speech bit

[eppie]

such a comparison shows that America's investment in its military is not exceptional. Exceptional military spending is better illustrated by the examples of China and North Korea. In these cases you do see a phenomenon of military spending negatively influencing the standard of living in a profound way. However, America's relative affluence is a counter to the idea that such a phenomenon is at work in that nation.

Well you are more or less right on this, but I would like to make some nuances.
Try changing this number to amount spend per person, instead using de %GDP. Let's say we have a country X with 1000 people who all happened to be miljonair and teh economy is great. Next to X there is Y also with 1000 people but these are all very poor. If X and Y would go to war it does not make sense for Y to spend the same %GDP as X because that would mean a lot smaller army. It is for that reason not very strange that a poor country "has" to spend more %GDP than a richer country to get the same kind of army. If north korea would spend the sames % as the US they might as well not have an army.

So this is not a very useful point to prove things with.

There is no military more active than America's, and the world has come to depend on it for stability.

Here you wrote down again another pount of debate. Is the world so much more stable because the US has military everywhere?. I don't think so.

I think more important for spending on military is the power of the weapon industry. If the US would end up in a real war again (one country against the other) I think they won't hesitate to use atomic bombs. Well they are already available so the rest is just for fun. :D :angry: