Hacker News Reader

Comment by dappermanneke | Hacker News Reader

actually european defence spending is frankly laughable compared to the USA which provides most of our security guarantees

View on HN

So American tax payers are subsidising your security costs? NATO has benefits and costs. Some of the costs are financial and some are political. All of that has to be figured in when you are talking about how the super-rich benefit greatly from the current situation and do not pay proportionally

uhm yes american tax payers absolutely do subsidise european security? this isn’t a new fact for you surely? one of the bigger reasons for this is that europe simply doesn’t have the economy to maintain anything even close to american spending levels. but even as a percentage of gdp most european countries are simply behind

We are talking about taxing the super rich in the EU to pay for a service (defence) that is currently paid by other people.

I agree with you that the economies of most EU countries cannot sustain US military spending levels.

My theory is that since the rich people in those EU countries are amassing wealth at a faster level than the economy is growing then we should use some of that growing wealth to ensure that the economy (and country) are properly defended. Also use the funds for education and infrastructure.

Sicilian police spending is frankly laughable compared to the Mafia which provides most of their security guarantees.

It turns out the US can learn from history and other countries when they see a model that suits them.

sorry but this comment is a bit too incoherent for me to parse

Reply on news.ycombinator.com