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Comment by 6DM | Hacker News Reader

I think it would if we didn't spend so much money in military and defense.

Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

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The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them, protects them from harm, and designs new technology so humanity can progress. The peace that America has wrought across the world is unprecedented and, in doing so, she has made the world a safer place to trade than ever before. And trade greatly benefits nations like Switzerland.

I'm not claiming they're freeloaders. This benefits us all. But it's not an obvious claim that America would be better off if there were less discretionary spending on the military.

Can you provide any empirical evidence for this claim?

I am not the GP, and I do not endorse the argument therein, but some evidence for some of his/her claims are provided by this article[1] by Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson and Thierry Verdier. I think Acemoglu and Robinson are the foremost experts in institutional state capacity, although I was not terribly persuaded by the model set forth in this paper (although I read an earlier revision a while ago). Some more easily readable press coverage of this paper is at [3] and [4].

As for the Pax Americana thesis, that is harder to get empirical evidence for [5], but some evidence for this thesis is that the NATO alliance explicitly has 1% GDP military expenditure minimums, which the non-US NATO allies have been shirking on for some while now[2]. So at least the underlying agreements that make up the international system do, on some level, endorse the "collective action" thesis of enforcing the pax.

[1]: Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World, http://economics.mit.edu/files/11377

[2]: Please do not misconstrue this statement to be some kind of endorsement of the current administration's dislike of NATO; I mean no such thing. President Obama acknowledged this, and lobbied multiple NATO members to increase their spending to meet the minimum, and he was no enemy of NATO.

[3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-09/americans... and here:

[4]: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/09/wil...

[5]: While this article by Dan Drenzer is overall skeptical of the thesis from the perspective of this being a good deal for America, it does provide a lot of citations to articles that claim that this is a good deal for the rest of the world, and is a great start to examine the related work in this area: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00124...

Drug companies are still able to make a healthy profit selling pills to millions of patients, the margins may not be as fat but they'll still be there. Instead of us protecting other countries, maybe they would find reason to protect themselves and trade would be the same. I'm sure we bring a lot of innovation to the table, but we don't bring ALL of the innovation. My point is the reason we're taxed so high, probably has to do with the fact that we're out spending everyone else in defense and it makes up a significant portion of where our taxes go.

You mean like the peace we have brought to iraq and the middle east right? Also honestly we could have steam rolled most anyone out there with half the forces most of the money spent on defense is wasted.

You sound awfully patronizing. The US does like to play world police and other countries do take advantage of this. However if this would not be the case, I'd argue that the other countries would rely more on military alliances like NATO and the world would still be all right.

Also nobody really wants to break loose WW3. Economic warfare is the name of the game today.

I'm sympathetic to your point, in general, but Switzerland is hardly a good example:

> when America develops drugs for them,

"Switzerland is home to many pharmaceutical companies, including very large groups, such as Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche. In 2013, 41 life science companies had their international headquarters (and 29 more their regional headquarters) in Switzerland.

The pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland directly and indirectly employs about 135,000 people.[1] It contributes to 5.7% of the gross domestic product of Switzerland and contributes to 30% of the country's exports.[1]"

> protects them from harm,

"The Swiss Armed Forces (German: Schweizer Armee, French: Armée suisse, Italian: Esercito svizzero, Romanisch: Armada svizra) operates on land, in the air, and in international waters. Under the country's militia system, professional soldiers constitute about 5 percent[citation needed] of the military and the rest are conscripts or volunteers aged 19 to 34 (in some cases up to 50). Because of Switzerland's long history of neutrality, the armed forces do not take part in conflicts in other countries, but it does participate in international peacekeeping missions.

Thousands of tunnels, highways, railroads, and bridges are built with tank traps and primed with demolition charges to be used against invading forces; often, the civilian engineer who designed the bridge plans the demolition as a military officer. Hidden guns are aimed to prevent enemy forces from attempting to rebuild.[14] Permanent fortifications were established in the Alps, as bases from which to retake the fertile valleys after a potential invasion. They include underground air bases that are adjacent to normal runways; the aircraft, crew and supporting material are housed in the caverns."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry_in_Swi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces

Those drugs were developed with stolen money, their banking system is the worlds harbor for frauds, thieves and dictators funds, and gets to lend all that money out at cheap rates.

