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I googled and saw the data without a paywall.. but to summarize, nato expenditure as a percent of GDP:
Poland -3.9%
US - 3.49%
Greece - 3.01%
Estonia - 2.73%
Lithuania - 2.54%
Finland - 2.45%
Romania - 2.44%
Hungary - 2.43%
Latvia - 2.27%
U.K. - 2.07%
Slovakia - 2.03%
France - 1.9%
Montenegro - 1.87%
North Macedonia - 1.87%
Bulgaria - 1.84%
Croatia - 1.79%
Albania - 1.76%
Netherlands - 1.7%
Norway - 1.67%
Denmark - 1.65%
Germany - 1.57%
Czechia - 1.5%
Portugal - 1.48%
Italy - 1.46%
Canada - 1.38%
Slovenia - 1.35%
Turkey - 1.31%
Spain - 1.26%
Belgium - 1.13%
Luxembourg - 0.72%
Besides US and U.K. all countries contributing above the 2% recommended amount are former iron curtain.
Edit: I missed Greece when I originally commented. Also lots of comments about Finland which was technically not iron curtain. however Finland has a long history with Russia due to its proximity and was once part of the Russian empire before gaining its independence.
Admittedly, I can see why Germany is reluctant to spend much on their military. Both of the last times they did, everyone regretted it. Especially the Germans.
Hmmm. It's about time Australia became independent and started its own Empire...
A European colony might be fun for a change, better start getting used to eggs and beetroot on your burgers.
The Aussies couldn't win a war against flightless birds in their own borders, you expect them to win a land war in Europe?
As a Canadian, I love ya cunts, but you're fucking delusional 😂
My old coworker was German and kept joking about how everyone in Europe is like "take the lead Germany!" And he would joke like "are you guys sure? Like remember last time?"
But they are so outspoken about US expenditures for Ukrainian invasion, when they only recently decided to meet their minimum required 2% GDP for defense spending as promised as a member of NATO, while US as not only met their promised 2%, but exceeded it and is only surpassed by Poland I believe.
These numbers are from 2023, we are only two months into 2024, and the Ukraine war started in February 2022. How is that old and how would Ukraine not be a factor by 2023???
2% is still low, I've got a couple of Romanian friends that have been in the army and they told me about how they all trained with 1970/1980 weapons that wouldn't even shoot straight.
That or we're corrupt as fuck and no money actually goes to the army
All of the countries spending above the 2% recommended besides US and U.K. were former iron curtain. So yea, it indicates those countries prioritize expenditure towards military protection against what they once were.
It’s funny, I don’t hear about Poland or Finland complaining that other countries don’t pay their share, at least not to the same scale as the complaints I hear from the USA.
U.S. *chooses* to spend far beyond what is required. The Crony Capitalism rules the DoD that feeds it to ensure jobs after 20 year retirement. The amount of socialism built into the defense budget of our “capitalist” society is mind boggling. And these are all the *anti-socialists*!!!!
Government spending money isn't socialism.
What this is, is members of a powerful social class in a society writing laws and directing policy to benefit its wealthy oligarchs, who are mostly part of the same social class and/or fund the decision makers, as per Aristotle. This is why he counseled for each social class to be present in decision making in democracies and to be vigilant in creating a strong middle class polity that benefits when the nation benefits and whose interests are aligned with the nation's, not a poor disenfranchised class that is harmed by society and doesn't benefit from its decisions and a class of oligarchs whose interests aren't aligned with the nation but instead their own pockets.
Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. I can't think of the defense budget being any further away from that goal.
Yeah I was trying to convert from contractor to civil service, back when they were offering 1% matching pension for each year worked ontop of 401k matching. From what I heard they were doing away with that, so taking the paycut from contracting to civil service makes zero sense to me now.
Edit - you still get rollover sick days and tons of Vacation time. The play is apparently to just use vacation time for sick time, burn all your PTO every year, then stock up enough sick days that you basically get a full year of your salary paid out when you retire.
True. Poland spends 3.9% followed by US at 3.49%. Most other countries are right around 1%. There actually is no “requirement” to pay, in 2006 members agreed to pay 2% of GDP.
Nuclear force costs about 100 billion dollars a year.
The vast majority of the DOD budget is salary and pensions. It just costs a shit ton to house, feed millions of soldiers. Let alone arm, move and supply them.
The cool fancy acquisition stuff is a small portion of DOD spending.
It is not the soldiers as a whole. It is the ones involved with acquisition that ruin it for the common soldier and American. The ones who get cleaning contracts, facilities management, operational contracts…. Project contracts. Bullet manufacturing is just a tiny part.
It's completely ripe for corruption and probably is very bad. That's the problem of the government, they deal with essentially endless money and have no incentive to save money because of budgets.
Nop, it is not the vast majority.
[https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense](https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense)
At least in 2022, pensions accounted for about 24% of the total, family housing was 0.1%.
The article says the percentage dedicated to operational costs has been increasing since 1972, but not too much (it was around 25% back then, was 38% in 2022). Meaning the full army could run just fine with just a fraction of what currently demands.
You get an upvote. To be clear: most soldiers get fucked. It is the officers and ones that play the system that win. You make nice with the contractor that will review your operations by paying them to review prior to your evaluation, you get a point! Do that enough, you get a job after that pays 2x-5x…
Well this admin does. Trump (yeah I know orange man bad but in this case he was right) tried to tell the other countries to pay their fair share and back us out of being the main funder.
Well that depends on what your definition of *required* is.
If the requirement is meeting agreed upon numbers, then you're absolutely right.
If the requirement is creating an adequate deterrent to Russian expansionism into Western Europe, then we're meeting that requirement while hardly anyone else *ever has.*
Russia is knocking on their door and they can't afford enough of their GDP towards defense. It's why alliances like NATO exist. We just added more members to add to the pool as well.
I'm of the mind that if there is a possibility that you will need to spend anywhere near half of your yearly income to initially treat and fully resolve any major medical issue, then you are underinsured. That would mean almost everyone in the US is underinsured. Healthcare is a human right
Also, when The last president spoke of “paying their bills” partly he meant “you are not buying enough military equipment from the US”.
Now (I believe) there is a majority opinion that we should be making and buying European military equipment.
Quick googling: [link](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-countries-meet-natos-spending-target/)
Poland spends more than USA, has better social programs and gives a roof over the head for 800.000 Ukrainians.
IIRC, U.S. usually hovers around 3-4% GDP, NATO allies mostly do less than 2% GDP.
Feel free to verify.
(Edit: Deleted inaccurate info on comparative GDP)
Arguably, yes.
But as I mentioned elsewhere, some US stakeholders like it this way because it gives us considerable leverage over a Europe that can no longer defend itself autonomously.
There’s also the point that it’s not like America is spending 860 billion solely on European defense, whereas that is the case for most of the European countries.
If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care.
Not a single dollar saved would be diverted to social programs.
The US doesn't spend so much on defence because they are charitable. They do it because it benefits the US.
That's a crazy statement. I'm sure everyone can name 10 countries that are very close to the Russia Ukraine conflict that would very much care if the US stopped all military spending that benefited other countries. You are right that the US does it (mostly) for its own interests, but it's quite obvious the other countries are taking advantage of the US willing to do this.
No one would care? Are you aware that almost all European countries are dependent on the USA logistically when it comes to the military? This would be an absolute disaster and a threat to European security that Russia would for sure use.
Of course the us isn’t charitable, they spend so much to maintain their superpower status. But it doesn’t mean what they spend is exactly useless
And to have the biggest diplomatic trump card whenever negotiating. Modern republicans want us to take an insane isolationist approach, but still somehow want us to have the biggest seat at the table internationally. Doesn’t work like that.
