03 November 2009

Worldwide defense spending


We'll defer for now any commentary, and just offer the numbers for consideration. The data source is here, via Yglesias -
I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the quote, but someone told me he heard a Chinese official tell him “over the past decade you’ve spent $1 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve spent $1 trillion building the future of China.” I don’t really think we should view that contrast in a paranoid light, but if you do want to take a paranoid view of the American national security situation it makes a lot more sense to worry about that than to worry that someone in a cave might build a bomb.
One commenter at the link suggested this list of aircraft carriers in the world:

At the Wiki link there are data re the relative sizes and ages of the carriers.

4 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 3, 2009 at 3:41 PM

    I've always been afraid of the fact that there are an enormous amount of people who are up in arms when a fraction of a percentage point is spent on Arts and Cultures, yet don't bat an eye when over half of the yearly budget is spent on building the worlds largest most expensive army.

    So expensive in fact that it's budget dwarfs that of every other country in the world combined.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Legal EagleNovember 4, 2009 at 9:59 AM

    The growth and the sway of the military industrial complex has always disturbed me. I am far from leftist (I am a gun-owner, pro-military, consider myself right center) but the amount we spend on defense is absurd. We should be reinvesting a large portion of that money in our country instead of pouring it down a pit. Yes, most of that money is spent in America, but it is not reinvested in infrastructure or anything with a prospective benefit. It goes to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. gbradleyNovember 5, 2009 at 9:51 PM

    I'd like to see that chart as a percentage of GDP.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 6, 2009 at 7:53 AM

    GDP 2008 vs Military Spending 2007 in US Billions
    USA 14,441 vs 660 (4.6%)
    China 4,327 vs 144.5 (3.3%)
    Russia 1,676 vs 85 (5.1%)

    http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/022609_fy10_topline_global_defense_spending/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29

    ReplyDelete