Putting America’s Defense Spending Into Perspective [Infographic]

Posted by Jan Charbel ⋅ February 9, 2016 ⋅ Leave a comment

Filed Under China, Defence, Economy, EM, Emerging Markets, Infographic, military, Military Spending, United States, Visual Capitalist, War

defense-budgets-world-america

By Jeff Desjardins, Visual Capitalist

Wouldn’t it be a strange world to live in if 50% of military spending was paid for by just 5% of the population?

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Every year, the United States government spends the equivalent of $3,300 for each working citizen on its military budget. In aggregate, this grand total of $610 billion in defense spending amounts to about half of the dollars globally spent on the military.

With $216 billion spent per year, China has the next largest budget by far. But, to get to a number even close to U.S. spending, the military budgets of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, United Kingdom, and France would have to be added together.

From another perspective, the amount of annual defense spending per working person in the U.S. is higher than the income per capita of 70 countries, including places such as Morocco, Nigeria, Nicaragua, India, and Ukraine.