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TheKoopaKing's avatar
mojave's avatar

Minor clarification - the trade numbers at the beginning are for goods and services. More than half of UK exports are services, and in particular it's two thirds to the US. So most of that £180bn exports to the US isn't being transported in a container.

Although it probably is going through those undersea cables.

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

Thanks!

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Patrick's avatar

Why does Russia have such a huge army when their absolute spending isn't orders of magnitude higher? Just lower costs?

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Nathan Ormond's avatar

I think so, also things like conscription, low wages, and a shit ton of surplus equipment from the soviet era. They also don't invest in training in the same sort of way -- for example, notoriously their pilots don't get enough flight time in training to know how to fly the planes properly at first. Many of their infantry are indentured from prisons and poor regions of the Soviet empire.

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