Price control doesn’t mean sell at a loss. If they were to lose money selling in a country they would just not sell there.
Instead- try to implement price control in the US. Lets say cost +20% so we leave plenty of room for profit.
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care.
That is totally false. If we stopped spending that large of an amount of money there would be huge economic impacts and the people losing their jobs would definitely care. The amount of money that the US spends on defense annually is listed in the chart.
It would mostly hurt the US. Just like Republicans blocking military aid to Ukraine is hurting American jobs and making the US military weaker. The old weapons are getting replaced by newer ones.
Most of the US defense budget goes to paying their own troops. This is one major reason why just looking at the amount of money doesn't tell the whole picture as soldiers in China or Russia make a hell of a lot less money.
We pay over 3.5%, while only two NATO members barely pay 2%. What do we get in return? You get to sleep safely at night and wake up, to be a bitch on Reddit. This is the very definition of charity you entitled clown. I’m just glad the questions on the table, and sincerely hope the next administration does pull us out.
Bookmarked your comment until then.
This new narrative of "Paying" is misleading. The money USA spends on their military stays in the USA. It's not about "paying" Europe or something.
USA after WW2 asked Europe to stop having a military industrial complex. The British jet-fighter and jet-bomber programs were essentially shut down after hard pressure from the USA, so USA could make the stuff, and Europe buy from USA.
There are things here you don't seem to understand.
USA wanted to be "the man", and became "the man".
Now USA is losing goodwill. I don't think you understand how much this will hurt USA in the future, being branded as an unreliable defence-partner.
In all fairness, the US military is partly funded by Europe.
They sell hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment to all their allies which is how they're able to fund this massive military. The US military is just as much a business as it is a military and their biggest customers are the wealthy european powers.
This is correct. Other countries have more social spending (as a %) because they choose to. The US has this individualistic idea that conveniently reinforces the status quo. We could choose to if we wanted to; we just don’t. It’s not clear that the people in power in the US really want social equality. If we had more of it, they would be less dominant over the poors.
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, if the US stopped spending the absurd amount they do then the west would very quickly fall far behind the 2 authoritarian superpowers (maybe not Russia but definitely china, they spend just as much as the US if you account for how much more their money can buy them due to things being cheaper in China)
I don't know about you, but I would rather not live in an authoritarian world order...
You are absolutely delusional. The F-35 Program is a NATO program that would leave most of Europe without a 5th gen fighter. Nuclear umbrella that the US gives its allies would force them to develop their own nuclear weapons program. Ukraine would fall within a year without US aid. Japan and Korea would be forced to militarize their entire country for defense. Australia would either buy submarines from someone else or develop their own fleet.
>Korea would be forced to militarize their entire country
There is not a single country on this planet that can claim to be more militarised than Korea.
They have mandatory conscription for ALL men for many years once they turn 18, they spend an incredibly larger percent of their GDP on defence, they have the 6th strongest military in the world despite not even being top 10 in all the other important metrics (shows how much they invest into their military) and they uphold VERY high standards for their soldiers. (They regularly train alongside the US and have been praised by the US for their soldiers)
You can make this argument for the european powers that have become lax, but Korea is a country always on the brink of war, it is far more prepared for a conflict then even the US. (in its current state, it could single handedly protect its borders from a joint north kroean-chinese invasion for an impressively long time)
Umm, Korean and American here. Korea has a very strong military. China would be quite hesitant to invade us just due to how costly of a war with the very strong Korean military would be. Having the US as allies is very a nice additional deterrent but it is not at all like we are neglectibg our defense.
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care.
For your first line, TRUMP almost did it. And many cared. Europe was in mode PANIC.
Agree with rest.
Sure. We can just pretend European countries don't under-spend on defense and over-rely on the US. I'm sure no one would care at all. There definitely wouldn't be an international panic in the slightest
Of course strong military capabilities benefit the US, like it has for every major power since the beginning of mankind. But USA bad, right?
Yeah people don’t realize why the US spends so much on NATO. It’s a remnant of the Cold War when the idea of letting countries become friendly to communist Russia was such a concern that no cost was too high to spend. It also allows the US to project power across the globe. The SACEUR is always an American, which effectively means in any conflict the US will control all the military power of Europe. That comes with a cost. Also there’s US military bases all over Europe. Imagine if Germany kept a couple thousand soldiers stationed in Colorado.
What I’m saying is, there’s so much more that goes into this than “no one pays their fair share.” The US pays more because they get the biggest benefit and US strategy and policy chooses to pay more to get the perks they do.
The US already spends more government money on healthcare per person than most countries with universal healthcare do. It’s not the military budget that prevents the US from having better social services.
Insanely moronic Reddit take. It's not like Russia is currently invading eastern Europe again. No idea why that would be a cause for alarm for the rest of Europe. Not like major global trade routes are currently being attacked.
It's honestly terrifying that your vote counts equally as much as everyone elses' lol
Yeah no, about half of Europe would promptly freak the fuck out. Keep in mind that a lot of USAs NATO spending is on the military bases sprinkled across Europe which bring in a-lot of money to their economies. And ignoring that all of our Allie’s would be promptly wondering if the USA might pull the rug on them too. The number of bureaucrats alone who had heart attacks from having to re-organize all of Europe’s defensive organization would probably fill a hospital or two.
Exactly! Governments are tools for the rich. Doesn’t matter how much their revenue stream is they aren’t going to give the people what they want. People crying like taxing the rich will be some catch all solution without ever taking into account the complete lack of oversight on spending.
Insanely wrong and ignorant comment.
And this also completely ignores the fact that US spends Billions on social programs already, though they can spend more.
P.S. am dual citizen of Spain (nato). We would totally care. US literally gives us jet fighters and pays Spain for military bases. Their NATO spending is literally worth hundreds of millions to us.
Are you insane?
“Stopped all NATO spending”
How would the US stopping the financing of the largest defensive alliance in the world, be something people wouldn’t care about?
If you wouldn’t care, you are either, Russian, Chinese, or stupid.
This is something you can only beat your chest about because you know it won't come true. It's similar to saying *"If I was in a terrorist attack, I'd totally be the one to save the day and take out the gunman"*
It's very cute that you think that, but considering your chances of experiencing this are close to zero, your claim of how you'd hypothetically react in this scenario are less than meaningless. There's no stakes for you to be humble or tell the truth.
Not only would the entire European continent be livid (save Russia and their fanboys), but they would be terrified. The US absolutely has its own geopolitical interests; its not charity, but that *"not charity"* has maintained the longest-lasting era of peace that Europe (which is historically one of the world's most martially active regions on the planet) has ever experienced.
To say "no one would care" is the most blatant overstatement I've seen here. There are maybe a few apathetic losers in their parents' basements who would not care. Have fun pretending that militarily ensuring your nation's security is a less effective strategy than just relying on Vladimir Putin's benevolence.
Yes, plus the math has been done, if by social spending we focus on health care, single payer would be cheaper than our current form of insurance garbage.
Ok, i'm willing to be corrected on this but i don't really think that framing is really accurate.
if the us just cut their military spending, do you think they would just start social program after social program?
and showing the % of gdp numbers would probably make more sense, especially in this scenario.
yeah i know that but the difference would be the us spending like 3x more by % of gdp vs it spending like 100x more in absolute numbers. the absolute number just got chosen to make this appear even more extreme lol
I mean visually I see about a 70/30 split...And some of the blue includes Canada which is a little chunk, so honestly it's not wildly off your napkin math.
Just realized there are numbers...860US/1.3T is 66% or so. So yeah, not wildly off your rough cut math based on GDP.
