Europe in general has been massively subsidized in different ways by the USA from the end of WW2. They turn around and love to show off their moral superiority while someone else picks up the bill.
The vast majority of US spending since 2001 has been wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the defense of Europe. This article has a good example of the spending increases specifically earmarked for Iraq/Afgahnistan: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/every...
That ignores things like the excessively high hours on F-18 airframes from a higher than anticipated rate of deployment, causing increased repair/replacement costs and lower airframe availability, even after: http://breakingdefense.com/2017/02/62-of-f-18-hornets-unfit-...
> If Putin for whatever reason decided to become an expansionist power and the US had an european level military, no one could stop him.
There are other, much cheaper solutions to this - note that the US and EU have made it politically untenable for Russia to resolve the invasion of Ukraine in their favor, with extremely minimal deployments of military forces (a few show of force exercises in eastern Europe with NATO members or partners).
Even given that, the budget is massively overblown.
> If Putin for whatever reason decided to become an expansionist power and the US had an european level military, no one could stop him.
You seem to appeal to extremes. Ignoring how unlikely for that is to happen, you still don't need ~1000 military bases around the world, or would 500 be too little to stop Putin?
> Europe in general has been massively subsidized in different ways by the USA from the end of WW2. They turn around and love to show off their moral superiority while someone else picks up the bill.
That is the cost of being as global superpower and the world police, you pick up some bills, but you also get away with a lot of crap that others wouldn't.
Where do you get the idea that "average Joe" is okay with that? It's been a huge talking point for Trump and his supporters for the past two years.
This was also a talking point for Trump and his supporters for the past two years. ("we're going to have insurance for everyone", "No cuts to medicaid", "No one will lose coverage", "Nobody will be worse off financially", "I am going to take care of everybody … Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.")
Of course, in that case as well, he took them for the rubes they are and likely had no plan for delivering on his promises.
We simply don't trust government to provide good service overall. And a lot of experiences tend to come from this; trying to get a local government to do anything to benefit a community is like pulling teeth. We'll be in the middle of economic decline, and they'll be repurposing land into dog parks.
I think Europe has fundamentally different ideas about the cost/benefit of investment in military. If the US went all-in on isolationism and drastically cut back military spending, Europe likely wouldn't replace American spending dollar-for-dollar. Instead they would spend more on other things, such as health care.