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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#91

Post by flowerbeater »

CptJamesCook wrote: post #42
dlp211 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

37% federal, 13.3% california = 50.3 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

The 37% and 13.3% are on marginal income, as I'm sure you know. The effective tax rate is much lower.

California and some other states also have required disability insurance that is taken out with the state income tax. It's 1% in CA.

And I would count Social Security and Medicare too, equally 7.65%. But the SS part has a cap so the percentage goes down the more you make.

All put together, someone making $250K pays about 37% on that to various income taxes listed above. If you were making 1M income a year, that rises to 47%. For 100K, it's about 30%.

Re: Economic costs of war

#92

Post by Grakel »

yunohn wrote: post #45
Grakel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There's no shortage of metal, only the price of metal 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?

There's probably more metal in the solar system than the volume of Earth.

Re: Economic costs of war

#93

Post by mrleinad »

oh_sigh wrote: post #25
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

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.

Not with the current system. $6.4T over 20 years = $340B/yr. The US spends 2x that per year just for medicare, which only covers approximately 20% of the population.

Not everyone has to use it, private and public systems can coexist, as it works in many countries.

Re: Economic costs of war

#95

Post by slacktide »

mulmen wrote: post #46
lmilcin wrote: post #19

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.

How is it owed to other countries?

Because they are the ones who lent the US the money. China is the #2 holder of US treasury bonds and currently own about 1T worth. (4% of the US national debt) Japan is the #1 holder at 1.2T. Source: https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

Re: Economic costs of war

#96

Post by yunohn »

Grakel wrote: post #86
yunohn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no evidence that Congress would have spent that money on something else “Reality is unchangeable, so we can’t know the unknown” So what? It definitely could’ve been spent better than decade’s killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

You don't get it. It couldn't have been spent on something else. If the day before 9/11 Congress had passed universal healthcare, free college, and basic income, they still would have spent this money on a war. Are you saying they could have said, oh we got attacked, let's estimate the cost of a war and put it into healthcare?

No, I’m saying the USA didn’t need to make it a multi-decade war, killing civilians while they were at it.

Re: Economic costs of war

#97

Post by jdironman »

lucb1e wrote: post #73
brokencode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000 per person is a big deal, and would cover rent or mortgage costs for most of the people I know. Though honestly, a lot my family members would squander it on things like new cars or electronics instead of paying off debt or investing for retirement..

GP was talking per year, not per month. This would be $83/month. Of course $1000 per month after taxes is a livable income (in Europe at least, I don't know what prices are like in the USA provided you're willing to move to a non-peak-price area) and does not merely cover housing, even if it's borderline poverty in richer countries with higher prices.

Its not livable on it's own, but it could improve living conditions.

Re: Economic costs of war

#98

Post by bamboozled »

epicureanideal wrote: post #75

Perhaps they should've spent this much on medical research instead. For the same money perhaps we could save a few million people dying of various diseases or cancer. It would take a whole lot of terrorist events to counter the benefits of significant R&D funding for medicine (or maybe a lot of other things).

Climate change will destabilize the world more than any "terrorists" could.

Also would've been nice to have seen 6.4 trillion go into renewables tech and investments ~ 20 years ago.

Re: Economic costs of war

#99

Post by SkyMarshal »

jaggederest wrote: post #6

Approximately $20,000 per person. $1000 a year would have made a nice universal basic income for the last 20 years.

> $1000 a year would have made a nice universal basic income for the last 20 years.

I think you mean per month, not year.

The idea of UBI is to give everyone a subsistence income so they can devote themselves to skill development and career advancement, even/especially while caring for kids. $1000/year doesn't remotely accomplish that.

Re: Economic costs of war

#100

Post by trentnix »

And a sizable portion of the population believes the government should take on more responsibility, as if those outcomes will be better somehow. It’s Gell-Mann amnesia of another kind.
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