Global Security has taken the Fiscal Year 2008 U.S. budget and prepared a new chart illustrating the most significant and under-discussed political fact in the United States, one that substantially affects every other issue:

Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world’s spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. “Only” about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we’re fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries’ defense budgets.

And this gap between us and the rest of the world has widened considerably over the last 10 years. That’s true because our own military spending, in absolute terms, has increased wildly during that time: