Top 15 Countries Military Spending (1830-2019)

[pauldun170]

Just sharing a pretty fun visualization of spending over that past couple centuries

 

[pauldun170]

Some relevance articles after the massive 2008 increases

Bush seeks record military spending in 2009

President George W. Bush asked Congress on Monday to spend at least $606.4 billion on the U.S. military in the next budget year, including nearly $184 billion that will bolster top U.S. contractors like Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co..

www.reuters.com

A Historical Perspective on Defense Budgets

Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman look back on how previous presidents brought defense spending into balance.

www.americanprogress.org

 

[abj13]

I think its interesting how it illustrates one of the myths of Reagan. There's always this talk about the US spending in the 1980's is what drove the USSR to insolvency. But the USSR had essentially doubled their spending from 1960 to 1980, while only increasing their spending by ~10% from 1981 to 1988 (I can't tell if the infographic is inflation controlled). If it really was the US influencing the spending spurge of the USSR, it was the combined efforts of JFK, LBJ, RMN, GRF, and JEC drove the doubling of the Soviet military expenses, not Reagan.

 

[ElFenix]

TIL making communism happen in russia was really, really expensive

 

[MrSquished]

I think its interesting how it illustrates one of the myths of Reagan. There's always this talk about the US spending in the 1980's is what drove the USSR to insolvency. But the USSR had essentially doubled their spending from 1960 to 1980, while only increasing their spending by ~10% from 1981 to 1988 (I can't tell if the infographic is inflation controlled). If it really was the US influencing the spending spurge of the USSR, it was the combined efforts of JFK, LBJ, RMN, GRF, and JEC drove the doubling of the Soviet military expenses, not Reagan.

The mythos of Reagan is insane. That is a nice summary of yet another way it's all just GOP fairy tales.

 

[hal2kilo]

I think its interesting how it illustrates one of the myths of Reagan. There's always this talk about the US spending in the 1980's is what drove the USSR to insolvency. But the USSR had essentially doubled their spending from 1960 to 1980, while only increasing their spending by ~10% from 1981 to 1988 (I can't tell if the infographic is inflation controlled). If it really was the US influencing the spending spurge of the USSR, it was the combined efforts of JFK, LBJ, RMN, GRF, and JEC drove the doubling of the Soviet military expenses, not Reagan.

Funny, I was looking for that big increase in spending in the same timeline for the same reason.