On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 19:05:42 GMT, Gunner wrote:
Ok, and how much of the "goods and services" are related to military
protection of other nations, with money spent in those nations, plus
that covered by the umbrella effect? A sizable fraction of our
military expenditures are dollars spent in other nations on
infrastructure alone. Do you have any figures for that?

Ok, here's the breakdown for fiscal year 2001.
all figures are in billions of dollars.

Pay $72.1
Operating and Maintenance Costs $110.2
Weapon Purchases $52.7
Weapon Research $38.0
Construction $8.9
Other $3.1
Department of Defense Subtotal $284.9

Department of Energy (Military) $13.4
Other $0.8

National Defense total $299.1

MILITARY-RELATED
Fiscal Year 2001

Foreign Military Aid $7.1
International Peacekeeping $1.1
Space (Military) $2.6
Military Retirement Pay $34.2
Veterans’ Benefits $45.4
Interest Attributable to Past Military Spending $94.8

Military and Military-Related Grand Total $484.3

Now you can see that the bulk of military spending is for pay
and retirement benefits, O&M costs, and a big chunk due to
interest on money borrowed in previous years to pay for it all.

Foreign costs would fall in the Foreign Military Aid category
(mostly to Israel), International Peacekeeping, and a bit of
the construction and O&M money for foreign bases.

Now it is true that other nations benefit from being under
our military umbrella. Japan immediately leaps to mind.
But don't forget that we're there primarily for our benefit,
not theirs. It isn't really to our security advantage to have
allies (who may be enemies once again some day) building
up large military forces. Better that only we have the big
stick.

How about benefits other nations derive from our R&D expenditures,
plus spin offs in medicine, space etc etc?

Well much of the R&D results are patented, so other nations have
to *pay* to make use of them. Spinoffs are not inconsequential,
but they're usually no bargain either. Almost always, the money
would have been better spent directly pursuing those things than
depending on them to incidently fall out from other expensive
programs of dubious value.

Knowledge is important, and our universities are the main source
for training technologists from most of the world. Many decide to
stay in the US, however, so this isn't as large a benefit to their
home countries as it may at first seem.

Not arguing, just wondering if the GDP really is an accurate indicator
of how that alleged 30% of world resources is used solely for the good
of Americans.

Well, GDP isn't really a good indicator of consumption of the world's
resources. Those resources are *raw materials* for the most part,
and there is very little value added in raw materials. The GDP mostly
reflects value added operations. We really would have to look at
raw tonnage figures to see how much of the Earth's resources we're
using on a per capita basis, ie how much iron, coal, oil, biomass,
water, etc, etc, etc. Without posting detailed figures, I'll only say
that our per capita consumption of those resources is extremely
larger than for most other nations of the world.

Gary