Defence Expenditure

A fascinating graphical presentation of various countries' military expenditure over at The Guardian. The figures show that  USA spent $607 billion in 2008 on 'defence'; more than the other nine top-spending countries put together. Loadsamoney in comparison to President Obama's Healthcare plan which will only cost £940 billion over ten years. But the USA is rich so, taken as a proportion of GDP, that's only 4% whereas Myanmar (formerly Burma), a military dictatorship, spent 26% of its GDP on defence. And the USA is 'high-tech' so they only have 829 military personnel per 100,000 population whereas North Korea has 24,728. That means a quarter of North Korea's population is in the military; no wonder they are starving. It seems to me that it's not just the American war-mongers who need to re-examine their spending priorities.