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robinNL070 t1_jacg12u wrote

Reply to comment by Skorkabian in Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short by Majestyk_Melons

That is not the issue of defence spending but America not having a great healthcare system in general. Free market is great in many things if it is regulated to the bone on necessary things like healthcare. I can speak of the Netherlands that we on average spend less per person on healthcare with tax included than the U.S.

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Skorkabian t1_jachdwn wrote

Oh no, I don't disagree, I just wanted to remind you that the arm swings both ways, and a massive defense budget is money that doesn't get invested in public good. We spend roughly a sixth of the budget to maintain our doctrine of fighting the next two strongest countries, while letting our infrastructure crumble, our teachers need to work second jobs, and our hospitals be privatized to the point of excessive costs for minimal aid. Spend more, but don't spend so much it starts to eat into every other aspect of your society, like we do.

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robinNL070 t1_jacn26w wrote

That is really a myth to be fair. The U.S spend 3.4% while having a larger GDP per capita than the Netherlands and we spend 1.4% on defence. also a lot of our money we spend on defence doesn't come back in our economy but yours does and even makes money abroad. On infrastructure the U.S. is not as dense as we have so it becomes more expensive to have nice roads everywhere. We are also the europort so we need to have good infrastructure to get the goods to Germany and the rest of Europe. hospitals are also privatized here as well but more regulated than in the U.S. Even we need to regulate more still but that is an ongoing battle that will go on forever anyways and will become more strict or more loose with each time a political party is in charge.

I follow the U.S. politics a bit but they always seem to make a lot of noise for big changes and nothing happens afterwards because it is to big to change in one go. America should do it more slowly and incremental and become a tiny bit less populist on both sides democrats and republicans. We also have our problems to be fair and are not perfect at all.

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beaucoupBothans t1_jaeph5d wrote

US defense budget is interesting. It is roughly 3.4% of GDP but also accounts for more than 10 percent of the federal budget and nearly half of the total discretionary spending. the GDP number is a bit deceptive.

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