Jophiel wrote:
To be fair, the Pentagon is a giant fiscal mess of
indeterminate proportions.
Although that's largely due to a willingness on the part of Congress to let the Dept of Defense flout the reporting rules and an unwillingness to say anything, lest one break the holy commandment of Thou Shalt Not Question The Holy Pentagon Ever Unless You Hate America.
While I don't have an issue with pointing out the lack of accountability in terms of how the Pentagon spends its money, that guy seems to really have a specific hate-on for the military/defense industry. His whole diatribe about how much we spend on things compared to how much we think we do is something you could probably find about any subject, not just defense spending. So in the interest of addressing his concern rather than the single target he selective choose to pick on (and I've been poking around the latest budget tables), some interesting factoids:
In 1971, the US spent 7.3% of GDP on Defense
Between 1999 and 2001 we hit a low point for defense spending at 3.0% of GDP
In 2010, the US spent 4.7% of GDP on Defense.
So, unless you cherry pick your starting period at the tail end of the Clinton presidency, you can't at all say we're somehow spending an historically high amount of money on defense. And to be fair, since 1971 was the last year of the Viet Nam war and is a bit of an outlier, I'll add that for the entire time period between 1972 and 1992 the spending rate never dropped below 4.7%. Just to show that I'm not cherry picking numbers myself.
In the meantime, in 1971, spending on Social Security was 3.3% of GDP and with some minor fluxuations along the way has steadily increased since that time to 4.8%.
More dramatically, in 1971, spending on Medicare was 0.7% of GDP. Today it is 3.6%
Medicaid was 0.3% in 1971. Today it's at 1.9%
So collectively, "health care" has increased from 1% of GDP to 8.4% over a 40 year time period, while defense spending has decreased significantly. Yet, for some bizarre reason there are some people who keep wanting to make the argument that we spend too much on Defense and not enough on Health care. Argue for more spending or less if you want, but don't pretend like the spending levels are different than the really are. Looking at a number in a vacuum doesn't tell you anything at all. Is 800B on defense enough, too much, or not enough? No clue. But we can look at historical patterns and judge how much we're spending relative to what we used to and get a sense that way, can't we? And we can assess whether we're getting the same or similar bang for the buck as well, right?
I think we can say that our military today is at least as effective a relative fighting force as it was back in 1971 (most people would argue it's a hell of a lot more effective in fact). Yet we're spending less of our total economy on it, so isn't that "good"? The better question, for one not so focused on the military is whether or not our health care system today gives us as much bang for the buck as it did in 1971. There certainly have been medical improvements since then. No doubt about that at all. But is it 8 times better? Do we provide 8 times the care today?
I don't think so. Do you? Does anyone?