Quote Originally Posted by tibilicus View Post
It's a shame that this sort of thinking is rampant when in reality, there is very few countries which have overtaken us. Germany, Japan and China are the only immediate ones which spring to mind.
Quite, to assume your country is in terminal decline is, basically, to give up.

Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
Defense spending is public spending. As such, normal left/right impulses apply. What better way to artificially prop up hurting industries, reduce unemployment and subsidise lagging regions, than through defense spending? In recent decades, it has been the left in France and the UK that has done this, and consequently increased actual spending, whereas the right has done the cuts.
"Actual spending"? You know, the "actual" price of lamb in the UK has increased in recent years, but it's still about 25% of what it was 20 years ago when one factors in inflation and the increase in wealth. Similarly, while the figure in £ of defence spending may have risen, it has fallen as a percentage of GDP, at a time when the country has become more wealthy, tax revenue has risen, and so has inflation. Frankly, it would be virtually impossible not to raise defence spending in "real" terms over such a period, as the armed forces would collapse if you did not.

So, by any meaninful measure defence spending has fallen.

The fact is, we spend less than half the percentage of our national wealth on defence than we did 20 years ago, so we can almost certainly afford to spend more (as a percentage of GDP) over the next 20 years.