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Economic costs of war

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Re: Economic costs of war

#251

Post by jdavis703 »

Mizza wrote: post #217
api wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or not? Maybe it’s China’s turn to burn trillions in Afghanistan.

I see this a lot but don't understand why. China has every motivation to prop up the Taliban. A sister comment already noted the mineral resources, but don't forget the main function of Afghanistan as a nation: production of heroin. Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media, but this is the name of the game. Chinese fentanyl has taken over the global opiate…

The Taliban taxes opium farming and manufacturing. It’s believed to be a significant source of revenue for them.

But, China probably still has the upper hand in the opiate business here, because fentanyl is far easier to smuggle.

Re: Economic costs of war

#252

Post by baybal2 »

Mizza wrote: post #217
api wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or not? Maybe it’s China’s turn to burn trillions in Afghanistan.

I see this a lot but don't understand why. China has every motivation to prop up the Taliban. A sister comment already noted the mineral resources, but don't forget the main function of Afghanistan as a nation: production of heroin. Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media, but this is the name of the game. Chinese fentanyl has taken over the global opiate…

> Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media

Indeed! The speculation is that there are people very high up in Chinese system who are cashing up on industrial scale fentanyl production.

Syrian Assad family now makes more money on captagon than they were doing before the war from all their businesses.

Putin Vladimir, the Russian president, made his early fortune on providing legal cover to drug trade in Saint Petersburg, and later delved into the business himself. Russia now runs a state business of drug smuggling through its military missions abroad, and diplomatic missions.

And of course, most famously, Great Britain used to be the biggest narcostate in history. Fortunes of many modern day British elites were built in these times.

Re: Economic costs of war

#253

Post by foolinaround »

A point no one seems to be making is that the $6.4T - a good amount of it just did not vanish...

it just found its way into the employees of the state , the war industrial complex seen in the posh houses around the beltway and beyond...

it just did not reach all the Americans...

those that made bank will no doubt be incentivized to keep up the charade..

the scary part to me is what they are going to cook up next to keep the dollars flowing...

Re: Economic costs of war

#254

Post by Dylan16807 »

Alupis wrote: post #226
Dylan16807 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this just illustrates how expensive these UBI plans really are... One thing to keep in mind is that this is half of the military budget, which is less than half of discretionary spending, which is much less than half of total federal spending. The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the UBI money would be immediately recaptured in income tax. Making it Universal keeps the logistics simpler, but a we…

> One thing to keep in mind is that this is half of the military budget Prior to "COVID Spending", the total US budget was $4.5 Trillion in 2019, of which 3.4 Trillion was from revenue, and nearly $1 Trillion was deficit spending[1]. In 2019, the total Military budget was a little above $700 Billion[2]. (these numbers also highlight the absurd levels of spending being contemplated in congress right now, 1.2 Trillion…

> ie. you could not say, cut the military budget in half without severe consequences

You could easily cut a third and match 2000's budget, adjusted for inflation. I bet half isn't even hard if we stop funding things like multi-role fighters.

> and that's only for $500, an in-significant amount of money in major metropolitan areas

UBI doesn't have to pay enough to live anywhere without a job on top.

And again, who is arguing for $2k monthly? That's enough for two people to almost hit median household income. Definitely much more than necessary.

> $864 Billion annually.

Why is that not sustainable? If military cuts take that down to $500B, that's only an 11% budget increase.

If the top 10% of earners paid a bit over a third more income tax, that would be enough to cover it. They're not even taxed that much when you consider capital gains.

You could make it happen without military cuts too, if you wanted.

And make no mistake, $500 a month with no strings attached is enough to do amazing things.

Re: Economic costs of war

#255

Post by taf2 »

WaxProlix wrote: post #222
robomartin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that we can't afford to mitigate climate change. We cannot mitigate climate change, period. In other words, you could throw all the money on the planet at it and it would not make a dent. No purported solution passes the math and physics tests. It's easy to make a mess. This can be done with very little energy, resources and time. On the other hand, cleaning-up the mess takes far more energy, time and resour…

That may or may not be true right now. Was it true 10 years ago? 20? 30? There exists a point at which it was not true, and we're talking about taking that investment over a 20+ year historical period, not as a lump sum right now. Lots of fossil fuel aligned people have pivoted from "everything is fine" to "there's nothing we can do now", and echoing the latter might be factually correct, but in the context it smacks…

I think nuclear is not a perfect solution but probably the fastest option we have.

