One difference between here and the States is that most of our tax money goes to the equivalent of city and state, and only a small percentage to the national government.
I pay an equal amount in federal and local property tax. Property taxes also pay for public schools.
Ironically, while people get in arms about how the federal budget is being spent almost no one knows what’s going on in their city or county budget. And that determines your quality of life just as much.
GP can't possibly mean Germany with chronic communal underfinancing (yet being hit by federal law creating entitlements all the time such as for eg kindergardens, energy efficient housing, etc),
The Department of Defense gets the lion's share of U.S. tax dollars, but we're not supposed to talk about that.
At this point I can't tell if the politicians fund the DOD because they want to, or because they're afraid of the lengths it might go to protect its cashflow.
It's actually 993 billion. And while it's not a full majority, it's definitely wayyyyyy too much. The overspending on military means other, productive parts of society are underfunded.
See what I mean GP? We're really not supposed to talk about this stuff.
mrep, you're either misinforming me, or you're misinformed. That 3.2% that you named doesn't cover domestic military spending (Homeland Security, FBI, NSA) nor does it cover pensions for widows and retirees, nuclear weapons research, nuclear waste disposal, nuclear weapon manufacturing, interest on war debts, the VA. Factoring in these costs actually puts military spending second on your list: 993.8 Billion Dollars, just 7 billion shy of the trillion we spent on social security. We now have a growing number of "civilians" in the military too; these private contractors help to make military spending look smaller than it really is.
And keep in mind the military budget has only grown since 9/11 never shrinking. We're still blowing up Yemen, Somalia, the Levant and Afghanistan as I type this, after already blowing up Iraq, Libya and Pakistan over a period of 20 years. It's expensive.
GDP can’t be spent. The Pentagon budget is about 750 billion and federal tax revenues are about 3.5 trillion so the pentagon budget is about 20% of tax revenues. The ‘about’s here are fudging billions.
I can't wait to hear from "conservatives" who "care deeply" about deficits to come out of the wood works and teach us the virtue of "not spending money we don't have" now that we have given our tax breaks (again) to all the corporations from Amazon to Walmart.
Nobody gets to whine about deficits until we raise our tax rates up and stable for at least a decade[0]. I don't see anyone campaigning for higher property taxes (my recommendation is an annual tax of 7 to 9 percent[1] of the property value with a housing allowance to all residents physically present in the US) similar to the carbon tax in Canada.
[0] My off-hand recommendation for income above 50 x 2000 x minimum wage (for example, at a minimum wage of USD 15, it is USD 50 * 2000 * 15 = USD 1.5M), the progressive tax rate should be at least 90%.
[1] The idea being not paying this tax for roughly ten years ought to be enough to get you evicted with minimum fuss so we can "sell" the property to someone who will pay the property tax. No exceptions. No homesteads. No charitable work exception. Applicable nationwide.
The pie slices represent the spend as a percentage of total spend, and the percentages are of GDP. I'd hope government spending is not 100% of spending!
I find this idea totally weird. Can you look at the last decade of US military actions and say this has increased European security? I think most people would say no, of course not.
Sure, the US pays a lot for defense, but is that money well spent? Did the EU benefit from the US invasion of Korea? Probably not. Vietnam? Also no. Iraq? Afghanistan? In all these cases, certainly no.
> Can you look at the last decade of US military actions and say this has increased European security?
Here is a video [0] of the borders of European countries over the last 1500 years. There is potentially a correlation behind their stability since 1945 (11:16 in the video) and the US having a number of troops stationed in Germany comparable to the German army.
It is debatable whether it was all to do with the US; but the circumstantial evidence is substantial. The border redrawings may resume one day.
There hasn't been a credible outside threat to European security since the fall of the Soviet Union. Intraeuropean wars between major powers have become a lot less likely because of increased economic integration thanks to the EU.
Oh, just the small problems like Transnistria and Donetsk and Crimea.
I do not mean to be sarcastic, but Baltic nations are really happy to be protected by NATO. They are in Russian sphere of interest and cannot defend themselves on their own.
Vietnam was originally a US funded French effort to retake its former colony, Iraq & Afghanistan rebalanced Middle Eastern power to secure an unthreatened flow of oil to Europe and Asia (even in the early 2000s, it was the EU almost wholly dependent on ME oil, not the US).
And then obviously as a result of acting as a third party security guarantor deterring internal conflict, the EU exists.
This is totally absurd. Do you seriously see Iraq or Afghanistan as balanced? Or are you using 'rebalancing' in the same way I could use 'rebalancing' to describe flipping a table?
The second sentence is also ridiculous. The EU stops the EU from having internal conflicts. That's the original purpose of the union. I don't know what the US has to do with it.
The Treaty of Rome was signed in the late 1950s. It, and the subsequent steps to today’s EU are products of Europe’s own internal balance being suspended by the presence of something roughly US shaped [0].
That statement isn’t particularly controversial without delving into some heady revisionism as far as I’m aware. The EU certainly wasn’t developed in a vacuum, and US involvement in the region—especially re: security—was substantial to say the least.
