Racial problems are going to take another generation or two to finally wither (assuming they don't take up their forefathers' mantle, which is entirely plausible). Healthcare is shitty, no denying that, but it's good that people are able to point out that cost is the problem, not care. Thats why I believe that in the current state of Medicare, making it universally free would not remedy our problems. Whether it be the patient, government programs, or insurance, the cost is unacceptable on any scale. The costs are constantly raked higher than they need to be. If you don't have insurance here and end up in the hospital, 90% of the time you are fucked, plain and simple. The only exception I can come find is the ER, which is subsidized by the government with billions, and doesn't affect the rising costs of insurance, medicine, etc...
Cutting the military spending? Sure, just don't cut it too much. America is rooted very,
deeply rooted into the geopolitical climate, and a sudden budget cut means that their influence will dwindle drastically. Russia and China don't make major annexations because America is literally right fucking there, and can deploy within days to counter them. Many nations have foregone military spending due to assurances by the US that they will provide aid and defense when it is required. For the US to leave right now wouldn't be a good idea. I'm certain that less-developed nations would begin a mass military buildup in order to flex on the inevitability of nuclear proliferation. Also you have to take into account how much our military does. Contrary to what a few people believe, the military maintains a massive presence on trade, especially maritime. It plays a major part in the protection of vessels across the the oceans, and actively combats piracy and provides logistical support to those in need. It was true 400 years ago and is still true today, controlling the seas with a naval hegemony is vital. Yes yes, I know that we embargo people that we don't like, but I can't imagine the East being any kinder. As it stands, I don't think a single NATO nation has more than 100 available naval craft, and be able to respond quickly to any crisis at which the US can (looking at you Falklands). If you're going to cut spending, do it in areas that don't do much, and not so suddenly that it causes a massive shift in geopolitical influence that turns out for the worst.
Regarding the military spending, I will quote this Reddit post, which explains it far better than I can.
Spoiler
Alright, late to this party, so I hope it doesn't get buried.
Full disclosure: as an officer in the military, I see a lot more of the organizational and budgetary side of things than most, so I wanted to share my two cents on military spending and let you decide on whether we actually spend too much.
As OP mentioned, there's a lot of metrics people use on US budgeting. Let me explore some of these issues in detail and hopefully bust a few myths, give you a historical background, and tell you what we currently peg spending on.
Military Spending - And Its Myths
Yes, the US spends $600 billion dollars on defense. And yes, that's more than the next 7-8 countries combined (assuming China's budget is honest, which we believe is not). And yes, the US spends about 36% of the worlds total spending on military.
But, as OP also mentioned, as a function of GDP, the US is at 3.3% - lower than some nations (like Russia) and a far cry from the 5.6% the US spent in 1988 near the tail end of the Cold War. Source: World Bank.
In the post WW2 world, this is at an all time low per the CFR with it having peaked at 16% around the time of the Korean War.
So which metric is better to use?
Well the issue with looking at nominal spending is that nominal spending doesn't correct for cost of living.
Take into consideration what the military actually spends its money on. You can use Table 5.1 of the GPO or this nifty Official DOD Budget Request 2017 (yes, all this stuff is public) to see the pretty breakdowns.
Per the GPO, for 2013:
Personnel Wages - 25%
Operations and Maintenance - 43%
Procurement - 16%
R&D - 10%
Atomic Energy Defense Activities - 3%
Other - 3%
So right off the bat, we need to kill the myth that buying new equipment costs us the most money. It simply doesn't.
Why did I bring up cost of living? Let's take a look at personnel wages and benefits shall we. Per the DOD budget request, this chart shows that:
$130 billion was requested just for military personnel wages for the 2.1 million active + reserve
A total of $177.9 billion was requested on just military personnel wages + benefits
Another $72.9 billion was requested for civilian pay and benefits for the 760,000 civilian FTEs in the DOD
A full $250.8 billion or 48% of the DOD base budget is allocated to JUST pay and benefits
What does this mean? Consider that a Chinese soldier is paid roughly a tenth of the wages of a US soldier. So sure, if we went to a Chinese pay scale, we could save $120 billion overnight. But that's neither feasible, wise, nor is it a good indicator of relative strength with China.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that both China and Russia have huge domestic arms industries producing goods at domestic prices. Furthermore, the world arms industry isn't an open market - the US doesn't compete with China or Russia directly as nations only buy from other nations they trust. The US buys domestic or buys from close allies like Belgium and Germany, who have comparable costs of production. End result? The US often pays 2-4x as much for a fighter jet than the Russian equivalent because US wages, US suppliers, and US maintainers all cost US prices, not Russian prices.
