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.

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.

One of the most important stuff is defence. If we in Europe had payed 2% of our budget on our defence we would have had far less issues now. Hopefully we have learned our lesson but it will still take a decade to get back at what we need to be to become a serious player to make a country think twice before they start invading someone.

The whole reason we have such a high GDP and have schools, healthcare and everything is because of the global security of free trade. It pays itself back many times to have this world order.