The US gets that much more military for its money. Look at the diagram on the bottom of https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/carriers.htm . Or remember that the US Air Force is the world's biggest air force, the US Navy is the world's second-biggest air force, and the US Marines are the world's third-biggest air force.
There's space for people to disagree on whether what we get out of the military is worth what we spend on it, but there's no mystery about where the money's going.
Believe me: There is plenty of mystery, and plenty more obvious waste. The most obvious is called "use or lose".
Why in the hell do we need it?
China has a billion more people, borders Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, yet spends less than a quarter as much as the US on defense, even by the most liberal estimates.
I can see arguing the merit of spending more than every country on Earth. I would still disagree, but it would definitely be a discussion.
However, the US contributes more than a third (closer to 1/2 now) of defense spending for the entire goddamn world.
It disgusts me that my country takes so much money from its citizens, and throws it at all into a machine of death, whilst simultaneously blaming its egregious debt on Social Security.
> China has a billion more people, borders Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, yet spends less than a quarter as much as the US on defense, even by the most liberal estimates.
Sure. But it has no (conventional) power projection capacity, whereas the US has been engaged in two simultaneous occupations of outright hostile foreign countries literally on the other side of the world for a decade, at the same time as deploying troops to defend dozens of friendly nations all around the world, enforcing freedom of the seas again all around the world... . The front line of a US-China conflict would likely be Taiwan, that's what spending 4x as much is buying us. Again, we can argue over whether that's something we should be spending money on, but on the whole (of course there is some level of waste, as there is in all large organizations) we're getting what we're paying for.
> the US has been engaged in two simultaneous occupations of outright hostile foreign countries literally on the other side of the world for a decade
And spying on the entire world, including its own citizens, etc.
Even if you believe the US should play world police, and demand a group of people with a totally different culture and history pay by it's rules, there are plenty of significant areas where we are clearly wasting significant amounts of tax dollars, all under the umbrella of "defense". Instead, Congress overwhelmingly decided, after Trump asked for a $20 billion increase, to have a $100 billion increase.
> We're getting what we're paying for
I don't buy that. We are paying an unfathomable about * 5.
There is extremely significant and obvious waste. Even what is not "waste" does not clearly help taxpayers in any way. Very significant portions are clearly to the detriment of taxpayers.
I can recommend "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" by Andrew Feinstein. The book argues that most arms deals are done to line the pockets of a few key players (and in the case of the US, pork-barrel politics) - it even goes so far as suggesting that political decisions to go to war can often be blamed on a desire to generate demand for new weapons systems that means more $$$$ and ££ in the right places. I found it quite depressing....
Eisenhower warned of this in 1961, and claims (sometimes correct) that war profiteers were responsible for causing wars can be found throughout history.
There's space for people to disagree on whether what we get out of the military is worth what we spend on it, but there's no mystery about where the money's going.