As a side note, this also irks me about the whole "arms trade" statistic and how the US is the number one exporter. Sure, by dollar amounts, we are - but our goods are magnitudes more expensive. The fact that Russia and China - producing goods at Russian and Chinese prices - are even close, should tell you who is exporting more physical quantity of goods, but I digress.
In sum, using nominal spending gives you eye popping numbers, but it tells you little about relative strength between nations. If anything, it should tell you how little Europe actually spends on defense (especially in comparison to Russian strength), and that China is a lot closer to the US than most people realize.
Waste Exists - But It's a Complicated Issue
One of the top issues everyone talks about is waste. Let me first bust one budgetary myth though: use it or lose it is not a DOD only thing. It exists in all federal agencies (e.g. NASA, NOAA, etc.) because the budget is done annually. Money not used one year isn't seen again.
It DOES NOT mean you need to spend it to get it again next year - the budget request is done annually and things change based on need and what not. Admittedly though, it does make it harder to justify getting budgeting if you don't show need, so alas, the system is very flawed. Short of a congressional change to how budgeting is done though, we're in a tough spot.
Does waste in the military exist? Absolutely. Thankfully, people are noticing and paying attention - there has been a considerable shift in mindset in the past few years towards saving money. Of course this has to be balanced: you don't want to skimp on maintenance or training, as lives are on the line when things go wrong.
In some areas, waste is also balanced by operational necessity. For instance, aircraft routinely dump fuel. In carrier aviation, we dump fuel because we have max landing limits - too heavy, and we can snap the arresting gear on the carrier or permanently damage our plane. Thus, if we arrive at the boat too heavy, the choice might be to dump thousands of pounds of fuel... or jettison even more expensive bombs. To the layman, it seems like we're burning fuel for no reason - but there's a rhyme and reason for it no matter how much it sucks. (And for the environmentalists, jet fuel is kerosene based - it's nothing like gasoline)
Inefficient Spending Often Comes from Political Sources
One of the big issues with the annual budgeting is that there is little long term continuity in a field that necessitates long term planning. For instance, the new class of aircraft carrier has been in the works for over a decade - and was planned out two decades ago. And yet, funding for it has oscillated year by year.
I'll give you an example of how political grandstanding has royally fucked military personnel and arguably cost us more money in the long run: sequestration.
During sequestration, a stop was put on training new replacement pilots for the fleet. Hundreds of replacement pilots were put on hold for a year. Well, since they just got their wings in training (costing roughly $1-2 million to train, each), you don't want to cut them from the military, but you still need to pay them.
But here's where the long term effects come in: every pilot in the Navy serves a 3 year operational tour before going back to become an instructor of some sort for 3 years. Whenever a pilot in the fleet is done with his first 3 years, a new replacement pilot comes in to take his place. Suddenly, the fleet had a shortage of pilots, and too many instructor pilots with no one to teach. And once pilots are done with their commitments, a lot get out to pursue other interests in the civilian world. Talk about a waste of human resources.
But this balloons further: a few years later, that shortage of pilots means fewer pilots available to be instructors. Fewer instructors mean fewer replacement pilots. Surely you can balance out how many pilots you bring in right? But ROTC and the Academy projects how many graduates they need from 4 years ago: suddenly, you have too many pilots-to-be and not enough instructors, and the fleet may need more pilots.
I could go into more detail, but the point is this: seemingly small disruptions have BIG ballooning effects on how the military operates.
Likewise, a lot of 'inefficiency' comes from conscious decisions to save money, believe it or not. Take for instance, the fact that much of US equipment is old. In the 90s, with the Cold War drawdown, we stopped a lot of acquisitions programs. Equipment in the military is designed to typically operate in 30 year lifecycles - the notable exceptions are things like capital ships (aircraft carriers).
However, in the 90s, a lot of early to mid Cold War stuff was up for retirement - and instead of replacing them, their lives were extended.
