Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 207 posts

Re: Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

#11

Post by skh »

curtis wrote: post #9

The reason why China is spending a lot more on infrastructure than the U.S. is because they didn't have a lot of infrastructure to begin with and if they want some they have to build it. The U.S. already has most (not all) of the infrastructure we need. A lot of what we need to build is to replace existing infrastructure which is getting old but technically still works. Comparing Chinese to American infrastructure sp…

Our roads are bad. We lack decent public transportation. Our internet speeds are slow and overly exspensive. We do not have most of the infrastructure we need.

Jack Ma calls it warfare you call it defense. Whatever term you wish to use is fine with me. The trillions we spent on defense in Iraq and Afghanistan certainly was not well spent.

We do have an obligation to defend the Ukraine against Russian attacks. That was the deal they made with us when they gave up nukes in the early 90s.

Re: Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

#13

Post by TheodolphusRose »

stcredzero wrote: post #7
hopyinail wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Anyone from the US who has flown overseas to modern, industrialized countries in the past decades will note the aging look of the US. Given overall industrial and cultural trends, why wouldn't everyone just keep building new stuff every 15 years? This would certainly fit the Chinese regime's policy of increasing GDP. (We'll have to crack the problem of carbon neutral concrete sometime.)

I haven’t noticed this in my travels. I have seen that the subway and train systems in some countries are leaps and bounds ahead of anything I’ve seen in the US, but what have you noticed beyond that?

Re: Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

#14

Post by excalibur »

mistrial9 wrote: post #4

I dont care who says this - it is true.

Agreed, completely on point regardless of source. History has proven trickle-down economics to be ineffective, and Michael Douglas' "greed is good" to be objectively false.

Re: Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

#16

Post by PavlovsCat »

sschueller wrote: post #2

This is almost a year old. [edit] I should have been more clear: Please mark the article as 2017 as when I read it initially I was asking my self why the WEF was now when it usually is during the start of the year.

This is almost 66 years old:

> What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road? The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Re: Jack Ma: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

#18

Post by osdiab »

hopyinail wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Curious—have you ever actually been to China? Those exist, but a lot of the infrastructure is used a hell of a lot more than most American infrastructure, where passenger trains are so crappy nobody rides them except in a handful of cities, and vast, usually empty roads are covered in potholes.
Post reply on HN