 Which means us of course to the perception that people have of China as this military threat and as a consequence of that People Democrats and Republicans have just voted for one of the largest at least in dollar terms Maybe the second largest something like that defense spending bill We've ever had bigger than the Korean Wars be it in Vietnam in dollar terms We'll get to GDP per cat with GDP percent of GDP in a minute 768 billion dollars a Biden just signed a bill and for those worried the Democrats are gonna We can out defenses and spend less money The only year in which defense spending was higher than this in terms of dollars was 2011 under Obama and This bill 768 billion is billion More than Donald Trump's last defense budget 768 billion dollars Are being spent by the United States on defense in a year where you would have thought given that we just left Given that we just left Afghanistan you would have thought the defense spending would have gone down and Yet defense spending is going up The one thing again that it seems like Democrats and Republicans agree on is let's spend money They love spending money Whether it's on defense or whether it's redistribution it doesn't matter politicians cannot cannot help themselves but spend money Now how does this compare to China because China's this massive threat, right? How does it compare to China? Well the United States as I said 768 billion How much is China spent? Well, we don't know exactly They're not quite as transparent as we are But estimates are that they spend less than a third than we do Somewhere probably around 200 billion maybe 250 billion but less than a third of What the United States spends is Spent by the Chinese government So just gives you a sense of this, right? We already have The strongest biggest most powerful military of any country in human history We're spending at a rate Nobody in the world comes even close to matching our biggest rival China Spends less than a third of what we spend annually on a defense budget the United States actually spends 39% of all military spending worldwide globally We spend about 39% of that amount It's almost 40% of all the money spent on defense in the entire globe 40% of that then You know that is just the United States if you take The 11 countries that spend the most on the military outside of the United States China Russia Saudi Arabia spends a lot of money on on defense. I have no idea What they're spinning it on exactly but Saudi Arabia. So Russia Saudi Arabia UK The United Span United States spends More than the next 11 countries combined next 11 countries combined. There is no There is no threat That if the United States wanted to it couldn't deal with from military perspective It is this fear mongering around China around Russia is Absurd and ridiculous and of course neither one of those countries is suicidal enough Crazy enough to actually attack the United States because of this Ragnar the desert, thank you really appreciate that that's very generous Thank you for that gets us a little closer to the goal as Of 2019 the United States spent about 3.4 percent of US gross domestic product GDP right now that is less as a percentage of GDP than countries like Saudi Arabia Israel and Russia, but that's because Saudi Arabia Israel and Russia have very very small GDPs and You can understand Saudi Arabia in Israel spending a lot of money particularly Israel Saudi Arabia primarily because the Iranian threat Russia it's purely for offensive measures and and because it views the whole West as a threat to itself, but there's just no threat out there and It's ever going So we were taught to son of Afghanistan You would think that that would mean that defense spending would go down and it doesn't The only time defense spending has really gone down is after the fall of the bill in wall after 1991 With the breakup of the Soviet Union you saw The Bush administration first Bosnia and then the Clinton administration Actually cut government spending and if you look at a chart of government spending per GDP That has gone down significantly over the years. It peaked in the in the early 1980s as Ronald Reagan beefed up spending To combat the Soviet Union actually was higher than that during the Vietnam War. It was over seven percent of GDP was Was a military spending then of course it peaked again After 9 11 9 11 was like the bottom in terms of percent of GDP was under three percent It looks like and then it peaked again in 2011 at over I don't know four point something percent four and a half four point six percent of GDP Since then it's been slowly coming down and then now over the last two years It's heading back up again because we're so worried about China Even though we're spending three times more in terms of dollars than they are is this fear Or is this what Eisenhower called? the order they call it the military industrial complex that won't let go of the dollars and Continuously demands more and more Again, we've talked about this in the past. Why do we have troops all over Europe? Why do we have troops all over Asia? Why do we have troops all over Africa? Why do we have troops all over the Middle East? How much is that costing us What about all the bureaucracy that keeps all that afloat or the infrastructure that keeps all that afloat? Imagine if you actually shrunk the US military To what was actually necessary to defend the United States from Russia China Iran, whatever If you actually invest it in an efficient deterrent and Efficient super efficient would be ideal super efficient missile defense system rapid deployment forces and Shrunk everything else What if we invest it in technology? Instead of in deploying Thousands and thousands were not thousands tens of thousands of troops all over the world But even in a time of inflation Inflation is about six seven percent these days of