This does, however, have an unintended effect on Operations and Maintenance - the US now has very old equipment to maintain. Some of our equipment is from the 1950s. I'm not even exaggerating - we have over 370 KC-135's, last built in 1965(!). For a long time - particularly with the Cold War drawdown - we put off replacing old equipment, but suddenly with a resurgent China and Russia, we've stretched a lot of these airframes lives out while in the late 2000's we finally sought replacements in the form of the KC-46.
All across the board you can see this happen. The F-22 was to replace the F-15 in the 90s/2000s, but was cut short and now the F-15 has had increasing costs rise to keep an airframe from the 70s and 80s flying. The A-10 was last built in 1984 - it was due for retirement years ago, but Congressmen (like McCain) have kept it alive long past their expiration date.
I hope this all gives a little insight into how a lot of spending issues do exist in the military, but the situation is far more complicated than a simple comparison of nominal spending with other nations, and how waste and inefficiency are complex issues within themselves - sometimes by design, sometimes by outside meddling.Alright, late to this party, so I hope it doesn't get buried.
Full disclosure: as an officer in the military, I see a lot more of the organizational and budgetary side of things than most, so I wanted to share my two cents on military spending and let you decide on whether we actually spend too much.
As OP mentioned, there's a lot of metrics people use on US budgeting. Let me explore some of these issues in detail and hopefully bust a few myths, give you a historical background, and tell you what we currently peg spending on.
Military Spending - And Its Myths
Yes, the US spends $600 billion dollars on defense. And yes, that's more than the next 7-8 countries combined (assuming China's budget is honest, which we believe is not). And yes, the US spends about 36% of the worlds total spending on military.
But, as OP also mentioned, as a function of GDP, the US is at 3.3% - lower than some nations (like Russia) and a far cry from the 5.6% the US spent in 1988 near the tail end of the Cold War. Source: World Bank.
In the post WW2 world, this is at an all time low per the CFR with it having peaked at 16% around the time of the Korean War.
So which metric is better to use?
Well the issue with looking at nominal spending is that nominal spending doesn't correct for cost of living.
Take into consideration what the military actually spends its money on. You can use Table 5.1 of the GPO or this nifty Official DOD Budget Request 2017 (yes, all this stuff is public) to see the pretty breakdowns.
Per the GPO, for 2013:
Personnel Wages - 25%
Operations and Maintenance - 43%
Procurement - 16%
R&D - 10%
Atomic Energy Defense Activities - 3%
Other - 3%
So right off the bat, we need to kill the myth that buying new equipment costs us the most money. It simply doesn't.
Why did I bring up cost of living? Let's take a look at personnel wages and benefits shall we. Per the DOD budget request, this chart shows that:
$130 billion was requested just for military personnel wages for the 2.1 million active + reserve
A total of $177.9 billion was requested on just military personnel wages + benefits
Another $72.9 billion was requested for civilian pay and benefits for the 760,000 civilian FTEs in the DOD
A full $250.8 billion or 48% of the DOD base budget is allocated to JUST pay and benefits
What does this mean? Consider that a Chinese soldier is paid roughly a tenth of the wages of a US soldier. So sure, if we went to a Chinese pay scale, we could save $120 billion overnight. But that's neither feasible, wise, nor is it a good indicator of relative strength with China.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that both China and Russia have huge domestic arms industries producing goods at domestic prices. Furthermore, the world arms industry isn't an open market - the US doesn't compete with China or Russia directly as nations only buy from other nations they trust. The US buys domestic or buys from close allies like Belgium and Germany, who have comparable costs of production. End result? The US often pays 2-4x as much for a fighter jet than the Russian equivalent because US wages, US suppliers, and US maintainers all cost US prices, not Russian prices.
As a side note, this also irks me about the whole "arms trade" statistic and how the US is the number one exporter. Sure, by dollar amounts, we are - but our goods are magnitudes more expensive. The fact that Russia and China - producing goods at Russian and Chinese prices - are even close, should tell you who is exporting more physical quantity of goods, but I digress.
In sum, using nominal spending gives you eye popping numbers, but it tells you little about relative strength between nations. If anything, it should tell you how little Europe actually spends on defense (especially in comparison to Russian strength), and that China is a lot closer to the US than most people realize.