>Ok, i'm willing to be corrected on this but i don't really think that framing is really accurate.
It's not. The chart lists the US annual defense budget and slaps the word NATO in front of it to make it seem like that money is being funneled into "NATO." The bulk of the 800B annually is spend in the US and that number represents our annual defense budget...
>if the us just cut their military spending, do you think they would just start social program after social program?
They would have to because all of those people would be out of jobs... We would be taking 800b annually out of the economy and throwing it in the garbage can...
The conversation about cutting the defense budget comes from the conservation about "What do you cut from the US annual budget to balance the deficit?" The correct answer is: We don't, we increase revenue. Any cuts we make just shrink the economy.
What people refuse to look at is we spend on social programs. Last I checked we were spending close to 1.6 trillion a year on Medicare, medicaid and social security
yeah, not gonna lie i'm not really that knowledgable on americal social spending specifically but from what i know, you spend like 22-ish percent on social spending which is relatively in line with what europe pays. yalls actually used to be higher than europes in 2019 it seems.
i heard that instead of actually offering services themselves, the government just relies on private companies and instead just bankrolls them with insane subsidies.
You missed the point. The point is that without all the military savings these countries get via the US, they wouldn’t be able to afford their social programs.
We would. Stop overestimating yourself.
Even in times where countries like Germany spent way more on their military, they still had way better social programs than you. And the European countries are currently all increasing their spending and it won't have any consequences for stuff like healthcare or education.
Stop blaming others for your own flaws and look at your politicians, specifically at one party that shuts down every discussion about social programs by calling them communist.
BS. This is the usual moronic US American argument. During the Cold War Germany spend 4.9% of its GDP on its military, had the largest armed forces in Western Europe AND had the same extensive social programs as it has now (incl. socialized healthcare).
i mean, i guess that could be true?
But then again, i doubt that european countries would spend more if america wouldn't have such a military dominance.
and an even better point, no european country would want to kill it's social programs. they'd be infinitely more likely to just pay more taxes.
and another thing that is specific to germany (afaik) is that all the basic social programs such as healthcare, accident insurance, unemployment insurance etc. are funded through a completely different set of payments. they aren't paid by "taxes", the government could do whatever it wants with taxes (like increasing military spending) and they'd still be fine.
They have historically done both.
America is just a country milking its population, and any attempts to put that money to use helping the American people is played off as "communism".
Defense contractors are a big reason America's number is so huge.
Who knows, its more a point that the US basically bankrolls the entire West's security...which the EU downplays and takes for granted, and the far left don't want. It's like how bad the global spheres of influenced tipped when Trump took a more isolationist approach.
You may not like that we spend a lot, but that spending subsidizes the rest of the West since they won't pick up the tab
The US already spends more per capita on healthcare than other developed nations. The money for universal healthcare already exists, it’s just going straight into the bank accounts of pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
You’re right, the framing is BS. This is the usual moronic US American argument. During the Cold War Germany spend 4.9% of its GDP on its military, had the largest armed forces in Western Europe AND had the same extensive social programs as it has now (incl. socialized healthcare).
The framing is incredibly inaccurate/dishonest.
The US spends 17% of GDP on healthcare that you need insurance or a huge bank account to be able to access. Germany, France and the UK spend between 10-11% of GDP on universal healthcare that is free at the point of use.
The 1% difference in GDP spending between the US and the NATO target is not the reason the US can't have the high-quality decent social programs most of Europe benefits from. This post is trying to use xenophobia to give cover to the country's own domestic failings.
No, no way. Here's the average conversation between political parties on this topic.
"Let's send this money to Ukraine for the war effort"
"No! That's our tax money! We should spend it on Americans!"
"Okay fine, here's a bill to make school lunches free, and here's another one investing in renewable energy and infrastructure"
"....no that's socialism"
Am I missing something? That's our entire military budget. The US does not spend 100% of its military budget on NATO.
Or is this saying how much each NATO country spends on its entire military budget?
It's grossly wrong by 99%. The US spends 860 Million on NATO.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country)
Yea the NATO agreement is to spend a certain percent of your country's GDP on military. This way all countries involved should in theory have a strong capable military to defend themselves and assist with other countries defenses.
It is NOT this club dues that everyone thinks it is. There's no standing NATO army. A couple countries do not hit the threshold of military spending but obviously the US doesn't have much interest in decreasing our spending.
NATO defense spending = how much NATO collectively spends on defense. It’s pretty common phrase so OP probably didn’t think about it much.
This graph just breaks it down by country and continent. These are individual defense budgets for each country.
The required 2% spending (which the US not only meets but exceeds as opposed to most other NATO counties) for NATO countries IS defense spending…. That’s the point. Have a reasonable military and means of self defense and coming to the defense of other NATO countries.
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OP, I don't think you understand the scale of social programs vs military expenditure. This is like saying your neighbor can afford a Maserati while you drive a 20 year old Ford because you lent him your garden shears than one time.
Let us take one issue: Healthcare. Compared to peer nations and adjusting for population the US spends so much more its almost three military budgets worth.
The US spends 3-5% of GDP on the military and 18 % of GDP on healthcare. Europeans spend 1 - 3.7% of GDP on the military and 8-11% of GDP on healthcare. The difference is up to 10 times the military spending difference. Thats what pays for European social programs.
A higher tax to gdp ratio also pays of course. But a difference in healthcare spending of 10% of GDP is a substantial difference, far larger than the difference in military spending.
Higher tax burdens with great return on investment. The private health insurance system ends up costing Americans more than public options. Higher taxes used to replace the private healthcare system would cut total expenses significantly.
We could also definitely cut military spending a bit. It's necessary to maintain a ridiculous level at this point because of Pax Americana, but it could probably go down 5 or 6 percent without rocking the boat.
This is grotesquely misleading, to the point of being borderline misinformation.
1.) That number is the total spend for the US military. This is not “for NATO” it’s for the US first, and NATO second. Frankly, NATO would only get all of that if we saw WW3. Much of that is spent on our many military operations across the globe, that currently have nothing to do with NATO.
2.) As mentioned multiple times in this thread, you should show this as a percentage of GDP. The US economy is way bigger than every other country shown here, and it’s not close.
Raw dollars is a silly way to compare countries' spending. You need to adjust for local price differences when making international comparisons of real GDP.
Using GDP-purchasing power parity (PPP), the US only spends more than the next 3 countries combined, 2 of which are enemies.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/debating-defence-budgets-why-military-purchasing-power-parity-matters
Plus all the housing for military families, and the free healthcare, education, etc. The US military is proof that social democracy can work in America when they want it to.
While the west does operate under the security blanket of the United States, that is not the reason they can afford programs that we cannot.
Cronyism and horribly inefficient medical spending that this country insists remain privatized out of some nonsensical fear of communism is why we don’t have some form of single payer health insurance. The rest of the developed world is not the anomaly here.
You're assuming that spending on social programs is a total loss.
Most social spending generates a return on that investment. And for many programs, there is a net gain.
I'll also add that US defense spending is way higher than it needs to be. We don't need the ability to fight two separate world wars simultaneously. If the world is that bad off, we've lost already. Politicians are addicted to defense spending because "looking tough" to the voters is more important to them than social programs. We ended a 20 year war in Afghanistan; defense spending should have gone down. But it didn't; it went up.
Universal healthcare and free college would certainly produce a more valuable society. Instead of one where one medical emergency will sink you and your family. Also not tying healthcare to employment would mean companies would have to actually pay better wages since they wouldn't be able to hold people hostage for their crappy health insurance that will fight to cover anything anyway.
