America's fear

When drowning in debts and facing the world's ever greater lack of trust in your ability to pay them back, it seams like the best investment you can do to keep up your unpaid and unearned lifestyle is to invest in guns... rather than in industries or education, which have the power to let you increase your productivity!

As absurd or stupid as this can sound I am describing the choice of the world's leading country: USA. When you really think about it you realize that it's not so stupid, it's actually quite cleaver: investing in means of production means having to work for the wealth you acquire, while investing in weapons simply means going and taking the wealth you desire. It's a damn smart decision, even if not a very long lasting one. 

Let's take a look at some charts:


Here we have the current cumulative account balance

Source: Wikipedia

We clearly see that America's balance of payments is the most negative in the world.

Here we have the military budgets:

Source: Wikipedia

The US military budget is the largest in the world, accounts for 60% of its discretionary budget (Figure left )

Source: The Economist

and is used to employ about 1% of the american population, making the US DoD (Department of Defense) the largest employer in the world (figure bottom left ):

I guess it's true that attack is the best form of defense... and the best way to keep unemployment under control!