You drove past flags at half-staff yesterday. You maybe grilled something. Maybe you thought about your dad, or an uncle, or a buddy from your unit. Memorial Day does that.

Now look at this chart.

In 1944, the United States devoted 37 cents of every dollar the economy produced to the military. Thirty-seven cents. The entire country was pointed in one direction. Factories that made Buicks were making bombers instead. That kind of commitment is almost impossible to imagine today.

Korea brought it back up to 14%. Vietnam, about 9%. Even Reagan’s Cold War buildup — which most historians credit with winning the whole thing — only hit 6.2%. And that felt like a lot at the time. People argued about it.

Today we spend 3.4% of GDP on defense. That’s the lowest share since before Pearl Harbor. Not since the late 1930s — when the Army was smaller than Portugal’s — has America committed so little of its economy to the military.

And here’s the part that really gets me. The world isn’t getting safer. China is building warships faster than we are. Russia is tied down in Ukraine but still nuclear-armed. The Middle East is... the Middle East. Yet the share of the economy we put toward defense is at a level that would have made Eisenhower nervous — and Eisenhower warned us about spending too much.

This isn’t an argument for spending like it’s 1944. Nobody wants that. But 3.4% — in a world with this many threats — is worth thinking about the next time someone tells you there’s no room in the budget. There’s always room. It’s a question of what you put first.