Anonymous
Posted on 2018-07-07 20:47:23 Score: 0 (vote Up/Down)    (Report as spam)
The first column of both US and USSR is military expenditure in rubles (for both and taking into account the differences of monetary value of the ruble and dollar at each date), the next column is percentage of the budget that is dedicated to military expenditure, then the amount of money the military expends per person, then the percentage of the GNP that military expenditure takes up. All for the years 1960 to 1990, every 10 years.

What we see is that the idea that the USSR expended more money than the USA on the military is false, despite claims to the contrary I have seen on the internet, mostly by those who claim the USSR spent all its money on military.

In 1960 the US spent more than 3x the amount of cash the USSR did, which consisted of 45% of the federal budget 8.7% of the Gross National Product, or 251 rubles per person. The USSR’s military consisted of 21% of the Budget, which was 7.5% of the GNP or 75 rubles per person. The difference is staggering. Now take note, this was long before Reagan’s ‘brilliant’ plan to outspend the USSR into economic collapse, (a faulty idea, used by the economically ignorant to praise him as the destroyer of communism). In 1970 the USA’s expenditure was 39.4% of the federal budget, a federal budget which had significantly rose since 1960. The Soviet budget rose as well, but just as in 1960, the expenditure was 3x lower and dropped in terms of GNP and budget.

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