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‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Trump is an asshole, and the US should absolutely be the leader in defending Ukraine given its stockpiles and technologies and the immediacy of the need.
At the same time, Europe was able to fund some pretty nice social programs by minimizing defense spending over the last few decades. They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.
Not true. They can always take money from their ruling class and give it to their working class.
That statement applies to minimizing defense spending. Of course you can raise revenues and spend more. If you spend less in other areas, you don't need to.
The US government spends more per total capita on healthcare than any country with nationalized healthcare, but in the US it covers less than a third of the population.
The US spends more on defense than anyone but it keeps fucking things up all around the world to justify those spendings.
The US can afford social programs, it decides not to, so give us all a fucking break.
I have only one correction and it’s a small one. The US spends more on healthcare but that spending isn’t all by the US government. Your main point still stands. The system sucks.
More on this:
Source
What you quoted doesn't say what you think it does... That's governmental spendings and then there's private spendings over that.
No. Just scroll up and down that page I linked and you’ll see some charts are labeled “national spending” and some are labeled “federal spending.” Federal is government. National is everything: government and private. The US government is not pouring 20% of GDP into healthcare, and then on top of that there’s all private spending.
States + federal government account for closed to 50% of the total spendings, which is still more, per capita, than anywhere else that is paid via taxes and then the other ~50% people end up paying from their pockets either directly or via private insurance.
https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet
The end result is still the same, the US spends more than anywhere else per capita and what it spent only covers a minority, the rest is private insurance.
Thanks for so passionately rallying against something I didn't write.
You're saying that Europe can afford social programs because it doesn't spend as much as the USA in defense, implying the USA can't afford those because they're defending Europe, I'm saying the USA has no excuse not to offer social programs even with their current spendings.
I'm 100% sure that Europe wouldn't have cut their social programs if their defense budget was higher, it's a governance choice to let your population eat shit and die and to waste money pretending to help it and that's the choice the USA made.
Europe can grow their military and keep social programs at the same level by increasing taxes.
The USA can increase social spending by decreasing military spending, increasing taxes, or increasing the deficit.
There are other options like cutting fraud and waste, etc.
I don't know why you were rude to me, but your audience approves.
Because the whole world is tired of people acting like the US is a victim in that and that's exactly what you did in your original message.
You might want to check your personal prejudices with how you treat other people.
The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any country with socialised healthcare
You're the second person to write that, and it's entirely irrelevant to European military spending, Russia, and Ukraine.
It's completely relevant to your fallacious argument that other countries have social programs because the benevolent protection from the US.
The US could have the best healthcare systems in the world without reducing military spending. It only doesn't for the sake of the profit of insurance companies.
Your social programs don't suck because of your "benevoloent protection" (which has turned into a mafia protection racket now) but because American hyper-capitalist ideology is a barrier against being able to create effective social programs.
I feel like I'm responding to AI at this point. I already responded ad nauseum that I was not arguing anything about the US system. Now people want to use my comment as representing their favorite Boogeyman.
What I’m saying is that you can have those social programs that you say Europe has and the USA would actually be able to put even more money towards your military. Your current system is wildly less efficient because it’s setup to enrich middlemen (insurance companies).
The social programs existing have nothing to do with military spending in Europe
Your first point has already been made by others and is off-topic for the post.
European governments have budgets. With a set amount of revenue, they can spend more on social programs if they spend less elsewhere. If they want to keep their social spending and spend more elsewhere, they will have to increase their revenues. Not having the extra expense has made things better for them, and now that is going to end.
It's very simple, and maybe people should stick to the point and not feel triggered to respond against hyper-capitalist America.
The eu sent $5b more in arms to Ukraine than the us did.
They need to increase that but also keep more for themselves.
I keep hearing this but I'm a skeptic at heart. You wouldn't happen to have some sources would you?
Lots of people are saying Trump is an asshole.
That is the only part of your comment that doesn't need additional sources
More than likely possible depending on how they came up with valuations on old stock piles from the cold war. Depends on if you value them based on their original cost, or the modern cost to replace them.
They could also afford to make the disgustingly rich even richer. By a lot.
Well put