Economic costs of war • Hacker News Board

Re: Economic costs of war

#281

Post by nightski » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:34 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #274

nightski wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been a matter of money. We've seen the government can pass multi trillion dollar bills on demand and increase the budget at will. That's what is lacking, the political power/will to pass such legislation. It's unfortunate but it has nothing to do with this war or its cost.

> It's never been a matter of money. We've seen the government can pass multi trillion dollar bills on demand and increase the budget at will. Not without consequences. Contrary to the headlines, we can’t simply print as much money into existence as we want. For example, the actual cost of the war was closer to $2T. The $6.4T number quoted in this headline is the theoretical sum total including interest payments on t…

Yeah I agree, you can't print money without consequences. But my point was when the political will exists things seem to get done regardless of whether we can afford them or not.

Re: Economic costs of war

#282

Post by harry8 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

This is why the military industrial complex hates Wikileaks so very much.

When the population knows the truth from source documents that cut through lies they really, really don't like the racket.

Asssange is still being prosecuted on charges that seem more than just a little spurious.

Re: Economic costs of war

#283

Post by new_realist » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

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).

U.S. spends $4T a year on health care (of which $171.8B is spent on research), vs. $320B a year here.

Re: Economic costs of war

#284

Post by hack-news » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #113

Rebelgecko wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate because I don't think cost is the main reason we don't have universal healthcare in the US: 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.

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.

God damn HN is so fucking dumb it hurts.

I've been trying to tell these idiots this stuff for like 10 years...

The world can't end soon enough.

Re: Economic costs of war

#285

Post by abc_lisper » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #271

abc_lisper wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CCP is different from China. If you think CCP has some moral high ground you are deluded. They basically do what the hell they want, as demonstrated many times

yes, heaven forbid a country does what they want rather than what America wants. call me deluded and I'll just say the same to you.

You clearly have an axe to grind.

Re: Economic costs of war

#286

Post by gruez » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

sgregnt wrote: post #233

WaxProlix wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

>There might be an escape velocity to this

There's a better term for this rather than "escape velocity", because a similar problem exists for interstellar travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...

Re: Economic costs of war

#287

Post by new_realist » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:39 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #116

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).

Simply spending it on already-researched healthcare would be more than sufficient.

No, the U.S. already spends $4T a year on healthcare.

Re: Economic costs of war

#288

Post by hack-news » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:39 AM UTC

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.

You need to stop and evaluate what brought you to the point of believing something so retarded.

It matters what we spend money on. It matters what we do. The mere act of "doing" something is neutral and it's embarrassing that you need this explained to you.

Re: Economic costs of war

#289

Post by adventured » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:39 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #269

mc32 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since we reneged on the decision Kennedy made to pull out of VietNam by Johnson, we've thought continually we were dealing with another defeated Japan or defeated Germany --the enemy population would just comply to our wishes, so we kept on thinking we could "turn them into replicas of American government" This thinking has undermined our actions in every major war since then, with the exception of GWI. Gulf War…

> Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars and give them sole war-powers The issue there is the massive conflict of interest and legal bribery. Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Their bank accounts want more wars.

> Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions".

Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table.

I'm familiar with how campaign contributions work and the legal regulations involved, including what they're allowed to do - and not do - with the money. How do campaign contributions from military industrial complex firms translate into Congressional members getting obscenely rich?

Every single Congressional member would have been better off buying any number of dozens of various traditional tech stocks than any of the military industrial stocks (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, etc.).

Amazon/Netflix/Apple/Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Tesla/etc. > Northrop

Cloudflare is up more since its IPO than Boeing is over ~15 years. Watch out for those CDN campaign contributions?

Re: Economic costs of war

#290

Post by gruez » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #213

throwawaysea wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that Afghanistan was due to oil, and not due to the most direct motivations, like Taliban sheltering Al Qaeda (as they still do)? This seems like a conspiracy theory.

If you want to go there look at the acres of cultivation of opium under Taliban and then under US occupation. Ask where that exponential increase in production was spent.

What does opium have to do with oil?