Waste Exists - But It's a Complicated Issue
One of the top issues everyone talks about is waste. Let me first bust one budgetary myth though: use it or lose it is not a DOD only thing. It exists in all federal agencies (e.g. NASA, NOAA, etc.) because the budget is done annually. Money not used one year isn't seen again.
It DOES NOT mean you need to spend it to get it again next year - the budget request is done annually and things change based on need and what not. Admittedly though, it does make it harder to justify getting budgeting if you don't show need, so alas, the system is very flawed. Short of a congressional change to how budgeting is done though, we're in a tough spot.
Does waste in the military exist? Absolutely. Thankfully, people are noticing and paying attention - there has been a considerable shift in mindset in the past few years towards saving money. Of course this has to be balanced: you don't want to skimp on maintenance or training, as lives are on the line when things go wrong.
In some areas, waste is also balanced by operational necessity. For instance, aircraft routinely dump fuel. In carrier aviation, we dump fuel because we have max landing limits - too heavy, and we can snap the arresting gear on the carrier or permanently damage our plane. Thus, if we arrive at the boat too heavy, the choice might be to dump thousands of pounds of fuel... or jettison even more expensive bombs. To the layman, it seems like we're burning fuel for no reason - but there's a rhyme and reason for it no matter how much it sucks. (And for the environmentalists, jet fuel is kerosene based - it's nothing like gasoline)
Inefficient Spending Often Comes from Political Sources
One of the big issues with the annual budgeting is that there is little long term continuity in a field that necessitates long term planning. For instance, the new class of aircraft carrier has been in the works for over a decade - and was planned out two decades ago. And yet, funding for it has oscillated year by year.
I'll give you an example of how political grandstanding has royally fucked military personnel and arguably cost us more money in the long run: sequestration.
During sequestration, a stop was put on training new replacement pilots for the fleet. Hundreds of replacement pilots were put on hold for a year. Well, since they just got their wings in training (costing roughly $1-2 million to train, each), you don't want to cut them from the military, but you still need to pay them.
But here's where the long term effects come in: every pilot in the Navy serves a 3 year operational tour before going back to become an instructor of some sort for 3 years. Whenever a pilot in the fleet is done with his first 3 years, a new replacement pilot comes in to take his place. Suddenly, the fleet had a shortage of pilots, and too many instructor pilots with no one to teach. And once pilots are done with their commitments, a lot get out to pursue other interests in the civilian world. Talk about a waste of human resources.
But this balloons further: a few years later, that shortage of pilots means fewer pilots available to be instructors. Fewer instructors mean fewer replacement pilots. Surely you can balance out how many pilots you bring in right? But ROTC and the Academy projects how many graduates they need from 4 years ago: suddenly, you have too many pilots-to-be and not enough instructors, and the fleet may need more pilots.
I could go into more detail, but the point is this: seemingly small disruptions have BIG ballooning effects on how the military operates.
Likewise, a lot of 'inefficiency' comes from conscious decisions to save money, believe it or not. Take for instance, the fact that much of US equipment is old. In the 90s, with the Cold War drawdown, we stopped a lot of acquisitions programs. Equipment in the military is designed to typically operate in 30 year lifecycles - the notable exceptions are things like capital ships (aircraft carriers).
However, in the 90s, a lot of early to mid Cold War stuff was up for retirement - and instead of replacing them, their lives were extended.
This does, however, have an unintended effect on Operations and Maintenance - the US now has very old equipment to maintain. Some of our equipment is from the 1950s. I'm not even exaggerating - we have over 370 KC-135's, last built in 1965(!). For a long time - particularly with the Cold War drawdown - we put off replacing old equipment, but suddenly with a resurgent China and Russia, we've stretched a lot of these airframes lives out while in the late 2000's we finally sought replacements in the form of the KC-46.
All across the board you can see this happen. The F-22 was to replace the F-15 in the 90s/2000s, but was cut short and now the F-15 has had increasing costs rise to keep an airframe from the 70s and 80s flying. The A-10 was last built in 1984 - it was due for retirement years ago, but Congressmen (like McCain) have kept it alive long past their expiration date.
I hope this all gives a little insight into how a lot of spending issues do exist in the military, but the situation is far more complicated than a simple comparison of nominal spending with other nations, and how waste and inefficiency are complex issues within themselves - sometimes by design, sometimes by outside meddling.
