Ja Tim, wie sachst du.

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You know how Australia pays everyone to take a year of travel before college? (That's how I understood it from the Australian guy in the next airplane seat, anyway.)

Bwah! I think it's safe to say the guy in the next seat was taking the piss, mate.

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Ja Tim, wie sachst du.

What does this mean?

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

Or compare defense spending on per head of population basis.

The unit of comparison has to be sovereign territory, ie. nation states or countries.

Understanding Military Expenditure from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

UNITED NATIONS- - Breaking long-held traditions of confidentiality, an increasingly large number of developing nations have decided to voluntarily declare their military budgets to the United Nations. The world body has "recorded an unprecedented increase in the number of governments reporting their defense spending’, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters Monday. Of 191 UN member states, more than 100 have reported their military spending at least once, while 77 states have submitted their annual reports this year, up from 61 in 2001 and 35 in 2000.

The regular declarations have come mostly from Western nations, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Canada. But this year's annual report includes declarations from Malaysia, Romania, Belarus, Mongolia, Albania and Mauritius. Other developing nations who have gone public with their military budgets are Jordan, Lebanon, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines and Thailand.

The budgets detail money spent on aircraft, artillery, armored vehicles, the costs of building air and naval bases, of operating and maintaining military equipment and the costs for military personnel and reservists.

The world's biggest military spender continues to be the United States, whose defense budget for 2001 was 327.5 billion dollars, according to its declaration. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies says the US budget has risen to an estimated 343 billion dollars in 2002, up from 300 billion dollars in 2000.

Other big spenders in 2001 include Germany (24.3 billion dollars), Russia (9.2 billion dollars), France (28.4 billion dollars), and Britain (36.8 billion dollars).

While transparency grows, military spending has risen to about 850 billion dollars per year, "an amount approaching average Cold War spending levels", warned UN Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala. The spending is "not only diverting precious financial, material and human resources from productive to non-productive pursuits, but was also jeopardizing humanity's common natural environment and the prospects for social and economic development of all nations", he said.

link

Table of military spending by country Table prepared by Center for Defense Information. Sources: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Department of Defense

"For 45 years of the Cold War we were in an arms race with the Soviet Union. Now it appears we're in an arms race with ourselves."

Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr., U.S. Navy (Ret.) Deputy Director. Center for Defense Information

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moonlit - you need to close your link tag

Lalala - nothing to see here.

moonlit, just out of curiosity, do you have any stats on the size of the population of the US (and territories) vs Germany, and the area of the US (and territories) vs Germany?

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is it ok?

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Yes, it's fine now. It was by the time my last post went through.

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Ja Tim, wie sachst du.

What does this mean?

Yeah, I'd like to know that too. I think it might be supposed to be German, but it's not a German I can understand.

Do enlighten us, Zoe!

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I'd love to see all the Buffistas' bookmark lists

To amuse Noumenon, I will voluntarily disclose that most of my fandom links, subcategorized of course, are housed in a folder called "Slavish Worship".

Not much to say about GDP and GDR and DPRK and other abbreviations. Except, serendipitiously, that the US armed forces are notorious for silly abbreviations and acronyms, as spice for their regular jargon.

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Defense spending for NATO countries as percentage of GDP & per capita

source doc, NATO BURDENSHARING AFTER ENLARGEMENT

moonlit, just out of curiosity, do you have any stats on the size of the population of the US (and territories) vs Germany, and the area of the US (and territories) vs Germany?

Germany,
Area:total: 357,021 sq km, water: 7,798 sq km, land: 349,223 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Montana
Land boundaries:total: 3,621 km
border countries: Austria 784 km, Belgium 167 km, Czech Republic 646 km, Denmark 68 km, France 451 km, Luxembourg 138 km, Netherlands 577 km, Poland 456 km, Switzerland 334 km
Coastline:2,389 km

Population: 83,251,851 (July 2002 est.)
Ethnic groups: German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, other 6.1% (made up largely of Serbo-Croatian, Italian, Russian, Greek, Polish, Spanish)
Religions: Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%
Government type: federal republic
Administrative divisions: 16 states (Laender, singular - Land); Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bayern, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thueringen

Military branches: Army, Navy (including naval air arm), Air Force, Medical Corps, Joint Support Service
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 20,854,329 (2002 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure: $38.8 billion (2002)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 1.38% (2002)

United States
Area: total: 9,629,091 sq km, land: 9,158,960 sq km, water: 470,131 sq km,
note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia
Area - comparative: about half the size of Russia; about three-tenths the size of Africa; about half the size of South America (or slightly larger than Brazil); slightly larger than China; about two and a half times the size of Western Europe
Land boundaries: total: 12,034 km
border countries: Canada 8,893 km (including 2,477 km with Alaska), Mexico 3,141 km note: US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is leased by the US and thus remains part of Cuba; the base boundary is 29 km
Coastline: 19,924 km

Population: 280,562,489 (July 2002 est.)
Ethnic groups: white 77.1%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1.5%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.3%, other 4% (2000)
note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)
Religions: Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10% (1989)
Government type: federal republic; strong democratic tradition
Administrative divisions: 50 states and 1 district*; Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia*, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

Military branches: Department of the Army, Department of the Navy (includes Marine Corps), Department of the Air Force
note: the Coast Guard is normally subordinate to the Department of Transportation, but in wartime reports to the Department of the Navy
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 73,597,731 (2002 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure: $276.7 billion (FY99 est.)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 3.2% (FY99 est.)

Is that the sorta thing you were after Cindy?

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