Friday, April 15, 2022

Is U.S Defense Budgeting Too Much or Too Little?

 Many peoples opinions on the defense budget of the U.S are heavily politically influenced, basing their views on a few short statements from the news or a tweet online, heavily oversimplifying a majorly complex system of money management. 

Every branch of security for the U.S is extracted a certain amount of money, and the defense budget covers the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons-related activities. As technologies and strategies are changing all over the world, the U.S is working to keep up with the changes without marking an unreasonable increase on these resources. 

Picking and choosing which facts to exploit can come in your favor, as there are many facts and evidence to pull out of this complex budget system that can support whether spending is of too much or too little. An example of the defense spending decline is the fact that the spending was around 8% of GDP in the 1970's, and during the Trump industry it is just above 3% of GDP. That point of view clearly confirms a drop in defense spending, until you realize the differences in GDP from the 1970's to now. 

Those in criticism of the spending can broaden those terms and take note that the budget constitutes more than 1/3 of all global military spending. Or that the second highest defense spending country, China, spends two times less than the U.S

When comparing to the nation's economy and growing GDP each year, this spending becomes a modest portion of the governments dividends. While seen as modest, it is still important to look into the specifics of what is being spent on and find out if some things are being funded unnecessarily. An influx of one area that was needed post 9/11 in 2001 could have shifted to a completely different area in 2022. While the budget has made small percentage changes, there is a need for shifts in which area needs what. The increase of want for newer technology, robots, and AI, could shift the budget drastically to the technology side of spending instead of frontline personnel. 

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