US total government spending is officially 34% of total GDP, Germany is 43.7%. With much of that covering healthcare and collage education which more than makes up the difference for the median family. In the end, the US’s extreme defense spending and horrifically inefficient healthcare system is a massive drag on the economy.
What the US does differently from most of the EU is to hide as much spending as possible in the form of targeted tax breaks. From a cash flow perspective little changes but from a political standpoint it’s not spending.
US military spending is 4% of GDP. When a warmonger is president, that goes up to about 6% of GDP. The NATO commitment is 2% of GDP. It is not particularly extreme.
The real drag is the US healthcare system, which effectively finances most of the medical R&D for the US, India, South America, and Europe, and also provides ridiculous levels of treatment for people who are about to die (in comparison to other health systems). There is also the US social security system, which seems to be very inefficient at best...
Officially it’s $1.64 Trillion in 2022 on defense vs ~23.4 Trillion GDP or 7% GDP. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=... You can see different numbers based on if you include stuff like the DoE spending on nuclear weapon ‘stewardship’ or only parts of the coast guard, national guard, VA etc.
US healthcare spending hardly subsidizes the rest of the world. Paperwork and insurance overhead don’t magically turn into R&D money. Litigation, malpractice insurance, excessive testing etc is just waste.
At best ~12% of US healthcare spending is for retail drugs, but it’s not that relevant globally when you consider how much US companies are spending on advertising vs R&D. Which is then compounded by how much more expensive US drug trials are.
The only way outlays are under 1 Trillion is if you ignore a great deal of defense spending. A classic trick is to hide future obligations like pensions and other benefits from current spending numbers, but if you need to hand out a pension to get people to work for you then obviously you should include either current spending in past obligations or the amount of additional obligations your adding this year as spending.
So yes, you can get imaginary defense costs to ~4%, but I ask you where is the coast guard, national guard, DoE, or VA’s budget here? “The budget funds five branches of the U.S. military: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Some might argue the national guard isn’t defense spending but we sent 250,000 guard members to Iraq and the guard is fielding F-35’s.
I will acknowledge some some outliers like the United States Border Patrol, while it’s job is literally defending the border it probably shouldn’t be included in defense spending.
PS: It gets even sillier, not that long ago we where hiding the cost of the Iraq war from defense spending numbers.
What the US does differently from most of the EU is to hide as much spending as possible in the form of targeted tax breaks. From a cash flow perspective little changes but from a political standpoint it’s not spending.