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

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

#151

Post by jjeaff »

orev wrote: post #76
beamatronic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have that too if our government had unchecked eminent domain power. Is that what we want? Seems to be one or the other.

Not saying it’s the solution, but giving the government that power might incentivize people to be more involved with local government and demand more accountability. Right now nobody really pays attention to what they are doing.

Hmm, nobody pays attention... So let's give the government even more power... Maybe that will wake everyone up.

And it doesn't really matter how involved you are in local politics. The federal government can already take your land with emminent domain.

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

#152

Post by lbrito »

achou wrote: post #116

Folks, realize that US military spending: - backstops the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, which allows the US to have a large deficit with low risk to its economic system, which basically means the US can ship paper to other countries and they will send real stuff back to us in return. Let's not kid ourselves, this has a lot to do with the US' large military and financial advantage. - makes opportunistic a…

>makes opportunistic authoritarian governments around the world think thrice before invading their neighbors

This can only have been an ironic or tongue-in-cheek comment.

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

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

#153

Post by jjeaff »

snow_mac wrote: post #42

This is so true. I went to Shanghai about 3 summers ago right when Denver was finishing up the "A Line" train from Downtown to the Airport. This project cost over a billion dollars and the damn thing can't run smoothly or stay operational. Tons of issues. Meanwhile we took the Maglev train from the Pudong Airport to the Shanghai City Center. The Maglev cost $1.2 billion dollars [1]. The train can travel up to 270 MPH…

Well, median income in China is less than $3,000 and in the US it's around $55k. So if their project cost more, that leaves a lot of slack time to engineer the train to go faster.

So potentially nearly 20x more man hours to get a train 6x faster.

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

#154

Post by peisistratos »

achou wrote: post #116

Folks, realize that US military spending: - backstops the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, which allows the US to have a large deficit with low risk to its economic system, which basically means the US can ship paper to other countries and they will send real stuff back to us in return. Let's not kid ourselves, this has a lot to do with the US' large military and financial advantage. - makes opportunistic a…

> US military spending...provides funding for basic research

Someone has to really have drank the kool-aid to even comprehend that statement, never mind believe it. What does military spending have to do with basic research?

If what you mean is that the US has a convoluted, wasteful system where workers work, get taxed, the money is sent to the Pentagon, and physicists at universities have to write out fantasy-laden grant proposals to DARPA about how their non-military basic research work has military purposes, then yes, "US military spending provides funding for basic research". This really got going in the 1970s, I recall one story of a physicist grant proposal for a basic research study into the theory of relativity being presented as research that would benefit small trajectory changes in rocket launches.

You seem to have a high estimation of the idea of the rest of the world on the leash of imperial America (with the phrase imperial America being apropos for your picture). I suppose American academics doing basic research should also be subjected to domination by the Pentagon, in your view.

Japan has a much less wasteful funding of research with MITI. You don't have scientists wasting time writing bogus grant proposals for basic research being reviewed by people sitting at desks in the Department of Defense.

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

#156

Post by cpursley »

mrguyorama wrote: post #128
cpursley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not that black and white. Despite a pretty spastic and often misguided foreign policy, the US human rights record is much much better than other large political entities (i.e, USSR, China, etc).

China and the USSR being worse does not absolve us.

I don't disagree.

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

#157

Post by cpursley »

Aunche wrote: post #133
cpursley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not that black and white. Despite a pretty spastic and often misguided foreign policy, the US human rights record is much much better than other large political entities (i.e, USSR, China, etc).

> the US human rights record is much much better than other large political entities While the US treats its own residents better, their human record rights abroad is much worse. If China started the war in Iraq instead, all news outlets would have called it as genocide. The US basically toppled a ruler of a stable country, gave the "good side" a bunch of guns, and told them that anyone who opposes them is evil. Inev…

Sounds like a fair summary to me. Add Afganistan and Syria for good measure.

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

#158

Post by EGreg »

rohit2412 wrote: post #149
EGreg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I totally agree we shouldn't have spent trillions on war, I have a question about this whole "our country spent on X rather than Y" Most of the money CIRCULATES in a country. So it's not like it's one shot and done. The money was paid to some people who then spent it back into the economy and it went round and round. So at most we diverted a certain number of hops of a huge amount of money to a thing. I look…

But just saying money is still circulating is very short sighted. Is the velocity is the money the same? Is it circulating among rich or poor? Taxation is normally for taking money from the rich and spending on the poor. In this case however, money was taken from the middle and lower working classes, and given to the rich stock owners. And the country got nothing in return, not bridges, trains, or roads. If you give…

The velocity of money returns to normal after it is spent into the private sector again. It’s just one hop for how it is spent. In the meantime the taxed money may be held in some funds, and those funds may be invested in private banks. We really don’t know. The Grace Commission found that hardly anything from personal income taxes even reaches public works. There is hardly any difference if the government burned all your tax money with their left hand (fiscal policy) and printed shiny new money with their right hand (monetary policy).

My point is that the money keeps circulating. Isn’t it short sighted the other way, to act as if it disappeared?

Circulating among rich or poor is a different question - of outsorcing, automation, demand for human labor and services, UBI and so on - rather than spending it on the armed forces. Poor people get paid in the armed forces and go spend that money into the economy too. It’s apples and oranges. I’m saying the tragedy is the bombing and destruction, the money found its way back into the economy.

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

#159

Post by floren »

taobility wrote: post #140
floren wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when they crashed a high speed train and buried all the evidence the next day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

you remind me of this incident as a joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derailme...

Hmm yes, this is exactly the same sort of situation:

> WSDOT announced on December 21 that it would not resume Amtrak service on the Point Defiance Bypass until positive train control is implemented in 2018.

"But America has also had train crashes" is a typical response in this sort of situation, but also typically irrelevant.

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

#160

Post by saltcured »

m_fayer wrote: post #127
achou wrote: post #116

Folks, realize that US military spending: - backstops the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, which allows the US to have a large deficit with low risk to its economic system, which basically means the US can ship paper to other countries and they will send real stuff back to us in return. Let's not kid ourselves, this has a lot to do with the US' large military and financial advantage. - makes opportunistic a…

Thinking that this spending is ok based on your reasons amounts to a tacit acceptance of a huge amount of dishonesty, I find it quite cynical. This is a totally ass-backwards way to do stimulus and domestic investing, with the upside that it lets you do stimulus and domestic investing while pretending you're not doing it, but doing something macho and patriotic instead. This is a way to maintain US economic and diplo…

If you want a really cynical view: consider that military spending (at every level from large weapons systems down to local spending around military bases), veterans services, and general disability benefits are in some sense the only social spending accepted by a significant fraction of the population.

When I am feeling very cynical, I think of how government spending and pork-barrel politics reflect the same quirk of psychology seen in the marketing of burly SUVs and trucks to the segment that could otherwise be served by minivans and economy cars.

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