Again, even if you inflate it to 10%, that's very clearly not a war economy. 90% of the economy isn't oriented towards the war, and the war has practically no impact on day to day lives of the vast majority of the people.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's oriented towards the war, but it's not a total war economy yet because the population wouldn't tolerate it. It's similar to the US at war in Vietnam, spending only got up to 8% to 10% of gdp.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Most of US economy isn't productive manufacturing output, it's stuff like service industry, software shops, financial economy, etc. Some of it, such as the health insurance industry, is actively harmful to society. There's a great article explaining how US lost most of its productive economy at this point.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/

Industrial output in US accounts for something like 15% of the overall economy, and steel production levels are comparable to Russia. That's a pretty good proxy for the size of industry in a country. So, when you compare US military spending to the productive economy in the country, then it's a very high percentage of the industrial GDP.

Also, the article you linked counts all the military adjacent economy to get to the 10% number, US military spending would also look a lot higher if we did that. US defense spending is currently well over $1 trillion a year.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-america-defense-budget-bigger-than-you-think/

Meanwhile, US industrial output is around $2 trillion.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scorecard-how-the-us-compares-to-18-other-nations/