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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Militaries are reliant on domestic production and labor. (Paying Chinese solider costs the government a fraction as much as an American soldier.) So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 2x to 4x.

Also, the US is particularly inefficient at capital spending. It costs us a billion dollars to build a mile of subway, and costs countries like France a fraction of that. So that weighs further in favor of discounting our spending in that comparison.

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The majority of DoD's budget is not salaries. Only the salaries should be scaled in this way.

E.g. many other countries are buying our F-35s at the same price we are. Other countries simply can't get equally effective jet fighters, aircraft carriers, etc., at a third to a quarter of the price.

You're correct, personnel costs is not the majority of DoD costs. However, their "pay and benefits" take up 40% of it's budget (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...)

Procurement (the most visible part of the budget we hear about) is 20% of the DoD budget.

Also, one needs to take into account Black Budgets - as they are totally opaque and we have no idea what amount of the budget they consume, assuming they are even accounted for in the 700 billion dollar number the budget claims to be.

The same is true for China and Russia.

Ooohhh hey again, we havent comment threaded in like five years... how are you doing.

Hanging in thank you for asking.

Why would only salaries be scaled that way? It costs China a fraction as much as the U.S. to build a train line. Do you think it costs them the same amount in nominal dollars to build a landmine?

>So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 3x or 4x.

Where did you get those numbers from? According to the OECD the renminbi PPP rate is 4.198 whereas the the current exchange rate is 7. That's 1.67x not 3x.

https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...

Now equalize labor cost... tada!

PPP does include labour. Whether or not it adequately reflects the share of labour costs for the Chinese military I don't know.

No matter which way you slice it, America has a very capable blue water navy while China's barely qualifies. They're on tier with India, Italy, and Russia; only capable of force-projection in their neighborhood. Besides the US, France and the UK are capable of global power projection; that's it. And both of those are in NATO too.

France isn't in NATO.

Edit: ok they are. But they did attempt to withdraw and were only stopped by the 20 year rule. And they still don't have unified nuclear command.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO

France is a founding member of NATO.

France was a member of NATO from the very beginning. In the 60s France had some manner of dispute with the rest of NATO and disassociated themselves in some capacity, but technically remained a member. Since 2009, French/NATO relations have been largely normalized, I think with the exception of how the French government chooses to control France's nukes.

> Edit: ok they are. But they did attempt to withdraw and were only stopped by the 20 year rule. And they still don't have unified nuclear command.

Be that as it may, I don't think Americans need an expensive navy to protect themselves from the French.

That would be news to NATO. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm

> So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion.

Are soldiers with greater purchasing power more effective on the battlefield?

Thats a really interesting question.

My brother was a Colonel in the airforce, Commander of the 10th Medical Wing. He is a really successful doctor who then led the VA for the state of alaska...

He is now CEO for a hospital in Idaho.

The point is that his life path was truly successful for him through the military and he has added great value to the nation through that experience.

Had he been a minion in a more oppressive style regime, such as China - or North Korea, or even Russia, then I would expect he would have been less effective at being such a positive value to those nations as he is to the US.

And this is due only in a small part as to his ability to have a happy, successful material life here in the US and also raise an amazing family.

I can only applaud your brother's accomplishments!

That said, why do you believe that he succeeded because of the military and not in spite of it? Is his story in any way typical for veterans? From my understanding, not at all.

Also, why do you assume that Russian or Chinese military service is less valued or constructive for their service members than US service? Are you basing this on something, or just the general image created by US media about the Chinese and Russian armed forces?

Thanks for your reply -- Ill be honest - I evaluated my statement based on your response, and the only thing I can come up with WRT what I am basing it on is actually a bias to my understanding of how corrupt those regimes are.... now, thats not to say that the US doesnt have a problem with corruption (its getting worse, here in the US, whereby politicians are enriching themselves at the expense of others -- see "politicians made millions from stock trade before the pandemic information was released" type stories)

All the battlefields created in the last 20 years have been more like walking into quicksand

They're not, and that's the point. If a software company in the U.S. was spending 5x as much as one in India (where are experienced developer might make 1/5 as much or less), would you say the U.S. company was spending to much?

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