[dieterrams]

>I didn't know that the US military budget is a third of what it was 60 years ago.

It's a little over a third of what it was 60 years ago as a percentage of GDP. And this is in line with most other developed nations.

As a percentage of the federal budget, military spending accounts for 16% of the total budget, and 54% of discretionary spending. The US also spends 2-3x more per capita on the military than France, the UK, and Germany.

[tcbawo]

60 years ago we were scaling down from the largest scale military action in human history and in the process of repurposing industrial capacity from military to peacetime.