With the large increase in military spending in our "Baffoon in Chief's" budget it is important to remember that this is money that could be spent for the "general welfare" mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution. The money in our out sized military budget is money that not available to provide universal health care or universal college that is provided by many other western developed countries. The US spends almost 5 times what China spends on the military and over 6 times what Russia spends on its military. And this is the "depleted military" that Trump talks about?
Is our out sized military been good for our country? There are many ways to look at this but I wanted to look at it from the perspective of general happiness of our population. According to the World Happiness Report we rank 14th in the World in happiness as a country. Not surprisingly socialist Scandinavian countries rank very well in this report. Norway ranks number 1. While the US spends 4.7% of our GDP on defense the Nordic countries spend anywhere from 1.2 to 1.5 of their GDP on defense. The US spends twice the world GDP average on defense and the Nordic countries spend half the world GDP average. While I know that correlation doesn't always mean causation I do think that how a country spends its financial resources may reflect in the happiness of its population. Tanks apparently don't buy happiness as well as secure access to health care.
P.S.
Norway has a message for Trump with his desire for more immigrants from Norway.
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