[0] obviously there’s no formal role for the US in the EU, assuming a greater context.
I think in the immediate post-war era, the US was obviously the guarantor of european peace.
That's very different to saying the EU exists because of the US. That's also very different to your claim that interventions in the ME were to protect European interests.
Using your logic, you could say that Britain exists because of the US, because without US support, they would probably[1] have been invaded by the Germans.
[1]: Not very probably, but the chances of the USSR rolling over Europe were always a bit slim too.
The primary threat to European peace isn’t external.
The EU was wholly created and developed during a suspension of internal politics, conflict, and balancing due to the distorting weight of a third party ensuring order, e.g. German reunification is opposed by Britain, France, and Poland without the presence and backing of the US rendering their oppo essentially useless. Repeat for N issues.
Britain’s current state wasn’t conceived and started because England, Scotland and Wales’ historically conflicting interests were rendered meaningless in the face of an ostensibly neutral third party keeping the peace allowing them to develop ever closer ties, England just conquered the rest a long time ago.
For reference, the last time Europe tried to collectively balance itself internally before conflicting interests inevitably metastasized into alliance formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe
And forgive me but once again, I just cannot overstate how important suspending internal conflict was vs keeping the USSR at bay, or going further back, keeping the Nazis out of Britain.
Is this a common view of european history amongst Americans? To me, it seems very idiosyncratic and strange. Here's some doubts off the top of my head:
1. Has the peace in europe been unusually long-lasting?
2. Are internal politics actually suspended? Russia, and by extension the USSR, was a traditional player in European conflicts.
3. Is there a fundamental difference between the soviet bloc / nato 'grand alliances' and the earlier ones?
4. What practical role did the US play in, for instance, German unification? I thought that was basically the German's own thing, with nobody else having a relevant opinion.
I'd see the recent cooperation between EU states as a result of the collapse of their empires. No empires means no squabbling over colonial territory, a loss of military power and prestige, and the end of an easy way of translating military power into economic success.
Usually, external powers cause instability, much as the US and the USSR did throughout the cold war in the third world.
Also, what internal conflict was possible to help the Nazis invade britain? Everywhere else in western europe was already conquered by the time such an invasion was in the works.
Oh no, it’s not common at all day to day. US foreign policy has been heavily liberal & internationalist for a century or so now in a manner that deeply affects public opinion of it and its effects. More realist lenses such as this have enjoyed splendid isolation in their IR niches until somewhat recently, but even that slight bump in popularity is mostly negligible outside DC and academia.
Each of your doubts could be addressed with a book/subfield of study, so this will be very high level, unsatisfying, inevitably colored, and in the same vein of perspective as before:
2. Mostly as it relates to balancing and the results of that, though as you’ve pointed out this could all easily be viewed as balancing against the USSR (though the context, lack of relative economic power & length of time in alliance preclude this somewhat, alliances don’t necessarily prevent peer conflict, especially over time and as the participants strengths vary!).
3. Sort of? Cold War era alliances were standing, and meant to ensure peace vs reactive with a finite life span and intended to address a specific crisis, e.g. Napoleon. This obviously existed beforehand though, and indeed led to WWI. I’m not sure of the exact historical trends on this.
4. The eastern half was still soviet for one, France was very strong in the form of EC at the time and didn’t like NATO dominating/expanding for two, and Thatcher was just Thatcher for three. The whole process of reunification was such a fantastic example of skillful diplomacy on both sides that I really can’t do it justice here, suffice to say that US efforts pushed an uneasy/unwilling FR/UK to commit to the process, the “Two Plus Four” negotiating format, and Germany in NATO while brokering the guarantees and associated issues that led the USSR to accepting. Really recommend checking out the history of this if you have the interest and time, fascinating period of history.
And decolonization was absolutely key to integration! Staying on brand, I would only question whether it was fully voluntary (Suez), and whether the global cessation of translating military force into economic success among US allies post Bretton Woods & the WWII destruction of every single other blue water navy had more of an effect.
Finally, the third world was a battleground. External powers and powers in general often do cause instability, but the US in this case held near complete hegemony over Western Europe, and hegemony is quite closely linked with stability in general. One can also look at the relative internal placidity of the eastern bloc while the soviets held control, and its aftermath.
I’m not exactly sure as to what your last paragraph asks, but I’ve had enough fun writing this as is, whew.
Iraq was about securing the US Dollar as the reserve currency for trading oil, not about securing supply to Western Europe. Saddam was threatening to start trading in Euros - he wasn't threatening to cut them off.
“Unthreatened” by regional conflict that spirals into affecting regional output more than anything explicit like turning off the taps.
And I’m sorry, but I personally still can’t/won’t do petrodollar discussions on the internet. It’s a perfectly valid reason for US involvement here, but I have been deeply scarred when it comes to good faith on this subject.
Quite right. The US guaranteed the security of allies and their trade in exchange for opposition to the soviets, who no longer exist.
The current post soviet (& fledgling post ME) situation actually is relatively “free” though, there is an absolutely massive amount of inertia in place.