Re: Economic costs of war

#256

Post by Geee »

dlp211 wrote: post #58
onelastjob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only print so much money though before the dollar becomes worthless, so there is an opportunity cost since you can't print infinite dollars

Except we don't just print money and give it away. The money is borrowed (backed by some asset), and this distinction matters. IOW, the money that gets printed is (generally) non-inflationary. Stop using what you learned in your Econ 1XX level courses to try and reason about government spending and money operations, especially, US government spending and money operations. What you learned is not applicable.

Government debt isn't guaranteed by anything, expect by the promise that it'll be paid back (although it won't be). Commercial banks can also borrow money that is guaranteed by government instead of being backed by any asset. Expanding the money supply always causes money to lose value.

Re: Economic costs of war

#257

Post by secondaryacct »

dougmwne wrote: post #164
pessimizer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare spending is currently $3-4 trillion a year. The important number is the difference between M4A and the status quo, not total spending. The sleazy hacks quoting him intentionally equivocated about this.

How can this be so damn expensive? That's 1,000 a month for every single adult and child in the USA. We must be seriously mismanaging our healthcare.

In France where I was raised and China where I raise my kids, which both have affordable good quality health care, we tend to say it's due to economy of scale.

We negociate national prices with indian labs, we manufacture at planned cost locally, we use the school system in synergy with healthcare to do preventive vaccination, dental, eye and ear care, we work hard on conflict of interest between doctors and drug sellers (a doctor always find you sicker if he makes a profit on the medicine he prescribes), we encourage to fix very early that way rather than when it s far too late. In France, competition between providers is hunted even more than communists would, with geographical quotas and strict university numerus closus to ensure price stability and fair enough spread of providers nationally (but still have challenges in the countryside).

Both systems are far from perfect and bleed tax money, but... so much more efficient than the weird US system that requires loan from poor people to fix a broken leg (I probably exaggerate).

Re: Economic costs of war

#258

Post by sgregnt »

anyfoo wrote: post #244
sgregnt wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be an escape velocity to this: as technology evolves it is easier to clean pollution, and perhaps the innovation moves faster than the added pollution. So maybe the best time to start cleaning is 30 years into the future?

That's like saying the best time to start saving for retirement is 30 years into the future, because by then investment returns may be higher.

It's a nice saying... but may I push back? Maybe it's like saying instead of insisting to keep a positive balance, take a debt and go study in a callege. Then profit for the rest of your life?

Re: Economic costs of war

#259

Post by standardUser »

NonContro wrote: post #170
el_jay wrote: post #118

To those here riffing on the theme of “this misrepresents the volume and beneficiaries of the transactions involved” - you’re not wrong. Accurate representation of public info like this is a top organisational problem for our species at the moment. But I do think you miss the point, so aptly put by Mr Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a thef…

In terms of cutting costs, the way we exited Afghanistan is the best way to do it. Pull out overnight, abandon all the equipment, and the rapid takeover by the Taliban means we don't need to keep running bombing missions to support a slowly retreating national army. In that regard I'd see the current situation as a success, not a failure. It also seems like the Taliban have chilled out a bit, since we're not seeing w…

If the Taliban were to attack US forces or otherwise enrage the West right now, they would likely be bombed. If they wait a week, they can do literally whatever they want with no reprisals.

They haven't "chilled out", they've just won.

Re: Economic costs of war

#260

Post by [deleted] »

WaxProlix wrote: post #222
robomartin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that we can't afford to mitigate climate change. We cannot mitigate climate change, period. In other words, you could throw all the money on the planet at it and it would not make a dent. No purported solution passes the math and physics tests. It's easy to make a mess. This can be done with very little energy, resources and time. On the other hand, cleaning-up the mess takes far more energy, time and resour…

That may or may not be true right now. Was it true 10 years ago? 20? 30? There exists a point at which it was not true, and we're talking about taking that investment over a 20+ year historical period, not as a lump sum right now. Lots of fossil fuel aligned people have pivoted from "everything is fine" to "there's nothing we can do now", and echoing the latter might be factually correct, but in the context it smacks…

[deleted]
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