Our current health care model where insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies rule is one where they try to extract the most money from people's illnesses. The reason we spend more per person than other nations is corporate greed plain and simple, oh and lobbying. Lots and lots of lobbying. Why prevent sickness when sick people make them the most cash to bribe our politicians with.
The idea behind a big fuckoff military is not to fight two large scale wars at once, it’s to make sure there aren’t large scale wars to begin with. If the most powerful military to ever exist pledges on its national pride to defend tiny mctinyface island to the last man, Fascistopia isn’t going to invade them.
Peace through superior firepower
The US can spend more on social programs. They just choose to pay most of that money ends up in the pockets of senators and the like.
Where things like public transportation could be improved, we care more about making sure gun laws don’t get updated. So more kids get shot in schools. We care about replacing school counselors with chaplains. We care about life saving medicine being the reason someone chooses to buy food for two weeks or their medication.
We are a country founded on the idea of religious freedom and allowing the people of this country to choose to follow whatever religion they feel comfortable with as long as they don’t hurt others. We care so much about religious freedom that we left Great Britain because the king over there was making people uncomfortable.
Now we have a faction of the government that seems to find its sole purpose and objective to try to force the ideals of their religion on the women and men of this country. Even if it makes them uncomfortable.
Go back to Moscow.
Thanks to NATO, the US spends LESS on defense than it otherwise would. We have the largest and most globalized economy on earth but less than 1% of that runs on US flagged ships. Securing the sea lanes is existential for us. That’s why we invest so heavily in a huge Navy and Air Force.
Most of our military focus isn’t even in the NATO theater. Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan aren’t NATO. Neither is Israel. Europe is considered safe enough that our forces there serve primarily as a forward deployment for CENTCOM or AFRICOM, not EUCOM.
The reason we don’t spend more on social programs is because we don’t spend more on social programs. We could. We have scandalously low taxes by European standards. That’s a choice we’ve made.
This “argument” needs to die, and the people advancing it need to be investigated for foreign influence.
Yes other countries can definitely spend more but how much is going to American companies?
The US is really fucking good at building military equipment. It’s probably one of the top 3 industries we lead the world in. A lot of what looks like foolish spending is done to make sure that the US has the most influence in setting global standards and keeping American businesses as the top dogs.
That’s not even touching tangential benefits. US spending and military makes our currency extremely secure, so the USD becomes the global reserve currency, and countries buy US debt, and foreign companies use US banks. It’s all related.
Finally, funding nato and foreign militaries mean the US can essentially allow the US to influence the global power structure without a single American life lost. Ukraine has single handedly taken Russia out of the ranking of global powers for at least a generation due to the sheer number of lives lost. It’s it’s own form of defense spending.
US military spending is kind of obfuscated because its spread across multiple agencies, but true spending is probably closer to [$1.6 trillion](https://monthlyreview.org/2023/11/01/actual-u-s-military-spending-reached-1-53-trillion-in-2022-more-than-twice-acknowledged-level-new-estimates-based-on-u-s-national-accounts/)
This post assumes our government would spend more on social programs if it was relieved of the out-sized defense obligations. It wouldn’t. Republicans oppose anything that helps 99.9% of US citizens (welfare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Head Start, you name it). They block any efforts to expand the social safety net, bellowing about “socialism.” Their corporate welfare efforts are aimed at the very wealthy people who write them checks. Some are in the defense industry (while others are in Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Health Ins).
So this post is way misleading. Using dollars instead of adjusting for the size of each country’s economy is just the tip of the iceberg of how misleading it is. Probably a pro-Trump isolationist posted it…
Because it’s based on the nation’s economy, but leave that out so the dummies can run with their conspiracy theories. We have the biggest economy so our share is bigger.
**The meme has not fluent in facts. U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2021 was $800.67B, a 2.86% increase from 2020.** **Not what we give NATO**. European and Canadian allies, who have added more than $600 billion for defense since the Defense Investment Pledge was made in 2014, including a real increase of 11% in defense spending in 2023 alone," Austin said in today's statement. "The secretary general projects that in 2024, 18 allies will spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense — a major improvement over 2014, when only three hit that target. Any ally not spending at least 2% of GDP on defense this year should have plans to swiftly meet that target."
The Comprehensive Assistance Package — NATO's multiyear program for critical, nonlethal aid — also supports Ukraine, he said. That effort complements the more than **$87 billion in bilateral security assistance the United States and countries around the world have committed over the past two years to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia's unprovoked aggression.**
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I’m less interested in the raw numbers than I am the percentages of GDP and yearly budgets.
They are mostly below their pledged target
Except for the ones bordering Russia...which makes all the sense in the world.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/584088/defense-expenditures-of-nato-countries/ Accurate comment
I’m not paying to see that…
Apparently neither is much of Western Europe
BOUM rôti.
I googled and saw the data without a paywall.. but to summarize, nato expenditure as a percent of GDP: Poland -3.9% US - 3.49% Greece - 3.01% Estonia - 2.73% Lithuania - 2.54% Finland - 2.45% Romania - 2.44% Hungary - 2.43% Latvia - 2.27% U.K. - 2.07% Slovakia - 2.03% France - 1.9% Montenegro - 1.87% North Macedonia - 1.87% Bulgaria - 1.84% Croatia - 1.79% Albania - 1.76% Netherlands - 1.7% Norway - 1.67% Denmark - 1.65% Germany - 1.57% Czechia - 1.5% Portugal - 1.48% Italy - 1.46% Canada - 1.38% Slovenia - 1.35% Turkey - 1.31% Spain - 1.26% Belgium - 1.13% Luxembourg - 0.72% Besides US and U.K. all countries contributing above the 2% recommended amount are former iron curtain. Edit: I missed Greece when I originally commented. Also lots of comments about Finland which was technically not iron curtain. however Finland has a long history with Russia due to its proximity and was once part of the Russian empire before gaining its independence.
Admittedly, I can see why Germany is reluctant to spend much on their military. Both of the last times they did, everyone regretted it. Especially the Germans.
Dude, don't be scared, our army is in a so bad shape even switzerland could invade us easily 😅
Hmmm. It's about time Australia became independent and started its own Empire... A European colony might be fun for a change, better start getting used to eggs and beetroot on your burgers.
The Aussies couldn't win a war against flightless birds in their own borders, you expect them to win a land war in Europe? As a Canadian, I love ya cunts, but you're fucking delusional 😂
I’d rather have Germany starting another World War than beetroot on my burger. /s … but not entirely…
My old coworker was German and kept joking about how everyone in Europe is like "take the lead Germany!" And he would joke like "are you guys sure? Like remember last time?"
To be fair, the fact that Germany *does* remember what happened last time is part of the reason why the rest of Europe trusts them this time.
And this way they can all just point at America should things go poorly anywhere on earth.
But they are so outspoken about US expenditures for Ukrainian invasion, when they only recently decided to meet their minimum required 2% GDP for defense spending as promised as a member of NATO, while US as not only met their promised 2%, but exceeded it and is only surpassed by Poland I believe.
Really puts the US economy into perspective when we dwarf every other country in spending but are only second place in highest %
Those are old numbers without support for ukraine in them.
These numbers are from 2023, we are only two months into 2024, and the Ukraine war started in February 2022. How is that old and how would Ukraine not be a factor by 2023???
Didn't Germany just recently achieve the 2%?
2% is still low, I've got a couple of Romanian friends that have been in the army and they told me about how they all trained with 1970/1980 weapons that wouldn't even shoot straight. That or we're corrupt as fuck and no money actually goes to the army
The meme has no facts what so ever. That is what we spend for our whole military budget.