Mining tunnels is cheap compared to a real military. Pax Americana means they, like all european countries, don't spend a fraction of what we spend on defense.

Offence! the US army has an unequaled capacity for actually running an offence war (or 2) anywhere in the world. No other military has even a fraction of that capacity. Basically the US really needs defence from Canada and Mexico, no one else can attack the US in any sensible way.

Even if european countries spend 3% of their GDP on defence like in the cold war all that money would be spend on soldiers that can defend and very little on those that can attack. Not nearly enough logistics!

The US not needing defence can spend on offensive capabilities instead. This it does, plus scale benefits mean that the US is the undisputed winner in any war.

Too bad the US uses this ability a bit to liberally.

Pax Americana means that when US mess-up Middle East then EU will pick up refuges?

Pax Americana mean than US organise coups in democratically elected governments Iran 53, Chile 73, Paname support dictatorships: Hussein, Mubarak, Pinochet sponsor terrorists: Contras and start wars: Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Your military spending for 1.5 trillion dollars on F35 is truly admirable, but this fighter is still not ready. In many cases NATO countries are forced to buy US produced weapons because of "compatibility".

If 100% of the Swiss GDP went to pharmaceutical spending it would still be less than the United states.

The benefit Switzerland gets from the US military is about trade. Without the US presence around the world there would be no one to export goods to.

>The pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland directly and indirectly employs about 135,000 people. It contributes to 5.7% of the gross domestic product of Switzerland and contributes to 30% of the country's exports."

And those Swiss (or French, or Italian, or Japanese) pharma profits are also high, in large part, because some countries' citizens pay the "gouge" rates for those drugs. That's still consistent with the parent's point[1] that America is bearing the cost of these drugs, effectively subsidizing other countries that negotiate good deals.

[1] at least, a charitable generalization of it

Lovely. Sounds like Sweden 20 years ago :-/

"freeloaders" is a bit of a strong term if you're not complaining.

> The rest of the world can do a lot of things when America develops drugs for them

Honestly this "Oh we're so benevolent" argument always irks me. "Sorry poor folks, we can't have affordable healthcare because otherwise the rest of the world will suffer due to the lack of money in medical research!". It's excusing the insane medical fees (1000 dollars for a bag of salt water?) by lying to yourself "Oh but at least it means the money goes to health R&D!" (Hint, it's not, CEO's of medical insurers are the top 0.1%).

Medical companies can charge so much because the government lets them. If the government had single-payer and managed to force the price of medication down, the price will go up elsewhere, one hopes to a percentage equal in each country's GDP/purchasing power. If a government tried to sell this to you by saying "We want to make sure we pay the fair price, and that everyone else in the world pays the fair price.", are you going to say "Boo! No! We want to pay more than the fair share, because, oh we're just so benevolent!"?

Don't get me started on unprecedented peace. Even if that existed, it's all been unraveled post-9/11. How many democracies has the US toppled? See Iran 1953 for example.

I'm sorry but America is wreaking havoc on the world with it's military.

I think it is an incredibly obvious claim that America would be better off. For one, we'd be able to spend that money on other things, or just lower taxes by that much.

Per capita the US spends roughly 2x as much as Switzerland on defence.

Wikipedia [0] shows US military expenditure at USD 1859 per capita in 2015, and Switzerland isn't on the Top 15 list, which bottoms out with the Netherlands at USD 759 per capita.

You may have a better reference than Wikipedia, though - thoughts?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

We spend only 3.5% of GDP on defense. We spend 17.8% on healthcare, 6.4% on education, 4.7% on energy, and a bit over 3% on entertainment.

52% of the budget goes to entitlements. 16% goes to defense.

That chart you posted is simply not correct. I think they confused discretionary spending with total spending.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

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