Are you basing that statement on the budget figures, or on the actual spending?
It applies to both, and the difference is so extreme it applies to any reasonable way of measuring our economy. There are different ways to calculate them, but without being outright dishonest in your calculations there is no way you can get defense spending as a bigger part of our economy over the decades.
Its risen a bit in the last few years, but much less (as a portion of our economy) than it declined before that. You have relatively short term peaks and troughs, but each peak is lower than the one before it (Iraq/Afghanistan, is lower than Reagan build up, which was lower than Vietnam, which was lower than Korea, which was lower than WWII).
And its not just a bit lower. The differences are large (staggering if your talking about WWII, but that's a special case and a long time ago, so I'm not really basing my argument on that but the trend of decline that continues since)
WWII peak - Over 1/3 rd of GDP on the military
Korea peak - 11.7%
Vietnam peak - 8.9%
Reagan build up peak - 6%
Gulf War peak - 4.6%
2007 (including the supplementals for Iraq and Afghanistan) about 4.3%
Those figures don't include DoE military related nuclear spending, but that spending was larger as well (in real terms, and certainly as a percentage of the economy) in the past, and is also small compared to the official budget or the "supplementals". It also doesn't include VA spending, but Veterans spending would have been a larger part of the economy when a much larger percentage of Americans where veterans. And also veterans spending might properly be associated with the past, most of the spending is related to military service from years ago not from today, so including it is tricky. If you do include it perhaps today's spending goes above the Gulf War peak, but probably not, there where more veterans of WWII and Korea around in the early 90s than today, and also our economy has grown so the same amount, or even a greater amount of spending in real terms can represent a lower portion of the GDP. I expect if you include veterans costs all along that the decline since Reagan will be steeper.
If you measure as a percentage of the US Federal budget rather than a percentage of GDP the decline is greater, because government spending as a percentage of GDP has increased. (Not from WWII when it reached its all time peak, but from its 1947 low its gone up something like 50%.
carriedaway.blogs.com
The data in that chart is only in 2003, but with Bush's ever increasing budgets I suggest the trend has probably continued. |