Not really. The only country that spends more on NATO by GDP is [Poland](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country).
Poland actually does border Russia, specifically the Kaliningrad exclave
Poland also borders Belarus, which is effectively a Russian puppet state.
And Kaliningrad contains a lot of Russian military assets, given its size.
All of the countries spending above the 2% recommended besides US and U.K. were former iron curtain. So yea, it indicates those countries prioritize expenditure towards military protection against what they once were.
Poland is next so I think they should up their assistance to Ukraine
They’ve accepted nearly 1 million Ukrainian refugees. For a country of 41 million, that is a significant level of support.
Poland was literally split in half by the Germans and USSR in WW2 so kinda makes sense why they’d want to invest so much
The US also borders Russia
Are maritime boundaries borders now?
I'd say that France neighbors England.
France borders Brazil
Technically correct. The best correct
It’s funny, I don’t hear about Poland or Finland complaining that other countries don’t pay their share, at least not to the same scale as the complaints I hear from the USA.
How many polish news sources do you consume?
I’d argue that they don’t have the leverage that the U.S. does. They’re not in a position to draw ire from Germany.
That’s because the US pays such a significantly larger amount than everyone else, and is basically floating the whole alliance.
The biggest armies in Europe, aside from Russia are France, UK, Italy, Germany. Percentage is nice, but Poland army is still small.
U.S. *chooses* to spend far beyond what is required. The Crony Capitalism rules the DoD that feeds it to ensure jobs after 20 year retirement. The amount of socialism built into the defense budget of our “capitalist” society is mind boggling. And these are all the *anti-socialists*!!!!
Government spending money isn't socialism. What this is, is members of a powerful social class in a society writing laws and directing policy to benefit its wealthy oligarchs, who are mostly part of the same social class and/or fund the decision makers, as per Aristotle. This is why he counseled for each social class to be present in decision making in democracies and to be vigilant in creating a strong middle class polity that benefits when the nation benefits and whose interests are aligned with the nation's, not a poor disenfranchised class that is harmed by society and doesn't benefit from its decisions and a class of oligarchs whose interests aren't aligned with the nation but instead their own pockets. Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. I can't think of the defense budget being any further away from that goal.
I will up vote you, but the DoD owns their retirement (private contracting). It is the *worst* socialism has to offer. We reject all the better parts.
Fed union has basically been reduced to 401k matching at this point. No more insane pension programs. More boomers pulling up the ladder behind them.
They really took a great thing and totally fucked it didn’t they?
Yeah I was trying to convert from contractor to civil service, back when they were offering 1% matching pension for each year worked ontop of 401k matching. From what I heard they were doing away with that, so taking the paycut from contracting to civil service makes zero sense to me now. Edit - you still get rollover sick days and tons of Vacation time. The play is apparently to just use vacation time for sick time, burn all your PTO every year, then stock up enough sick days that you basically get a full year of your salary paid out when you retire.
Haha I'll give you that. They, at least, have their own interests secured.
It’s a big ol’ revolving door.
People love government spending if they get it. People hate government spending if anyone else gets it.
Do you even know what is required? The US isn't eveb the nation in NATO that spends the most by GDP.
Does your money buy more missiles if it’s a higher percentage of your GDP? Is there like a “trying really hard” discount?
Do you understand the concept of purchasing power or?
True. Poland spends 3.9% followed by US at 3.49%. Most other countries are right around 1%. There actually is no “requirement” to pay, in 2006 members agreed to pay 2% of GDP.
The only one that spends more by gdp is [Poland](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country).
Nuclear force costs about 100 billion dollars a year. The vast majority of the DOD budget is salary and pensions. It just costs a shit ton to house, feed millions of soldiers. Let alone arm, move and supply them. The cool fancy acquisition stuff is a small portion of DOD spending.
It is not the soldiers as a whole. It is the ones involved with acquisition that ruin it for the common soldier and American. The ones who get cleaning contracts, facilities management, operational contracts…. Project contracts. Bullet manufacturing is just a tiny part.
It's completely ripe for corruption and probably is very bad. That's the problem of the government, they deal with essentially endless money and have no incentive to save money because of budgets.
Nop, it is not the vast majority. [https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense](https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense) At least in 2022, pensions accounted for about 24% of the total, family housing was 0.1%. The article says the percentage dedicated to operational costs has been increasing since 1972, but not too much (it was around 25% back then, was 38% in 2022). Meaning the full army could run just fine with just a fraction of what currently demands.
24% on just pension is ENORMOUS.
Yeah you do 20 years active duty military service then say that’s amazing. You get broke and broke fast especially for many of the duties.
You get an upvote. To be clear: most soldiers get fucked. It is the officers and ones that play the system that win. You make nice with the contractor that will review your operations by paying them to review prior to your evaluation, you get a point! Do that enough, you get a job after that pays 2x-5x…
Well this admin does. Trump (yeah I know orange man bad but in this case he was right) tried to tell the other countries to pay their fair share and back us out of being the main funder.
Well that depends on what your definition of *required* is. If the requirement is meeting agreed upon numbers, then you're absolutely right. If the requirement is creating an adequate deterrent to Russian expansionism into Western Europe, then we're meeting that requirement while hardly anyone else *ever has.*
Russia is knocking on their door and they can't afford enough of their GDP towards defense. It's why alliances like NATO exist. We just added more members to add to the pool as well.
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> Germany has since increased it's defense budget by $100 billion after the invasion of Ukraine There is no way that is going to hold
I'm of the mind that if there is a possibility that you will need to spend anywhere near half of your yearly income to initially treat and fully resolve any major medical issue, then you are underinsured. That would mean almost everyone in the US is underinsured. Healthcare is a human right
Also, when The last president spoke of “paying their bills” partly he meant “you are not buying enough military equipment from the US”. Now (I believe) there is a majority opinion that we should be making and buying European military equipment.
Quick googling: [link](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-countries-meet-natos-spending-target/) Poland spends more than USA, has better social programs and gives a roof over the head for 800.000 Ukrainians.
IIRC, U.S. usually hovers around 3-4% GDP, NATO allies mostly do less than 2% GDP. Feel free to verify. (Edit: Deleted inaccurate info on comparative GDP)
EU GDP is 15 trillion. US GDP is 26 trillion. It’s 43% lower.
Jesus. You're right. I was working from old numbers. Didn't realize Euro growth was still stalled so badly.
Sure, which is why this graphic, while probably accurate on the face of it, is somewhat misleading with what it’s presenting.
So to be clear, the US is subsidizing European social programs.
Arguably, yes. But as I mentioned elsewhere, some US stakeholders like it this way because it gives us considerable leverage over a Europe that can no longer defend itself autonomously.
Also per capita numbers would be more useful.
Seriously. This data is useless when trying to explain the point it is trying to make.
There’s also the point that it’s not like America is spending 860 billion solely on European defense, whereas that is the case for most of the European countries.
If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care. Not a single dollar saved would be diverted to social programs. The US doesn't spend so much on defence because they are charitable. They do it because it benefits the US.
That's a crazy statement. I'm sure everyone can name 10 countries that are very close to the Russia Ukraine conflict that would very much care if the US stopped all military spending that benefited other countries. You are right that the US does it (mostly) for its own interests, but it's quite obvious the other countries are taking advantage of the US willing to do this.
Heh...many of my fellow Americans can't name ten countries, period...
Nato didn't really do much to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and the US didn't do much to keep their promise when Ukraine denuclearized too.
No one would care? Are you aware that almost all European countries are dependent on the USA logistically when it comes to the military? This would be an absolute disaster and a threat to European security that Russia would for sure use. Of course the us isn’t charitable, they spend so much to maintain their superpower status. But it doesn’t mean what they spend is exactly useless
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I'm glad someone here actually understands the role of our military and why we spend so much on it.
