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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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If I turn out to have my head up my ass (excuse me, arse), I'm planning to blame it on the language barrier.

Heh, heh, heh!

Nou, I did some work on applying Neufeld et al to Australian socio-political arena, but removed the Australian specific stuff before I posted.

Other influences along the line of Neufeld,

• RJ Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical - Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1992.
• RW Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
• TJ Sinclair (Ed), Approaches to World Order, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• RD Germain and M Kenny, ‘Engaging Gramsci: International Relations Theory and the New Gramscians’, Review of International Studies, Vol 24, No 1, January 1998.
• S Gill (Ed), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• A Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971.
• M Horkheimer, ‘Tradition and Critical Theory’, in Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, MJ O’Connell (trans), New York, Continuum, 1989.

I've replaced my computer three times over the past 5+ years, so my bookmarks and reams and reams of saved articles fill up boxes and boxes of disks. The last upgrade I was able to burn to CD so that was a lot easier. You've reminded me that many of those saved articles and the 4 drawer filing cabinet full of hardcopy articles are probably linkable now (some of these go back many years). Project for a rainy day - update cites from before internet explosion.

The United States are just that--a federalist system. It makes me laugh ruefully when unAmericans say that "America has the death penalty" or "America's gun laws are such and such" or "America spends x dollars on education" or whatever. All of those things are largely reserved to each state and can vary wildly depending on where you live.

Australia is a federation as well and some things are covered by states and some by fed govt. Gun laws are fed, education is states, defense and communications are federal, health and transport are state.

Aside from the distances involved for most people, that's another reason Americans are attached to the idea of the road.

Much the same in Oz, with even less populations and towns in an area of comparable size to the US. You've got lots more people and towns spread right across the country whereas basically almost everyone in Oz lives around the edges of the continent with nary a soul in the middle. And even round the edges is a bit generous considering there are vast amounts of coastline that have no development.

Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned boycotts? Or DIY--that Mecca Cola thing sounds like a great idea if you want to make a point. Vote with your wallet and leave the Eeeeevil Companies alone--and unpatronized.

100% with you on this. But the difficulty arises in the area of superannuation, investment, and funds management, for example, when the investors are so far removed from the investment that they do not know what activities their money is funding and supporting. It is not unheard of for a little old grandmother to be unknowingly supporting child labour in a third world country because her retirement money has been combined with lots of other people's retirement money to fund shonky corporate activities both home and abroad. Again Enron is a perfect example of this.

Moonlit, those essays were really something. Sounds like somebody's been reading Z-Mag.

If you're serious, thanks, and yes I have, as well as many other sources including Smith, Hume, Machievelli, Aristotle, and Hawking, as well the examples posted before.

Baby brother shipped out on Sunday morning. We got a call from him and he can't say where he is, but he's definitely not directly in harm's way, although that frontier does seem to move around a bit in this war.

Caroma, I am so glad that your brother is not too directly in harms way. I have no direct family who has ever been involved in military action, mainly because they weren't that many and never at the right age or whatever when Australia has been at war.

And I heard Moynihan being glowingly mentioned on another politics program sometime last week and seeing as he certainly seemed well thought of by the Buffistas I wondered if you ('cos you're the one with the tag and all) could point me to a few links on some of the more important/historic or just worth knowing things that he did/said or achieved.

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to bring European figures together to create a divisible figure for the whole EU.

OK so I'm not sure that line makes sense in any known European language (gaelic perhaps?)

The figures for all the European states could be made into one figure.
The figure for the US could be divided by 52.
Then we'd have a set of roughly comparable figures.

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But it'd be meaningless. Because the USA is a country, and Europe isn't. There are huge variations - I don't see what the value is of comparing "European" (whatever that means) spending with that of the US.

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I don't understand the anti-globalization thing, I must admit. Sounds like a case of rich First World nations saying to the Third World, "We've got ours, so go away and toil in the fields your whole life. You're not bright enough not to be expoited even though our ancestors soon organized and got themselves better lives, so forget those factory jobs and upward mobility and all that, just stay stuck and isolated like you are." Kind of patronizing. Not all local culture is worth preserving--FGM, slavery, corruption--that kind of stuff.

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Ja Tim, wie sachst du.

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