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Comment by nojvek | Hacker News Reader

I never understand why America spends an obscene amount of money to make technology to kill other people. Education is suffering, public transportation and healthcare is ridiculously behind western nations but military still gets an insane budget.

I would like Google and Apple to really up their game on security.

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It might be part and parcel with the American Dream. Believing that society is a meritocracy -- that your success or failure is primarily a function of the effort you put in (plus whatever sui generis "merit" you personally have) is another version of a just world. And if you have a just world, well, surely if you've commanded the attention of the police or ire of the military, you've done something to deserve it, right?

Check the list of largest arm exporters and manufacturers the enlightened EU says hi.

total budget of the EU on Military: $226.73 billion

total nominal GDP: $16.97 trillion

total budget of the US on Military: $3.97 trillion

total nominal GDP: $18.56 trillion

Let the US pullout of NATO and see how the EU long the EU will remain with 226 bln. Most NATO members defense budgets and contribution are below NATO requirements.

And again this has nothing to do with spending, France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands combined export more arms than the US while having approximately the same population.

Overall the EU as a whole exports more arms per capita than the US, you might not like buying guns but you sure love selling them.

According to [1], the volume of arms exports in 2015 (at least) was lower for the countries you mentioned (a sum of USD 7755M for France + Germany + UK + Spain + Italy + Sweden + Netherlands) when compared to USD 10484M in the US.

Another perspective would be to check the nationality of the largest weapons manufacturers, 6 US companies in the Top 10, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companies_by_arms_sales

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...

Source?

Annual US military budget for 2016: 521.7 billion $

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

Annual EU military budget for 2015: 203.143 billion Euros

http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Brief_10_Defence_spen...

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

> Expenditures

> Budget $226.73 billion (2016)

It's been the world hegemony since World War II. US protects the oil supply, particular factions of Islam, and Europe and sells outdated versions of our weapons to foreign countries. A peek at American military base locations will give a clue.

It's a consequence of the puritanical roots of US. It's a fetish for punishment.

This does seem to me to be a little bit of a to easy explanation. Is it really so that this can be tied back to the founding roots of the country, when the setup of the population nowadays can be tied back to so many different influences from different parts of the world?

I never understood the "fetish" of Hollywood for the lone ranger and bullet slinging revenge guy. Or the idea that guns are a valid protection.

Non the less - there are other parts of the world that maybe have the same (or even higher) amounts of guns in private possession without the military and police fetish.

I am even not sure, that this is a valid correlation. Private gun ownership and police/military spending/fetish.

From an outsider's perspective, nowhere comes close to the US for gun (and by extension, miltary/police) fetish.

Wikipedia seems to back up my first thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...

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