41–50 of 618 posts
Approximately $20,000 per person. $1000 a year would have made a nice universal basic income for the last 20 years.
Sure, but you can't discount all the US jobs created for defense industry and mercenary corps /s
Sure glad my taxes are 55%
Since this is based on US spending I am assuming you are talking about US taxes, in which case, no you are not paying 55% in taxes.
Most wealthy people spend another 1-2% of their income on property taxes and a bit on sales taxes, etc. I estimate I pay 53% of my income to taxes. I agree that 55% is unlikely tho
This title is completely wrong. The article estimates the US has accumulated around $2 trillion in war debt as of 2020. It goes on to estimate interest payments will equal $2 trillion by 2030 and $6.4 trillion by 2050.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ignore money. Think in terms of stuff. Metal that gets put into Humvees can't be put into something else. We threw away an insane amount of stuff. And think in terms of people. People that spend a year as soldiers in Afghanistan can't spend that year doing something else. We threw an insane amount of people-time, and a tragically insane amount of people. There is an opportunity cost in terms of both stuff and people.…
Absolutely not. Waste fuels the economy. There's no shortage of metal, only the price of metal. As for people, spending a couple of years in the military is much better personal development for many young people than going to college at an age when most people can't appreciate it. These things aside, of course the loss of life is horrific and a terrible waste.
Metal is a non-renewable resource. Cost of extraction does not match market price, more so when unnecessary demand is created for wars. What kind of spin is this?
Nah... probably large portion of this was paid to US corporations and citizens. Spending on the level of government is counterintuitive. If you are government you hand out money but it gets back to you. Unfortunately, interest on that debt is real and is owed to other countries.
Sure glad my taxes are 55%
Since this is based on US spending I am assuming you are talking about US taxes, in which case, no you are not paying 55% in taxes.
Deaths 9/11 2,996 Deaths Covid-19 USA 621,000 207x Lack of understanding of large numbers is a flaw in the human mind we have to figure out how to fix.
Assume it will never be fixed. What's another solution?
This is basically modern capitalism. It works, as a way of managing large numbers. Most people hate it, though, because it has a tendency of reducing humans to numbers.
But we can’t afford universal healthcare. Edit: Y’all, every other OECD country doesn’t have the healthcare challenges the US has, and they also don’t light trillions of $fiat on fire waging useless wars. You should care how tax dollars are spent.
Bernie Sanders (who is probably the most pro-universal healthcare politician in the US so his numbers might be on the low side) estimated that Medicare For All would cost $3-4 trillion per year.
The war in Afghanistan was about 10x cheaper per year.
There isn't an "opportunity cost" as the article discusses, there's no evidence that Congress would have spent that money on something else. It doesn't sit in an account and then they allocate it, they make it up on paper and then try (and fail) to cover it later.
The simplest way to look at it is the national debt would be 22.6T instead of 28.6T. That’s one option where nothing changes except war or no wars. Many people say national debt has zero impacts but eventually nobody is going to be lending the US money if we don’t pay our debt, which one way or another leads to a world of hurt. However, to get that debt we needed to borrowing money from someone and agree to pay them…
1) The Fed can loan money by simply creating new dollars and purchasing treasury bills. This has been happening for a long time, T-Bills do first get offered to private institutions but the Fed backstops all auctions.
2) There is literally no way for the US Gov to go involuntarily bankcrupt because of 1). It is the sole manufacturer of US dollars and can always create more.