{"id":2556,"date":"2005-07-31T17:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-31T17:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2556"},"modified":"2018-02-12T09:36:18","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T15:36:18","slug":"fun-with-percentages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/31\/fun-with-percentages\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun With Percentages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This graph tells <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationmaster.com\/graph-B\/eco_com_to_for_aid\" target=\"_new\">a story<\/a>: The United States is the stingiest of all countries relative to military budgets.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the United States spends the equivalent of 3% of its defense budget on foreign aid.   Contrast this with the Danes, who spend the equivalent of 52% of its defense budget on foreign aid.  That is, for every defense dollar Denmark spends, it apparently also spends about a half dollar on foreign aid.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a nice story, Bodie.  But what this chart doesn&#8217;t illustrate is the relative size of these budgets.  Ergo, it&#8217;s possible (but I am to lazy to research to prove) that Denmark&#8217;s defense budget is so low that 3% of America&#8217;s defense budget dwarfs the 53% commitment of Denmark&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>So one way to bring this into parity would be to raise the foreign corruption contributions and NGO viggorish to 53% of the current US defense budget.  The other is to drop the United States&#8217; to match Denmark&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>One assumes either would please someone who points to these charts as evidence of the United States&#8217; stinginess.  Personally, I&#8217;ll be satisfied with the absolute, real number amount our wise and benevolent (or at least smiling) leaders in Washington, D.C., expend or perhaps a little dissatisfied that it&#8217;s so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This graph tells a story: The United States is the stingiest of all countries relative to military budgets. For example, the United States spends the equivalent of 3% of its defense budget on foreign aid. Contrast this with the Danes, who spend the equivalent of 52% of its defense budget on foreign aid. That is, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19476,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions\/19476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}