience here, it's bad.
So are you willing to risk the sequester ? Let's start with the EPA forcing to Navy to buy fake biofuel at $12 /gallon.
Jul '11
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
flownover: A couple of disparate points that create a possible conclusion.
So are you willing to risk the sequester ? Let's start with the EPA forcing to Navy to buy fake biofuel at $12 /gallon. · 0 minutes ago
In the EPA's defense, though, they're complete idiots. We need to take into account that they're morons. So to expect good things from them might require a fundamental transformation of what we have classically regarded as an agency that protects the environment.
It might just be that instead of turning swords into additional EPA regulators, we might want to build ourselves more swords out of the wasted bloat of an unelected bureaucracy that takes freedom away with penstrokes.
May '10
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Sequestration was a dumb idea from the start, obviously. The pivotal question is whether or not its effect on defense spending is acceptable under the circumstances we have been given.
Dec '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Of course it's not acceptable; it is survivable though. It is also not going to happen (IMHO). Too many furloughs of federal union employees would result. No politician, especially Mr. President wants that. It's just the latest episode of "Incompetent Government Theater." Sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and Sturm Ruger.
Edited on February 10, 2013 at 3:01amDec '12
Re: Perspective on Defense Spending
Here's a little human perspective on this whole affair. See post #4. I have family serving on the Truman; the CO announced Wednesday that the deployment is cancelled due to budget cuts; they were scheduled to depart Friday. Now, when they depart for a 9 month tour, these people do things: give up their apartments; store the car and cancel the insurance; travel home to say goodbye; cancel the cell phone; etc. etc. etc.
Chaos. All avoidable. All for nothing. Your tax dollars at work.
Edited on February 10, 2013 at 2:36am