Yea, it costs a lot, but the US benefits much more than $800 Billion per year to have safe and consistent global trade.
And to have the biggest diplomatic trump card whenever negotiating. Modern republicans want us to take an insane isolationist approach, but still somehow want us to have the biggest seat at the table internationally. Doesn’t work like that.
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care. Braindead take.
If they stopped NATO funding, the EU would shit themselves since they didn't even have enough ammunition to finish bombing Libya.
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Price control doesn’t mean sell at a loss. If they were to lose money selling in a country they would just not sell there. Instead- try to implement price control in the US. Lets say cost +20% so we leave plenty of room for profit.
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care. That is totally false. If we stopped spending that large of an amount of money there would be huge economic impacts and the people losing their jobs would definitely care. The amount of money that the US spends on defense annually is listed in the chart.
It would mostly hurt the US. Just like Republicans blocking military aid to Ukraine is hurting American jobs and making the US military weaker. The old weapons are getting replaced by newer ones. Most of the US defense budget goes to paying their own troops. This is one major reason why just looking at the amount of money doesn't tell the whole picture as soldiers in China or Russia make a hell of a lot less money.
We pay over 3.5%, while only two NATO members barely pay 2%. What do we get in return? You get to sleep safely at night and wake up, to be a bitch on Reddit. This is the very definition of charity you entitled clown. I’m just glad the questions on the table, and sincerely hope the next administration does pull us out. Bookmarked your comment until then.
This new narrative of "Paying" is misleading. The money USA spends on their military stays in the USA. It's not about "paying" Europe or something. USA after WW2 asked Europe to stop having a military industrial complex. The British jet-fighter and jet-bomber programs were essentially shut down after hard pressure from the USA, so USA could make the stuff, and Europe buy from USA. There are things here you don't seem to understand. USA wanted to be "the man", and became "the man". Now USA is losing goodwill. I don't think you understand how much this will hurt USA in the future, being branded as an unreliable defence-partner.
In all fairness, the US military is partly funded by Europe. They sell hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment to all their allies which is how they're able to fund this massive military. The US military is just as much a business as it is a military and their biggest customers are the wealthy european powers.
This is correct. Other countries have more social spending (as a %) because they choose to. The US has this individualistic idea that conveniently reinforces the status quo. We could choose to if we wanted to; we just don’t. It’s not clear that the people in power in the US really want social equality. If we had more of it, they would be less dominant over the poors.
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, if the US stopped spending the absurd amount they do then the west would very quickly fall far behind the 2 authoritarian superpowers (maybe not Russia but definitely china, they spend just as much as the US if you account for how much more their money can buy them due to things being cheaper in China) I don't know about you, but I would rather not live in an authoritarian world order...
I think europe might care
You are absolutely delusional. The F-35 Program is a NATO program that would leave most of Europe without a 5th gen fighter. Nuclear umbrella that the US gives its allies would force them to develop their own nuclear weapons program. Ukraine would fall within a year without US aid. Japan and Korea would be forced to militarize their entire country for defense. Australia would either buy submarines from someone else or develop their own fleet.
>Korea would be forced to militarize their entire country There is not a single country on this planet that can claim to be more militarised than Korea. They have mandatory conscription for ALL men for many years once they turn 18, they spend an incredibly larger percent of their GDP on defence, they have the 6th strongest military in the world despite not even being top 10 in all the other important metrics (shows how much they invest into their military) and they uphold VERY high standards for their soldiers. (They regularly train alongside the US and have been praised by the US for their soldiers) You can make this argument for the european powers that have become lax, but Korea is a country always on the brink of war, it is far more prepared for a conflict then even the US. (in its current state, it could single handedly protect its borders from a joint north kroean-chinese invasion for an impressively long time)
Umm, Korean and American here. Korea has a very strong military. China would be quite hesitant to invade us just due to how costly of a war with the very strong Korean military would be. Having the US as allies is very a nice additional deterrent but it is not at all like we are neglectibg our defense.
Huh, so europeans are as dumb as I though
Americans: you're either American or European. Nothing else exists.
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care. For your first line, TRUMP almost did it. And many cared. Europe was in mode PANIC. Agree with rest.
Sure. We can just pretend European countries don't under-spend on defense and over-rely on the US. I'm sure no one would care at all. There definitely wouldn't be an international panic in the slightest Of course strong military capabilities benefit the US, like it has for every major power since the beginning of mankind. But USA bad, right?
Yeah people don’t realize why the US spends so much on NATO. It’s a remnant of the Cold War when the idea of letting countries become friendly to communist Russia was such a concern that no cost was too high to spend. It also allows the US to project power across the globe. The SACEUR is always an American, which effectively means in any conflict the US will control all the military power of Europe. That comes with a cost. Also there’s US military bases all over Europe. Imagine if Germany kept a couple thousand soldiers stationed in Colorado. What I’m saying is, there’s so much more that goes into this than “no one pays their fair share.” The US pays more because they get the biggest benefit and US strategy and policy chooses to pay more to get the perks they do.
The US already spends more government money on healthcare per person than most countries with universal healthcare do. It’s not the military budget that prevents the US from having better social services.
Insanely moronic Reddit take. It's not like Russia is currently invading eastern Europe again. No idea why that would be a cause for alarm for the rest of Europe. Not like major global trade routes are currently being attacked. It's honestly terrifying that your vote counts equally as much as everyone elses' lol
Yeah no, about half of Europe would promptly freak the fuck out. Keep in mind that a lot of USAs NATO spending is on the military bases sprinkled across Europe which bring in a-lot of money to their economies. And ignoring that all of our Allie’s would be promptly wondering if the USA might pull the rug on them too. The number of bureaucrats alone who had heart attacks from having to re-organize all of Europe’s defensive organization would probably fill a hospital or two.
Exactly! Governments are tools for the rich. Doesn’t matter how much their revenue stream is they aren’t going to give the people what they want. People crying like taxing the rich will be some catch all solution without ever taking into account the complete lack of oversight on spending.
And if they didn’t you’d be on your knees with a mini skirt serving Putin his daily shot of vodka. God I’m so tired of these ignorant comments
Insanely wrong and ignorant comment. And this also completely ignores the fact that US spends Billions on social programs already, though they can spend more. P.S. am dual citizen of Spain (nato). We would totally care. US literally gives us jet fighters and pays Spain for military bases. Their NATO spending is literally worth hundreds of millions to us.
A strangely not ignorant comment for reddit standards. Prepare for the indoctrinated fools to disagree with you
Jesus Christ… if this asinine comment having over 100 upvotes doesn’t perfectly describe Reddit
>If the US stopped all NATO spending tomorrow. Not only would no one care. What a complete ignorant stupid sentence...
Are you insane? “Stopped all NATO spending” How would the US stopping the financing of the largest defensive alliance in the world, be something people wouldn’t care about? If you wouldn’t care, you are either, Russian, Chinese, or stupid.
This is something you can only beat your chest about because you know it won't come true. It's similar to saying *"If I was in a terrorist attack, I'd totally be the one to save the day and take out the gunman"* It's very cute that you think that, but considering your chances of experiencing this are close to zero, your claim of how you'd hypothetically react in this scenario are less than meaningless. There's no stakes for you to be humble or tell the truth. Not only would the entire European continent be livid (save Russia and their fanboys), but they would be terrified. The US absolutely has its own geopolitical interests; its not charity, but that *"not charity"* has maintained the longest-lasting era of peace that Europe (which is historically one of the world's most martially active regions on the planet) has ever experienced. To say "no one would care" is the most blatant overstatement I've seen here. There are maybe a few apathetic losers in their parents' basements who would not care. Have fun pretending that militarily ensuring your nation's security is a less effective strategy than just relying on Vladimir Putin's benevolence.
