Government Spending Choices

Recently Germany decided to eliminate tuition fees entirely. That is a great move, which will cause students here in the US very envious. The debt that our students carry is staggering and restricts them from accessing education. Granting free higher education will, in an ideal situation, make the nation more educated and prosperous.

Of course, while this is free to students, it will cost government lots of money to make the program viable. Germany has made a choice. According to some one who lives in Germany, this shows that “some governments believe in spending money on education while ‘others’ choose to spend money on military”. There is no doubt that he is referring to US as the “other” country in that statement promoting the superior choice by the Germans.

Yes, we in the US have chosen to spend money on defense and less so on education. It does to some extent reflect the psyche of the American people, many of who would like to take pride in the fact that we are the strongest in the world.  Then there is the good old military industrial complex, which benefits enormously from our defense spending and that of many others it supports. The whole political structure is designed to keep it that way.

However, I would argue that there are some factors that make this enormous spending on defense not just a matter of choice. We are the prime target of every wacko organization in the world. Terrorists killed more than 3000 Americans a few years ago not Germans. From ISIS to Iran to North Korea, they all consider US as their prime enemy and want to cause us harm.

Also, we end up being world’s policeman. Some may say it is because we like to take that role as doing so furthers our cause. They argue that we intervene because we benefit, say, by taking an oil producing country away from a despot, or opening up a new market for our goods. The others may say that we do it from the goodness of our heart…to promote our idealized version of the world, even if it means we have to use force.

No matter what the reason is, we are and the world expects us to be the policeman. Any crisis in the world, whether it is in Ukraine, Syria or Iraq, the country which is expected to provide leadership is US, not Germany. Probably, there is no other choice; we are the most powerful nation on earth.  However, there is also a factor that the world trusts us with exercising power more than it trusts other powerful countries. How confortable will everyone be if China takes over that role?

Coming back the full circle, Germany does not spend too much money on defense because they are restricted from doing so. Where did that restriction come from? Well, the last time they were a military power, things did not go too well for the world. They managed to cause a conflagration that cost over 50 million lives.

So, Germany can afford to spend money on education, while we cannot. To conclude that this choice somehow reflects superior values of their society as compared to ours is a bit simplistic, to say the least.