Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road • Hacker News Board

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#181

Post by SamReidHughes » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

spacehome wrote: post #179

SamReidHughes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not appropriate to include in terms of proportion of GDP because they'd be spending that money on healthcare anyway.

It still is appropriate because it's compensation for a job. VA benefits are part of the package deal a service member signs up for. Without those benefits the military would have to offer a higher salary to recruit the same number and quality of employees, at the margin at least. It's like saying a government pension shouldn't be counted as part of the cost of employing government workers because the workers would s…

By that logic you could affect the spending numbers by charging military spouses rent and making up for it with daycare pay to compensate them for watching their kids. It's just a difference in accounting.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#182

Post by jeffreybezos » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 3:39 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #70

jeffreybezos wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference for the US interstate system being built where there was trade already?

I guess I don't have any links, but it isn't hard to imagine interstate trade in the US in the mind 20th century. There were military considerations later on but the groundwork before that wasn't entirely military focused.

I always thought the interstate was a big 'F you' to the rail industry.

...and the rail system seemed to follow along the path of most of the rivers.

Now fiber is also placed along these paths.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#183

Post by spacehome » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 9:41 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #181

spacehome wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is appropriate because it's compensation for a job. VA benefits are part of the package deal a service member signs up for. Without those benefits the military would have to offer a higher salary to recruit the same number and quality of employees, at the margin at least. It's like saying a government pension shouldn't be counted as part of the cost of employing government workers because the workers would s…

By that logic you could affect the spending numbers by charging military spouses rent and making up for it with daycare pay to compensate them for watching their kids. It's just a difference in accounting.

I'm confused about what you're arguing. If governmental funds are being spent on military spousal housing, that's a cost of the military, whether it's accounted as salary to the service member who pays rent or if the military builds the house directly.

My original point is that nobody (at least publicly) knows the true spending on the US military because the accounting is so baroque. The VA is just one agency whose rather significant cost is typically forgotten when quoting these numbers, but it's far from the only example.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#184

Post by CryptoPunk » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 3:13 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #48

sonnyblarney wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to Soviet Union is problematic but definitely more relevant than US investment scenarios that you highlighted. The US scenario you highlighted would be more comparable to Chinese investment in the last 25 years, no? The clear difference between Soviet Union and China is that China has a growing and robust economy, with a firm grip on the situation whereas the Soviet Union was aching away on so many lie…

> Chinese fabricated financials can be papered over with any kind of magic the state wants to apply to it - so long as the economy continues to move forward the numbers will say anything they want them to say. My feeling is business people and economists are upset that China utterly refuses to follow neoliberal economic polices. Preferring instead to follow old school Keynesian policies. Policy makers thus view China…

>>My feeling is business people and economists are upset that China utterly refuses to follow neoliberal economic polices.

>>Typically countries that try to follow Keynesian economic policies get hammered by western central banks and monetary institutions.

This is a common trope/conspiracy-theory that's not substantiated by the numbers. Western countries don't follow neo-liberal economic policy, unless you consider an increasingly powerful and unaccountable regulatory state, growing social welfare spending provided at the taxpayer's expense, and interventionist central bank policy, to the tune of the Federal Reserve holding $4.5 trillion in assets now, "neoliberal".

By any broad-based metric of economic freedom, the West has been growing less economically liberal over the last 50 years.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#185

Post by SamReidHughes » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

spacehome wrote: post #183

SamReidHughes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic you could affect the spending numbers by charging military spouses rent and making up for it with daycare pay to compensate them for watching their kids. It's just a difference in accounting.

I'm confused about what you're arguing. If governmental funds are being spent on military spousal housing, that's a cost of the military, whether it's accounted as salary to the service member who pays rent or if the military builds the house directly. My original point is that nobody (at least publicly) knows the true spending on the US military because the accounting is so baroque. The VA is just one agency whose r…

That might have been a bad example. But if you're comparing military spending between one country with the VA and another with universal health coverage, it will mess with the numbers if you include the VA. It's the other country with the difficult accounting.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#186

Post by spacehome » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 11:16 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #185

spacehome wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about what you're arguing. If governmental funds are being spent on military spousal housing, that's a cost of the military, whether it's accounted as salary to the service member who pays rent or if the military builds the house directly. My original point is that nobody (at least publicly) knows the true spending on the US military because the accounting is so baroque. The VA is just one agency whose r…

That might have been a bad example. But if you're comparing military spending between one country with the VA and another with universal health coverage, it will mess with the numbers if you include the VA. It's the other country with the difficult accounting.

Ah, I see what you're saying.

But I don't want to compare countries. I'm not sure if there's a "right" level of military spending, but I think pro-Military-Industrial-Complex forces in the US purposefully obscure the cost in order to not erode popular support.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#187

Post by exploringBabel » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

While I think there's a certain romance and grandeur about enormous and lasting infrastructural projects, it's a little frightening how quickly we can forget our mistakes.

Even though so very much has changed in China since the Great Leap Forward in the 50s and 60s, I wonder how carefully the consequences of poor planning, overstretching one's resources, shifting economic conditions and miscalculation were taken into account.