I'd love to see all the Buffistas' bookmark lists. I just swapped favourites folders with my brother last week and found some cool links. And I back mine up to disk too.

The effect of IMF and WB on poverty

Ooh, this is by William Easterly. His Elusive Quest for Growth was really interesting. I saved this to read this weekend.

Germany's annual military budget is 23.4 billion Euros, and is fixed until 2006. But even if Schröder were to add 1.5 billion Euros to the budget of his defense minister, Struck,

This seems like counting pennies next to the $50 billion Bush added to our $322 billion defense budget after 9/11.

Only if you ignore the scale. Don’t compare to the entire US defense budget, compare to the defense budget of one single US state for a more reasonable analogy.

What 'ZoeFinch' "thing with England"?
England is a part of my home country.

Don’t compare to the entire US defense budget, compare to the defense budget of one single US state for a more reasonable analogy.

Or compare defense spending as a proportion of GDP which is the only meaningful way.

Or defense spending as a proportion of the GDP of a single state.

Edit: It is a greater defense commitment than 'Noumenon' suggests.

America should offer everybody to spend six months in Haiti or somewhere. My friend went to Haiti for Army training and she's a lot more content with how much she earns and owns now. It's an important perspective.

Well there's the Peace Corps.

Most states don't have a seperate defense budget in the same sense as a federal defense budget, unless I'm mistaking what you mean.

What 'ZoeFinch' "thing with England"?

I'll mail ya. I thought your old username was pretty, though.

I was coming from "Let's all marvel at how much money the U.S. throws at weapons," not "Let's mock Germany for not having the world's biggest military-industrial complex." It's like comparing your salary to Bill Gates -- not to make yourself look bad, but just to marvel that your paycheck for two weeks is what he takes home in two minutes.

"Let's all marvel at how much money the U.S. throws at weapons," not "Let's mock Germany for not having the world's biggest military-industrial complex."

We're talking about those war crazy Prussians here right? {Oh they call themselves 'German' now but we all know :-P}

I understand 'Noumenon' honest. I get the squicks when people compare apples and oranges for kicks. Because if it were possible to do the math I am not sure that the US defense budget would necessarily be the larger figure. But as Heather has pointed out the math can't be done because the US doesn't keep records of defense spending as a proportion of state GDP while all European defense spending is calculated as a proportion of state's GDP.

Edit: Or so I believe.

But a "state" in US terms is totally different than a "state" in EU terms. The EU has, as we no, no unified defense spending. Member states should be compared with the total US GDP.

I object to the difference in scale. Saying that a proportion of anything the size of a continent is directly comparable to a segment of another without accounting for scale is, to my mind, incorrect.

It's theoretically no big mathematical feat to bring European figures together to create a divisible figure for the whole EU.
Administration? Bwah.