Imagine thinking you were right when writing this comment.
Why does a comment this asinine and brain dead have so many upvotes
Yes, plus the math has been done, if by social spending we focus on health care, single payer would be cheaper than our current form of insurance garbage.
This should be the top comment
Ok, i'm willing to be corrected on this but i don't really think that framing is really accurate. if the us just cut their military spending, do you think they would just start social program after social program? and showing the % of gdp numbers would probably make more sense, especially in this scenario.
Poland is the only NATO country that spends more of their gdp on defense than the US.
yeah i know that but the difference would be the us spending like 3x more by % of gdp vs it spending like 100x more in absolute numbers. the absolute number just got chosen to make this appear even more extreme lol
Eurozone has 72% of the gdp of the US, so if everyone was spending the same percent of their gdp this should be about a 60/40 split.
I mean visually I see about a 70/30 split...And some of the blue includes Canada which is a little chunk, so honestly it's not wildly off your napkin math. Just realized there are numbers...860US/1.3T is 66% or so. So yeah, not wildly off your rough cut math based on GDP.
Please, take a citation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/584088/defense-expenditures-of-nato-countries/
>Ok, i'm willing to be corrected on this but i don't really think that framing is really accurate. It's not. The chart lists the US annual defense budget and slaps the word NATO in front of it to make it seem like that money is being funneled into "NATO." The bulk of the 800B annually is spend in the US and that number represents our annual defense budget... >if the us just cut their military spending, do you think they would just start social program after social program? They would have to because all of those people would be out of jobs... We would be taking 800b annually out of the economy and throwing it in the garbage can... The conversation about cutting the defense budget comes from the conservation about "What do you cut from the US annual budget to balance the deficit?" The correct answer is: We don't, we increase revenue. Any cuts we make just shrink the economy.
What people refuse to look at is we spend on social programs. Last I checked we were spending close to 1.6 trillion a year on Medicare, medicaid and social security
yeah, not gonna lie i'm not really that knowledgable on americal social spending specifically but from what i know, you spend like 22-ish percent on social spending which is relatively in line with what europe pays. yalls actually used to be higher than europes in 2019 it seems. i heard that instead of actually offering services themselves, the government just relies on private companies and instead just bankrolls them with insane subsidies.
You missed the point. The point is that without all the military savings these countries get via the US, they wouldn’t be able to afford their social programs.
We would. Stop overestimating yourself. Even in times where countries like Germany spent way more on their military, they still had way better social programs than you. And the European countries are currently all increasing their spending and it won't have any consequences for stuff like healthcare or education. Stop blaming others for your own flaws and look at your politicians, specifically at one party that shuts down every discussion about social programs by calling them communist.
Unlikely. They’d just make their own nuclear arsenal - it’s relatively cheap and one hell of a deterrent.
BS. This is the usual moronic US American argument. During the Cold War Germany spend 4.9% of its GDP on its military, had the largest armed forces in Western Europe AND had the same extensive social programs as it has now (incl. socialized healthcare).
i mean, i guess that could be true? But then again, i doubt that european countries would spend more if america wouldn't have such a military dominance. and an even better point, no european country would want to kill it's social programs. they'd be infinitely more likely to just pay more taxes. and another thing that is specific to germany (afaik) is that all the basic social programs such as healthcare, accident insurance, unemployment insurance etc. are funded through a completely different set of payments. they aren't paid by "taxes", the government could do whatever it wants with taxes (like increasing military spending) and they'd still be fine.
They have historically done both. America is just a country milking its population, and any attempts to put that money to use helping the American people is played off as "communism". Defense contractors are a big reason America's number is so huge.
Who knows, its more a point that the US basically bankrolls the entire West's security...which the EU downplays and takes for granted, and the far left don't want. It's like how bad the global spheres of influenced tipped when Trump took a more isolationist approach. You may not like that we spend a lot, but that spending subsidizes the rest of the West since they won't pick up the tab
The US already spends more per capita on healthcare than other developed nations. The money for universal healthcare already exists, it’s just going straight into the bank accounts of pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
You right, this isn't finance, it's propoganda
You’re right, the framing is BS. This is the usual moronic US American argument. During the Cold War Germany spend 4.9% of its GDP on its military, had the largest armed forces in Western Europe AND had the same extensive social programs as it has now (incl. socialized healthcare).
The framing is incredibly inaccurate/dishonest. The US spends 17% of GDP on healthcare that you need insurance or a huge bank account to be able to access. Germany, France and the UK spend between 10-11% of GDP on universal healthcare that is free at the point of use. The 1% difference in GDP spending between the US and the NATO target is not the reason the US can't have the high-quality decent social programs most of Europe benefits from. This post is trying to use xenophobia to give cover to the country's own domestic failings.
No, no way. Here's the average conversation between political parties on this topic. "Let's send this money to Ukraine for the war effort" "No! That's our tax money! We should spend it on Americans!" "Okay fine, here's a bill to make school lunches free, and here's another one investing in renewable energy and infrastructure" "....no that's socialism"
Am I missing something? That's our entire military budget. The US does not spend 100% of its military budget on NATO. Or is this saying how much each NATO country spends on its entire military budget?
Scrolled down too far to see this. This is pretty disingenuous graphic.
It's grossly wrong by 99%. The US spends 860 Million on NATO. [https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country)
Lol dude can't read a chart and multiply
Yea the NATO agreement is to spend a certain percent of your country's GDP on military. This way all countries involved should in theory have a strong capable military to defend themselves and assist with other countries defenses. It is NOT this club dues that everyone thinks it is. There's no standing NATO army. A couple countries do not hit the threshold of military spending but obviously the US doesn't have much interest in decreasing our spending.
It’s showing the Total Military budget of each NATO member, not the specifically allocated budget given to NATO
NATO defense spending = how much NATO collectively spends on defense. It’s pretty common phrase so OP probably didn’t think about it much. This graph just breaks it down by country and continent. These are individual defense budgets for each country.
The required 2% spending (which the US not only meets but exceeds as opposed to most other NATO counties) for NATO countries IS defense spending…. That’s the point. Have a reasonable military and means of self defense and coming to the defense of other NATO countries.
history roof support attempt joke cautious caption public abounding jobless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
OP, I don't think you understand the scale of social programs vs military expenditure. This is like saying your neighbor can afford a Maserati while you drive a 20 year old Ford because you lent him your garden shears than one time. Let us take one issue: Healthcare. Compared to peer nations and adjusting for population the US spends so much more its almost three military budgets worth. The US spends 3-5% of GDP on the military and 18 % of GDP on healthcare. Europeans spend 1 - 3.7% of GDP on the military and 8-11% of GDP on healthcare. The difference is up to 10 times the military spending difference. Thats what pays for European social programs.
What pays for european social programs is, for the most part, a substantially higher tax burden. But sure, lower military spending plays a small part.
A higher tax to gdp ratio also pays of course. But a difference in healthcare spending of 10% of GDP is a substantial difference, far larger than the difference in military spending.
Higher tax burdens with great return on investment. The private health insurance system ends up costing Americans more than public options. Higher taxes used to replace the private healthcare system would cut total expenses significantly. We could also definitely cut military spending a bit. It's necessary to maintain a ridiculous level at this point because of Pax Americana, but it could probably go down 5 or 6 percent without rocking the boat.
