• assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not to mention, it makes them less reliant on the US – which as an American, means we can reduce our defense spending. Which means we can finally have really good welfare programs.

    • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This has been disproven so many times. You don’t lack social programs because of defense spending. Defense spending is only 3.5% of GDP. Your wildly inefficient private health care system, on the other hand, costs 16.6% of GDP and you still get worse outcomes, on average, compared to other OECD countries. If you brought your health care system in line with other OECD countries with a public health care system at around 11% of GDP, you could literally double the size of your military and still have tons of money left over to improve social programs and wipe out all medical debt (only 0.6% of GDP, but devastating to poorer families).