I’m just explaining to you that all the “largest armies” on there are outliers. Wikipedia lists Iran as having only 600K active personnel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed_Forces

The list is just incorrect, and I explained why. South Korea has only 51 million people. Do you really think that 7.5% of all people are in the military? No, that includes “reserves” who actually do not work as soldiers.

In that sense, every male in the US signs up for selective service at 18. Should every male aged 18 to 40 be counted as a member of the military?

But the US doesn’t literally use soldiers as construction workers to build random roads and bridges. They use private contractors for most things like that. The groups you mentioned just help out a little to practice for wartime. Most construction is done privately.

Size of the “military” on paper is meaningless from a defense perspective, which is the main purpose of a military. What matters is the amount and quality of troops that you can deploy and support in the field, and the speed at which that happens. Someone paving a road in Hunan or building drones for export in Tehran shouldn’t be counted as a “soldier” because they are not able to be deployed.

The US doesn’t count it’s construction workers or factory workers as “soldiers”.

You can’t use numbers of people to make comparisons between countries because they are misleading. Some countries use their soldiers for construction work (China) or have whole industries owned by the military (Iran). A person working on a defense industry assembly line isn’t a member of the military in most countries.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards were put in charge of creating what is today known as the Iranian military industry. Under their command, Iran’s military industry was enormously expanded

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed_Forces

Using numbers of personnel to compare China or Iran to a country like Belgium would make Belgium look like a pushover. Belgium has a tiny military but uses it’s location in Europe to ensure security through diplomacy and membership in NATO.

I promise you would be harder to invade the headquarters of NATO than either of those countries.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Sometimes butter goes on sale for $4. It’s the same thing they sell later for $8. Of course they’re making +50% profit on that.

I just try to stock up when it’s low, and not get screwed with the normal price. It used to be like $1 more. Now it’s double. Make your own food people!

Interesting article, but nowhere near what Wells Fargo was doing. They had institutionalized their fake account openings. The average customer had 8 accounts (including checking, savings, credit cards, mortgages, etc.). That’s obviously too many.