Growing up in deficits and growing up in debt the United States feels rich enough To keep spending and and the both the right and the left keep beating the drama of We've got an enemy. We've got an enemy. We've got to spend we got to spend we got to spend what we can't afford to spend guys This country is already over 100% of GDP in terms of its debt. The debt is only increasing defense spending Is I can't say a 40% of all discretionary spending something like that in the United States Non-discretionary spending is so security Medicare things that Congress can't adjust from year to year. They adjust automatically If you're gonna cut anyway, you're gonna have to cut defense. If you're gonna cut the budget, you're gonna have to cut defense If you're gonna get spending out of control, you're gonna have to cut defense. Now, you're also gonna have to completely change modify shrink entitlements Vultureized maybe privatized maybe but in the meantime We're writing bigger and bigger and bigger checks to the military To cope with Unknown threats I found this interesting, you know, China has two aircraft carriers two aircraft carriers One that it bought from ukraine It's an old russian aircraft carrier And one I think it produced itself And it's got it's building two So I don't know when they'll be done But uh, that You know the two that it's building will give china four aircraft carriers China has you'll see some people who are fear mongering tell you that china has the largest navy in the world It does a lot of the little boats A lot of small boats with very little military offensive capabilities Two aircraft carriers two Being built right now The united states on the other hand Has 11 aircraft carriers Half the aircraft carriers in the world Are in the us in the us navy It is also building two new aircraft carriers These new aircraft carriers are are going to be stunning phenomena's indeed They're late in terms of being deployed because They've tried to do too much And in a sense put too much technology into these things But they are going to be You know way ahead of anything the chinese can produce american superiority in terms of weapon systems It's just unmatched in the world For many years during the soviet union times People used to think the soviet union had great Weapon systems that I remember the t-72 tank And uh and the mig the mig 27 I think it was the mig aircraft aircraft All duds when it came to actual real world I mean if you if you wanted to test your weapon systems You put them in the least and put them against the israelis The israelis using american weapon systems And in 1967 using french and british and german weapon systems Completely crushed The air forces using soviet weapon systems I remember being trained In a tank corps and we were very worried about the t-72 the latest greatest amazing stunning Russian tank and it had for the first time in history It had an automatic loader, you know how the the the the Projectiles that a tank shoots out are loaded in one by one and Most tanks Suddenly in those days had manual loaders you would you would pull out a shell you would put it into the Whatever it's called and you would shoot it out right and then you would get another one and it would be tricky Tanks are very cramped spaces. It's dangerous. You these are big explosive things You you know the heavy the difficult the complicated I was in a tank. I shot these things. I know what it's like not pleasant Well, the russians came up with the idea of automatizing it So they put this automatic system that took out took out the shell put it into the Cannon and boom and wow. We were terrified of this thing plus the t-72 had these very very This profile it was very Slick so it was very difficult to hit if you were shooting at it with your own tank You almost your shells It turned out though This was turned out in the 1982 war in lebanon, which The syrians participated in a little bit. They stopped once they realized what was going to happen to them That the nice thing about for our perspective the t-72 was you didn't have to hit it If you managed to explode a shell anywhere close to the t-72 The impact of the shell Would cause the automatic loader To completely malfunction and the tank to become useless useless that's Russian weapon systems no thinking about how they actually used in the field no thinking about the actual consequences And therefore, you know, I'm not worried about russians. I'm not worried about chinese systems I'm worried about how we're spending our dollars I'm worried about our capabilities and our capacities and the waste and fraud And corruption that is involved in military spending in the united states But in terms of the quality of the weapons Once they're built it takes forever to build them. They're super expensive But once they're built once then In the program there's no weapon system in the world that can match them So really Nothing to fear. I'm more worried about the economic consequences of our government spending like there's no tomorrow Spending on everything Not thinking this is republicans and democrats not thinking deficits matter not thinking debt matters. Well It does matter and the inflation we're experiencing right now is a consequence Of I think partially the fact That these deficits and this debt is out of control And people have realized That we will never be able to pay it back so Stop worrying about china I kept saying this during the trump years stop worrying about china and start worrying about america China is not the enemy The enemy our universities The enemy our politicians The enemy is our intellectual elites That's the enemy Chinese We can take care of them easily Thank you for listening or watching the iran book show If you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation. 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