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Comment by thehappypm | Hacker News Reader

The rest of the West really has got it made. Spend nothing on defense because the USA will always bail you out. Meanwhile US citizens get ridiculed for producing the most powerful economy in world history.

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It's really easy to pay for healthcare and social benefits for your citizens when your military defense is subsidized by American Tax Payers.

I see this statement a lot, but the US spends about 2-3x the cost per capita for healthcare than the rest of the OECD. That includes both public and private spending. (see https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm)

We can afford it, with or without the military spending.

The US has by far the largest trade deficit in the world. It's a net consumer, because it can print dollars. It is not remotely the most powerful productive economy on a per-capita basis.

Compared to small, rich city-states and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, sure. But in any more apples-to-apples comparison — the EU, China, India, Brazil - the US is in the lead by a lot.

It's certainly an accomplishment to achieve a highly productive per capita economy, but I don't think it's quite the slight on the US when the four countries with higher productivity per capita range in size from 0.3% to 2.8% of US GDP. Achieving productivity per capita at scale is hard.

Yup, and nevermind that almost everyone is ignorant of the massive role of the US Navy in protecting global shipping lanes from piracy, which is why you can send a 40ft container from Shenzen to LA for something like $2000 and expect it to get here with 99.999% certainty. The piracy off of Africa was a short-lived phenomena - until they found out that forking around where the USN plays works out very badly for you.

Europe: I feel sorry for you.

USA: I don’t think about you at all.

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