Does Our Budget Allocation Align With Our Threats?

America’s giant defense budget still wasn’t enough to protect against its greatest threat in recent history—which came not from tanks and bombs but from an enemy one four-hundredth the width of a human hair. The CDC had roughly 1% of the defense budget to respond to a pandemic that’s killed more Americans than all of our twentieth-century wars combined. From Warren Buffet to Jeff Bezos, the greatest investors and CEOs are the greatest allocators of capital, deploying it to seize opportunities, ensure long-term growth, and minimize risks. The same applies to governments. The U.S. government is one of the largest managers of capital in the world. And it has underinvested in the institutions that serve as the connective tissue holding the nation together.

72

U.S. Department of Defense Budget vs. Centers for Disease Control Budget

FY 2021

Sources: CDC, Defense.gov.