NATO, military, US and education

8 Responses to “NATO, military, US and education”

1. Franse
   March 28th, 2010 at 17:21
   

   It’s absolutely insane, yes. If you look at their annual budget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget), you can see that their military takes up almost 1/4 of their entire expenditures.

   It won’t get better over here in Europe though as we now have the Lisbon Treaty which mandates the countries to increase their military spending (http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/themen/Europa/eu-wahl2009-baf.pdf). It’s a sad world really..

   
   
2. Basti
   March 28th, 2010 at 19:18
   

   The US’s budget is insanely high, and that’s no surprise with two ongoing wars. Maybe they now know where the money went from Clinton’s balanced budget to Dubbya’s trillion dollar debt.

   I agree, however, that Europe has to spend some money on defense. Most armies in Europe have not fully made the transition from a cold war bulwark to a mobile tactical force.

   In other words, it’s worse to be paying for something useless than to be paying even more money for something useful.

   
   
3. E.
   March 28th, 2010 at 20:05
   

   @ Basti: here is an oversimplified utility function of invested money for defense budget:
   (something useful) / (something useless) * [1/(money required)]
   The higher the result, the more useful, I’d say.

   What I want to emphasize with this is that it really depends on how much better “something useful” is than “something useless”, and on much money is needed to achieve that gap.

   In principal, I might agree, then again there are many other budgets we should consider investing money first.

   1/3 (!!!) of the German GDP goes into social welfare (unemployment, pensions, etc). Of course that’s important, but we have to start talking about that sooner or later.

   
   
4. Robert
   March 29th, 2010 at 15:39
   

   Although I would believe the numbers of Dollars spent for German Military might be even higher (probably x 1000 :) totalling 31 billion.

   And I’d rather have well paid, trained and educated Soldiers than the last retard redneck in the tank. Something that the US can’t afford anymore (or never could?).

   
   
5. E.
   March 29th, 2010 at 15:54
   

   Thanks, $ 31 billion is correct. I still can’t grasp why they use the “wrong” names for numbers in the states. And yes, of course, I agree on the education part.

   I wonder why the US cannot afford education anymore, though – they spend insane amounts of money on their defense budget. I would think that equipment (tanks, ships, helicopters) has the higher budget there, it can’t be impossible / that costly to give the people reasonable training?

   Then again, maybe you don’t need to be the brightest person to drive a tank?

   
   
6. Franse
   March 29th, 2010 at 17:52
   

   We shouldnt forget that the expenditures for education and research are that low in Germany because it is a federal republic. Also the federal states pay their share as well as the smaller administrative units (counties/cities). It doesnt sum up much higher though. For example: Bavaria pays the lowest education expenditures with 2.8% of its GDP (compared to 4.1% average). Although Bavaria has a fairly high GDP in comparison, it cant hold a candle to entire Germany which results in only a small addition to the 3%. Altogether we get 4.8% (http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2009-09/oecd-studie-bildungsausgaben). Far away from the envisioned 10% goal.

   Concerning the 1/3 for social security: It’s a matter of looking what is in these 33%. (Source for all: BMF) Some parts are unemployment compensations (34bn) – including e.g. poor relief (3bn) and administration (3bn), the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (8bn) and pensions (78bn). Pensions include e.g. 3bn for subsidizing East German pensions, 6bn for miners’ pensions, 38bn federal subsidies for the general pension (which is de facto a balance sheet extension) and 12bn compensation for children education. Much money has been lost with the infamous (read: wrong) integration of East Germans and their industry and welfare. If we hadnt destroyed their economy right when we took over (btw, some of the people leading the process were now-president Köhler and Sarrazin), we would have much less to pay now (“Soli”, unemployment compensations, pensions etc.). Not to forget that we had fewer expenditures before the Agenda reforms…

   
   
7. Denis
   April 2nd, 2010 at 03:20
   

   Just a little correction of the second dash: Germany spends about 10% of it’s total government spening on military. What is about 1,2% of the total german GDP.

   I’m not sure about the 1/3 social spending. I guess germany spends about 1/3 of it’s total governmental spending on social matters and about 50% of the federal governmental spending is covered by social expenditures. But I’m not sure, cause the websites of the ministry of finance and the federal statistcal office are not very user friendly…

   
   
8. E.
   April 2nd, 2010 at 11:28
   

   Thanks, I corrected it. As you say, I had to rely on wikipedia, because the German official websites are way too cryptic really.

   
   

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