I felt compelled to look this up today.
The U.S. accounts for more than 48 percent of all defense spending in the entire world, if you take into account the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons, which is not paid for by the military (who knew?).
In 2008, the whole world spent $1.43 trillion on military stuff. The U.S. spends $711 billion of that.
If you add up our spending and that of our NATO allies, that comes to something like 72 percent of all military spending on the planet.
I also wanted to look this up:
The U.S. operates about two thirds of all the aircraft carriers in the world. We have 12 active super-carriers (with at least two more inactive but fit to recommission quickly), plus at least 10 of the smaller amphibious assault ships, which are effectively aircraft carriers. Even using a fairly generous definition of "aircraft carrier", there are only 13 active non-American carriers on the whole planet and only England and France have more than one (the Royal Navy has four, the French have two).
This leaves me with an important question:
Shouldn't we be kicking butt somewhere or something?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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6 comments:
I've got a thing or two to say about this, but I'm sick of how every time I comment there's a big lag waiting for it to post. I do believe you can set your comment moderation so that comments from certain preferred posters just 'sail through' as it were. I mean, it's not like I'm going to abuse the privelege with a bunch of sexually provocative all-caps come-ons, or by misspelling "privilege."
HOT MAN ON WOMAN SEX! HOT WOMAN ON MAN SEX! HOT HOT SEX WOMAN ON MAN ON SEX! HOT MAN SEX WOMAN!!
SEX ON!
It might help. All Caps sex is a sure winner in the attention getting department.
All right, Mr. Smarty-Pants Commenter. Moderation is now OFF. Comment away. But don't let me catch you getting all Spammy.
Whoa. I just meant for me. I wanted to feel special!
Still, this is pretty sweet!
Now I forget what I was going to say. I'll "wing it":
The cost of maintaining nuclear weapons should be borne by our nation's schools.
If we up our defense spending to 51% of the global defense budget, that should give us some sort of special say or voting status in the UN akin to "majority shareholder" or the like. We're pretty close, we should go for it.
WHO THE HELL ELSE HAS AIRCRAFT CARRIERS? I thought we held some sort of patent or trademark on that. It's our design, damn it!Other nations should be forced to angle the deck sideways or something.
I think we already do kick butt in general. Metaphorically, at least. Symbolically.
The ferocious Brazilian Navy has a carrier. How special have they be if they are something BRAZIL has?
I bet it runs on alcohol instead of petrol derivatives.
Wait - they're not nuclear are they? I think it's just the subs that are nuclear.
I think they should have warships that are so huge that their torpedo chutes fire out FULL-SIZE ATTACK SUBMARINES!! Imagine one of THOSE babies rocketing out atcha! You'll be quaking in your little sissy BOOTS in your little sissy BOAT.
"fire two!"
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