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

Post by lamarpye » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

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…

Post by zachguo » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

lixtra wrote: post #29

But will he say the same about the country that has the largest standing army? So many lives wasted in dull duty.

Post by tekkk » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 11:20 PM UTC

achou wrote: post #169

tekkk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying we, the rest of the world, are funding your inefficient military budgets and troops sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other? Had US policymakers little more sense in their heads I'm sure they could achieve the same result (dictators around the world not willing to invade their neighbours) and get actually working infrastructure. But nope, let's…

Yes, exactly. You, the rest of the world, are indeed subsidizing this system to some extent, and in exchange, far fewer of your own young people are sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other. I won't defend US incompetence wrt infrastructure. But I will observe that "spending more" hardly seems to be the problem, as we seem to do plenty of that already. It's that…

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:14 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #186

rohit2412 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

US Military budget comes from federal taxes which mostly comes from federal income taxes AFAIK and thus the top 1% contribute more than the bottom 90%: "In 2014, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs below $38,173) earned 11.27 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid approximately $38 billion in taxes, or 2.75 percent of all income taxes in 2014. In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayer…

Post by cannonedhamster » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

taobility wrote: post #165

eplanit wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing -- they get a Maglev train for $1.2B, and in only 2.5 years of construction[1]. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, we get a [flawed] bridge for $6+B that took 11 years to build[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train#Construc... [2] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/10/from-250-million-to-6...

Another example is about Boston's Big Dig. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig $6 billions with 15 years for 1.5 miles tunnel. What a horrible project!