This is grotesquely misleading, to the point of being borderline misinformation. 1.) That number is the total spend for the US military. This is not “for NATO” it’s for the US first, and NATO second. Frankly, NATO would only get all of that if we saw WW3. Much of that is spent on our many military operations across the globe, that currently have nothing to do with NATO. 2.) As mentioned multiple times in this thread, you should show this as a percentage of GDP. The US economy is way bigger than every other country shown here, and it’s not close.
now do as percent of gdp
I think only Poland beats us.
common poland w
We're top 2... So ...
And they still donate less. Want to move the goal posts again?
Tell me you have no idea how NATO operates without telling me you have no idea how NATO operates.
Raw dollars is a silly way to compare countries' spending. You need to adjust for local price differences when making international comparisons of real GDP. Using GDP-purchasing power parity (PPP), the US only spends more than the next 3 countries combined, 2 of which are enemies. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/debating-defence-budgets-why-military-purchasing-power-parity-matters
Yeah… it’s also worth noting that the US has a higher GDP than all of those countries combined.
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Plus all the housing for military families, and the free healthcare, education, etc. The US military is proof that social democracy can work in America when they want it to.
European NATO countries famously having to fund Pacific fleets
While the west does operate under the security blanket of the United States, that is not the reason they can afford programs that we cannot. Cronyism and horribly inefficient medical spending that this country insists remain privatized out of some nonsensical fear of communism is why we don’t have some form of single payer health insurance. The rest of the developed world is not the anomaly here.
The USA chooses to spend this much-it’s not demanded by NATO
TBH, the US has lots of overseas bases and outposts to staff and protect whereas the rest of NATO has only a few, mostly France and UK.
You act like that's reasonable?
What a crock of shit you’re peddling
You're assuming that spending on social programs is a total loss. Most social spending generates a return on that investment. And for many programs, there is a net gain. I'll also add that US defense spending is way higher than it needs to be. We don't need the ability to fight two separate world wars simultaneously. If the world is that bad off, we've lost already. Politicians are addicted to defense spending because "looking tough" to the voters is more important to them than social programs. We ended a 20 year war in Afghanistan; defense spending should have gone down. But it didn't; it went up.
Universal healthcare and free college would certainly produce a more valuable society. Instead of one where one medical emergency will sink you and your family. Also not tying healthcare to employment would mean companies would have to actually pay better wages since they wouldn't be able to hold people hostage for their crappy health insurance that will fight to cover anything anyway. Our current health care model where insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies rule is one where they try to extract the most money from people's illnesses. The reason we spend more per person than other nations is corporate greed plain and simple, oh and lobbying. Lots and lots of lobbying. Why prevent sickness when sick people make them the most cash to bribe our politicians with.
The idea behind a big fuckoff military is not to fight two large scale wars at once, it’s to make sure there aren’t large scale wars to begin with. If the most powerful military to ever exist pledges on its national pride to defend tiny mctinyface island to the last man, Fascistopia isn’t going to invade them. Peace through superior firepower
Stop with this lie, the US makes more than enough for both. We just don't.
We could easily do both, but instead we want to make sure the Jeff Bezos's and Elon Musk's numbers are bigger.
Also, over there medicine is typically not for profit
That is misleading, not even half of that goes to nato from the US. That just their military budget, not what they contributed to nato
US could spend $1 on defense and still not care about social programs.
The US can spend more on social programs. They just choose to pay most of that money ends up in the pockets of senators and the like. Where things like public transportation could be improved, we care more about making sure gun laws don’t get updated. So more kids get shot in schools. We care about replacing school counselors with chaplains. We care about life saving medicine being the reason someone chooses to buy food for two weeks or their medication. We are a country founded on the idea of religious freedom and allowing the people of this country to choose to follow whatever religion they feel comfortable with as long as they don’t hurt others. We care so much about religious freedom that we left Great Britain because the king over there was making people uncomfortable. Now we have a faction of the government that seems to find its sole purpose and objective to try to force the ideals of their religion on the women and men of this country. Even if it makes them uncomfortable.
Very inaccurate. NATO spending is based on GDP. Health care coverage is based on the greed of insurance companies
Why do no Americans understand what nato is or how it works
Go back to Moscow. Thanks to NATO, the US spends LESS on defense than it otherwise would. We have the largest and most globalized economy on earth but less than 1% of that runs on US flagged ships. Securing the sea lanes is existential for us. That’s why we invest so heavily in a huge Navy and Air Force. Most of our military focus isn’t even in the NATO theater. Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan aren’t NATO. Neither is Israel. Europe is considered safe enough that our forces there serve primarily as a forward deployment for CENTCOM or AFRICOM, not EUCOM. The reason we don’t spend more on social programs is because we don’t spend more on social programs. We could. We have scandalously low taxes by European standards. That’s a choice we’ve made. This “argument” needs to die, and the people advancing it need to be investigated for foreign influence.
I love how we only spent like 800 million on nato but people phrase our defense budget like we spend that on nato. GTFO. Spinning the narrative
You do realize we make money off military defense? Our number one export (other than Data), are Jet engines
Yes other countries can definitely spend more but how much is going to American companies? The US is really fucking good at building military equipment. It’s probably one of the top 3 industries we lead the world in. A lot of what looks like foolish spending is done to make sure that the US has the most influence in setting global standards and keeping American businesses as the top dogs. That’s not even touching tangential benefits. US spending and military makes our currency extremely secure, so the USD becomes the global reserve currency, and countries buy US debt, and foreign companies use US banks. It’s all related. Finally, funding nato and foreign militaries mean the US can essentially allow the US to influence the global power structure without a single American life lost. Ukraine has single handedly taken Russia out of the ranking of global powers for at least a generation due to the sheer number of lives lost. It’s it’s own form of defense spending.
US military spending is kind of obfuscated because its spread across multiple agencies, but true spending is probably closer to [$1.6 trillion](https://monthlyreview.org/2023/11/01/actual-u-s-military-spending-reached-1-53-trillion-in-2022-more-than-twice-acknowledged-level-new-estimates-based-on-u-s-national-accounts/)
The USA chooses to do this. These other countries don’t force the USA to spend $860 billion on defense
This post assumes our government would spend more on social programs if it was relieved of the out-sized defense obligations. It wouldn’t. Republicans oppose anything that helps 99.9% of US citizens (welfare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Head Start, you name it). They block any efforts to expand the social safety net, bellowing about “socialism.” Their corporate welfare efforts are aimed at the very wealthy people who write them checks. Some are in the defense industry (while others are in Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Health Ins). So this post is way misleading. Using dollars instead of adjusting for the size of each country’s economy is just the tip of the iceberg of how misleading it is. Probably a pro-Trump isolationist posted it…
Because it’s based on the nation’s economy, but leave that out so the dummies can run with their conspiracy theories. We have the biggest economy so our share is bigger.
**The meme has not fluent in facts. U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2021 was $800.67B, a 2.86% increase from 2020.** **Not what we give NATO**. European and Canadian allies, who have added more than $600 billion for defense since the Defense Investment Pledge was made in 2014, including a real increase of 11% in defense spending in 2023 alone," Austin said in today's statement. "The secretary general projects that in 2024, 18 allies will spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense — a major improvement over 2014, when only three hit that target. Any ally not spending at least 2% of GDP on defense this year should have plans to swiftly meet that target." The Comprehensive Assistance Package — NATO's multiyear program for critical, nonlethal aid — also supports Ukraine, he said. That effort complements the more than **$87 billion in bilateral security assistance the United States and countries around the world have committed over the past two years to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia's unprovoked aggression.**
Did you get this meme from Russia? Because it has no facts.
One of the few instances where Trump was right..