The American Defense budget is excessive

Thank you for your post. If you don't mind though, i notice you keep saying "your country". If you don't mind me asking, what Country are you from? I understand if you don't wish to answer, however, I'm simply curious, and I feel it may add to the debate in later rounds. For my third round i will provide Counter Arguments to the three main contentions you made in round 2. Contention 1: Imbalance of priorities in the American budget You argue here that the American budget is too heavily invested in the Military, when that money could be spent elsewhere. While it seems like a good argument, I personally feel this is a logical fallacy. You state, and i quote "The defense portion of the budget will receive a considerable total of 543 billion dollars. To put that into a greater context, Education, employment and training services COMBINED are only receiving 94 billion.". Throughout most of your first contention, you continue to compare the budget of various organizations, to the military, all of which were significantly smaller than the militaries budget. This is true. I will not deny that. But you do not address the simple question, how much do we NEED to spend on schools? How much do we NEED to spend on transportation, or police? Schools are much cheaper to run than a military. Police forces are much cheaper to operate than a Military. I'm going to particularly focus on education here, since you seemed to focus on that most. You may be surprised to hear that per-student the United States already spends a very large amount on education. [1] The United States spends $11,483 per student every year (if you look at primary to non-tertiary spending). The only countries in the OECD to surpass this were Austria, Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The United States also spent more than Countries such as Germany, the UK, and France. I don't wish to sound rude by saying this, but that is why i feel your argument is a fallacy. Militaries are very expensive compared to schools. When you look at major expenses, all a School requires is a building and some staff. A military requires bases that stretch for several miles, spread out across a country, filled with state of the art equipment, and highly trained professionals. Not to mention food, housing, salaries, and health care for hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Of course a military would cost more than education. You also brought up fire departments, police departments, the VA, and transportation services. But once again, how much money do these organizations really need? What major expenses must they pay? Near the end of your debate you brought up how certain American cities also have very high violent crime, and murder rates. However the problem i have is you nit pick the worst cities and the compare them to entire countries. I do not believe that is fair representation of a Country as a whole. You should compare Countries to Countries. Not to mention you state incorrect information. You state Detroit has a homicide rate of over 2,000 per 100,000 people. I believe you may have misread your own source [2]. That is not Detroit's homicide rate but Detroit's rate of violent crime. Detroit's actual homicide rate is 40 times lower than than at 43.8 per 100,000. [3]This is still meaningless however as we are looking at the worst city in America, instead of the Country as a whole. Contention 2: Budget Deficits + Cost of interest This is one of the most common arguments made when discussing defense budgets, and i admit, America has a debt problem. The United States has more debt than any other country in the world. But... the United States also has a higher GDP than any other country in the world. And you see that's the problem with this argument. If the United States suddenly acquired $50 million dollars worth of debt, then comparatively to our GDP of nearly $18 Trillion, $50 million worth of debt is a fairly insignificant amount of money. Tuvalu on the other hand has the worlds smallest GDP of $38 million. If they were to acquire $50 million worth of debt, their country would most certainly suffer. [6] This is why we must look at the Debt to Ratio. [4] The United States has a Debt to GDP ratio of 106%. No small amount, but when compared to other Countries 106% looks quite meager. Above the United States is Portugal with 130%, and Japan with a shocking 250%. Debt is a problem yes. But so long as our economy grows with it, we will be able to manage it. Personally i find it hard to believe the Japanese economy will collapse on itself. And i don't think there is any reason to assume the American economy will either. And besides the Military budget (according to your own source) only takes up 13% of the federal budget. Why should we make cuts here? And even then, if we need to tackle debt there are other approaches, such as a raise in taxes. Contention 3: Not needed (Nato) Now you make a good argument here. However at the same time many Americans have also begun to question NATO's strength. Now i do not know what Country you are from, and I hope if you are from a NATO country you do not take my next argument offensively. But many Americans Left, and Right wing, Liberal and Conservative, have cast doubt onto our NATO allies and their commitment to defense. Many Americans question how well "Mutual defense" is truly being upheld. While in office, Presidents Bush, Obama, and currently Trump, have all pushed for our NATO Allies to spend more [7]. Both Democrats, and Republicans feel our Allies are not pulling their fair share. I would strongly encourage you to look at my next source [8] where a study found the America spends roughly the same on it's military, as every other NATO country combined, times three. You stated, "In fact the US does not need a huge military to protect itself either because under NATO (which the US is part of) "an attack on one is an attack on all". The defense pact is true. However at the same time let's be realistic here. If tomorrow America was invaded, there would be no Hungarian army to assist us. If tomorrow America was invaded, Italians would not be rushing for war. The only countries that would send any meaningful number of Soldiers would be the UK, France, and Canada. If you don't believe me look at [9]. A poll done by pew research found that there were only TWO NATO countries where a majority of the population supported going to war to defend a NATO ally. You wanna guess what Countries those were? The United States, and Canada. That's it. Even the French and British seemed unsure. [9] Americans do not feel we can rely on NATO. Most NATO countries are too concerned about their own borders, or can't maintain a large enough army. I don't blame them for this. I understand why it has to be this way. And i would support America going to war to defend any NATO country. But what i said is true. The US can not depend on our Allies the same way they can depend on us. And even if what i said about NATO wasn't true. The US still has goals of it's own. As stated in my Round 2 argument, the US has interests far beyond Europe. Our strategy is to protect global trade and economic areas. A strategy that literally pays for itself. Anyways i hope this wasn't too much information. I spent well over an hour on it, so i hope you find it informational. I look forward to your next post and the next round. [1] https://data.oecd.org... [2] https://www.forbes.com... [3] http://www.city-data.com... [4] https://tradingeconomics.com... [5] https://www.google.com... [6] http://statisticstimes.com... [7] https://www.nytimes.com... [8] http://www.businessinsider.com... [9] http://www.pewresearch.org...