trail wrote:
OK, cool. My fallback position is that while a useful stat, percent GDP isn't the whole picture. While some costs scale with GDP, some don't. E.g. land area to defend is relatively constant. Also the nature of warfare changes. WWII was maybe the last war with classic, large fronts. The next wars probably won't involve fielding massive armies and navies.
Of course I could be wrong. Sometimes you end up fighting the war that actually happens instead of the war you planned for.
I completely agree that certain government costs do not have to scale to GDP. I mean, I'm a huge fan of that concept. (The jury is out on how much that might apply to defense spending). My point wasn't necessarily that the US military spending is a model of efficiency or even moderately well done, either.
I just felt JPO's comment could use some context as it gets compared to other parts of the federal budget that really have been going up, up and up -- both in absolute and % gdp terms.