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spikefly t1_jac950v wrote

Reply to comment by lukfrom in Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short by Majestyk_Melons

I don’t disagree with you. Would be nice to put money elsewhere. Unfortunately, everyone will have LESS money to spend on the important stuff (the things you mentioned).

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robinNL070 t1_jacd74q wrote

One of the most important stuff is defence. If we in Europe had payed 2% of our budget on our defence we would have had far less issues now. Hopefully we have learned our lesson but it will still take a decade to get back at what we need to be to become a serious player to make a country think twice before they start invading someone.

The whole reason we have such a high GDP and have schools, healthcare and everything is because of the global security of free trade. It pays itself back many times to have this world order.

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Skorkabian t1_jacf6uf wrote

Just be careful not to swing the arm the other way, and drastically overspend at the cost of losing what you have. The American model is barely sustainable, and hurts the populace. I fell through my attic and was mostly fine, but since we were worried I was seriously hurt, and I had a nail sticking out of my foot, we called an ambulance. They cleaned it, got me to a hospital, they took the debris out and gave me a tetanus shot and let me limp out the door. I've been fighting the hospital, the ambulance service and health insurance since. It was a $2000 ambulance ride, with another $1000 in hospital bills. Insurance covered about a third, after harassing them for months. And the ambulance company and insurance company can't decide whether or not they covered their share yet. That was a year ago. If I hadn't had enough money set aside, I'd be getting buried in late fees, and interest.

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robinNL070 t1_jacg12u wrote

That is not the issue of defence spending but America not having a great healthcare system in general. Free market is great in many things if it is regulated to the bone on necessary things like healthcare. I can speak of the Netherlands that we on average spend less per person on healthcare with tax included than the U.S.

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Skorkabian t1_jachdwn wrote

Oh no, I don't disagree, I just wanted to remind you that the arm swings both ways, and a massive defense budget is money that doesn't get invested in public good. We spend roughly a sixth of the budget to maintain our doctrine of fighting the next two strongest countries, while letting our infrastructure crumble, our teachers need to work second jobs, and our hospitals be privatized to the point of excessive costs for minimal aid. Spend more, but don't spend so much it starts to eat into every other aspect of your society, like we do.

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robinNL070 t1_jacn26w wrote

That is really a myth to be fair. The U.S spend 3.4% while having a larger GDP per capita than the Netherlands and we spend 1.4% on defence. also a lot of our money we spend on defence doesn't come back in our economy but yours does and even makes money abroad. On infrastructure the U.S. is not as dense as we have so it becomes more expensive to have nice roads everywhere. We are also the europort so we need to have good infrastructure to get the goods to Germany and the rest of Europe. hospitals are also privatized here as well but more regulated than in the U.S. Even we need to regulate more still but that is an ongoing battle that will go on forever anyways and will become more strict or more loose with each time a political party is in charge.

I follow the U.S. politics a bit but they always seem to make a lot of noise for big changes and nothing happens afterwards because it is to big to change in one go. America should do it more slowly and incremental and become a tiny bit less populist on both sides democrats and republicans. We also have our problems to be fair and are not perfect at all.

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beaucoupBothans t1_jaeph5d wrote

US defense budget is interesting. It is roughly 3.4% of GDP but also accounts for more than 10 percent of the federal budget and nearly half of the total discretionary spending. the GDP number is a bit deceptive.

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RokulusM t1_jaci5zg wrote

Defence spending isn't why the US has such a terrible health care system. US public health care spending is way higher per capita than in countries with universal health care. Adopting a universal model would save them money.

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Mayor__Defacto t1_jad1txf wrote

That’s not an issue of defense spending, the Federal Government already spends more on healthcare than any other country does, but only covers seniors and the abject poor. The main problem is the layers of bureaucracy that take money the whole way down, from insurance to billers etc.

If we reformed the system to not waste our money paying insurance companies and all sorts of black holes that money disappears into, Medicare could cover everyone without much additional cost. Think about how much extra money people would have in their pockets.

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