1. United States (FY08 budget), $623 billion
2. China (2004), $65 billion
3. Russia, $50 billion
4. France (2005), $45 billion
5. United Kingdom, $42.8 billion
6. Japan (2007), $41.75 billion
7. Germany (2003), $35.1 billion
8. Italy (2003), $28.2 billion
9. South Korea (2003), $21.1 billion
10. India (2005 est.), $19 billion
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Data source: TomDispatch.com
@Jack
The United States wasn’t even in the Top 10 Freest Nations on Earth. And here is the ranking:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=389&year=2008
The reason why many Americans believe this is because it is what they are taught and in all reality they don’t have an international perspective. Americans are, in general, in the dark about the rest of the world.
Education will set us free! Education in the U.S.? 32nd, by a shameful admission of our own President Barrack Obama, man of truth, no propagandist, no Rah! Rah! no foot baller’s flags a waving in the breeze! ain’t we great? bull Shiite! Mo guns, Military uniforms, just the truth! – The truth, now swallow it! Yankee Doodle Dandy! Asians get better schooling, Chinese rate well above American schools, and in such squalor, pollution, as to dismay the “Candy Assed”, over-fed, spoiled rotten ,catered to, American student, who only attends sometimes, and never summers! They go year round! – No school-house or teachers talents wasted like us dumb fvcks! Fact is: Without conscription, and permission form OPEC for additional oil to fuel it, the American Military is a fvcking farce! A paper dragon! While China will have no problem manning their forces, but prefer economic war against America! They, and the rest of the world, for that matter, realize that “Nuclear Mutual Destruction” has been a fact of modern day life since the 60′s when even Israel armed itself to the teeth with Nukes! Do you really believe that another nation is going to go to all the trouble of arming up to fight a WWII battlefield style war against anybody in the age of the computer, guided missiles, Nukes, already established? Take your Hummers and stick them up your ass, America! We want economic wars, fought with fair money not your fixed, manipulated, fiat printing-press bullshit you impose on us now! Your fvcking sawbuck has fallen so far as to no longer demand 80% of the worlds goods! You are in a jamb! You cannot point a gun at the whole world and steal what you want! You will have to get off your fat asses and earn it like the rest of us! Compete against a strong Yuan for oil! Lose this battle and all is lost for you! You can no longer play romantic “Police the World” extraction games, Nukes abrogate this lever of power for you! You have already lost your ‘edge” and save for mutual destruction, can no longer bully the poorer nations for ransoms! Now: Go get a job! – a paying job! and be satisfied with your rightful share of resources, you greedy bastards!