[fmakunbound]

I've come to think of it as a public works project. Employs a huge number of people, provides corporate welfare for Lockheed and their suppliers, but no one is going to fight a world war with it. It's already close to obsolete to way cheaper, recent radar systems and non-meatspace crafts.

[bradleyjg]

In total taxes paid per capita the US isn’t far off from the countries of Western Europe. But they get universal health care and mass transit that’s actually good, we get F35s, surgeons that drive Ferraris, and tens of thousands of college administrators.

[lumost]

In fairness, the basic premise of NATO was that the US would handle military protection of Western Europe in exchange for solidarity on foreign policy, trade, and economic development.

If Nato didn't exist its debatable whether western Europe could maintain their existing level of defense expenditure. The EU would also need to manage increased defense expenditure amongst member nations to avoid an arms race.

[MagnumOpus]

If Nato didn't exist, Western Europe could focus on building defending forces against Russia rather than spending their defense budget on expeditionary forces that need to tag along on American-led adventures like Iraq or Afghanistan.

[iab]

How would they effectively do that though without the cover of the US nuclear umbrella?

[bradleyjg]

You really think Germany couldn’t build all the nuclear weapons they wanted to?

[iab]

I do think that - how would you go about testing them with a nuclear test-ban treaty in place?

* Assuming that Germany remains responsible and doesn’t go NK route. Maybe that’s not reasonable.

* also assume we are talking about modern thermonuclear weapons

[refurb]

What? No. Not even close if you look at tax revenue versus GDP.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rev...

Western Europe is over 40% while the US is at 27%. And the US figure include all public healthcare spending which is 60% of all healthcare in the US. So even adding private spending it’s still lower.

[EliRivers]

Don't forget to add employer contributions to health insurance in the US. That adds about 10% to the US rate (in as much as one can come up with a single figure for hundreds of millions of people).

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-a...

[refurb]

I did account for it and the tax rate is still lower. Public spending is about the same as private and public is 8% of GDP, so the US goes from 27% to 35%. Still significantly lower than Western Europe.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...

[EliRivers]

I did account for it

I don't believe you. I think if you originally accounted for it, you would have known that your original value of 27% was misleading and you would have expanded on it.

If you did account for it, you wouldn't only now be saying 35%.

The alternative is to believe that you DID know, and you deliberately misled; I think that's not the case though. I don't think you're a deliberate liar; I think you've got an ego. Got one myself and sometimes I do the same thing.

You have NOW accounted for it, yes.

[unionpivo]

sure in percents. But US per capita makes more money, so the actual dollars to dollars are similar.

EU GDP per capita is 46,888 US 68,309

  68000/100*27 = 18360
  47000/100*40 = 18800

Edit i took GDP from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP... 2021 estimates

I was kind of surprised by this, when I ran the numbers.

[refurb]

You're using averages across all of the EU which includes both countries with a higher GDP per capita than the US and countries with lower GDP per capita.

Some of the examples I gave actually have a higher GDP per capita than the US.

[unionpivo]

Yes but most of such countries are small in population.

The biggest countries (by population): Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland

All have lover GDP.

The countries with higher GDP than US (according to wikipedia): Luxembourg (pop: 638,153 ), Ireland (pop: 5,006,061), Norway (not in EU, pop: 5,457,423), Switzerland (not EU, pop: 8,717,698)

I am sure if you just take the richest few states, they are also richer than average US

[dylan604]

Also known as the military industrial complex. I seemed to remember a prominent person speaking/warning quite decisively about that.

[gremlinsinc]

I can think of a few ...most recently probably Sanders, but I'm pretty sure Dwight Eisenhower warned about the MI Complex in speeches, and probably Kennedy too.

[owenmarshall]

Read “War is a Racket”, written in 1935 by retired USMC Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley Butler for an excellent historical perspective.

[hajile]

The army says it has enough tanks, but the US government still approves several hundred per year. They go straight to the scrap bin to be used as parts.

It's not just about welfare though.

If they shut the plants down and something happens, what do they do? The assembly lines will have been shut down or retrofitted for something else and the experienced workers may well have gone to work elsewhere.

They already have to keep the plant available for readiness and the workers need experience building actual tanks, so they keep pumping them out.

[bradleyjg]

> If they shut the plants down and something happens, what do they do?

Use the tanks we already have?

[hajile]

Why keep IT around if everything is working right now? Because by the time you need them again, it will take months to get a new crew up to speed and catch up. In the meantime, the business will suffer.

If actual combat kicks up, then tanks start getting destroyed or break down very quickly. If it takes a year to restart production, it's a very real possibility to not have enough before they start leaving the factory again.

Did you know that the Chinese state-run media is now hyping up nukes in preparation for a potential US war over COVID? [0] If they are actually working on increasing their nuke stockpile, they are definitely also working on increasing total military readiness.

If the US and China got into a conventional war, how long do you think the current tank stockpile would last? The US isn't going to take that chance and the very fact that they have a constant stream of available tanks is one more reason for China to avoid war.

On the whole, I'd rather pay a few dollars to help deter war rather than spend a bunch of lives fighting that war and in case the deterrent fails, at least we are ready.

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/china-state-media-says-country-must...

[bradleyjg]

I have this tiger repelling rock and it’s doing great. I haven’t been attacked by a tiger my whole life.