United States military spending

As a nation we spend over $600 billion dollars per year on the military. This struck me as too much as compared to the rest of the world.

All combined, the world spends $1.47 trillion per year, and we are over 40% of that, even though we are around 4 percent of the population.

Yet, I think the better way to look at our military spending is in terms of our GDP, the value of all of our goods and services. It is presently around $14 trillion, which puts the $636 billion we spend at around 4 percent of our Gross Domestic Product.

This is very reasonable given all that we need to protect, and the good we do throughout the world.