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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#321

Post by mikem170 »

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.

Presidents can use the power to declare war for political purposes, i.e. start a war after a scandal, or before an election, etc. They can also be bribed, just like the politicians in congress.

The constitution grants congress the power to declare war, congress being the representatives of the people of the states. It was never intended that a single person, the president, has the authority to launch an offensive war with another country.

I agree with you that the campaigns are financed in the U.S. amounts to legal bribery. Most other civilized countries outlaw or greatly curtail campaign donations from corporations, unions, and trade associations. Many also limit donations to offices you can vote on, subsidize donations with tax credits, limit the lengths of campaigns, and/or publicly fund political parties.

Re: Economic costs of war

#324

Post by jonnycomputer »

standardUser wrote: post #259
NonContro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But neither has there been a lot of resistance; most places surrendered without a fight, from what I can tell. That suggests that the Taliban, for good or ill, have more legitimacy in the eyes of Afghanis, than the government we created and supported for the last 20 years. But, Afghanistan has changed, and who really knows what is going to happen. Cell phones are ubiquitous. They hardly existed in 2001. A whole generation of Afghani women are now educated. We'll just have to see. And the Taliban may just have to figure out how to swim with the sharks of that region, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China.

Re: Economic costs of war

#325

Post by pizza »

throwawaysea wrote: post #200
epistasis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$6.4T into renewables and storage over the past 20 years would have decarbonized the US grid several time over, accelerated the tech curve drastically, nearly completely transitioned us to EVs, and we'd probably have decarbonized a good chunk of industry that is hard to decarbonize now. We'd have cheaper energy than we do today, and cheaper energy forever. We could have been looking at current levels of climate chang…

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.

> Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline (1997)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan%E2%80%93Afghanist...

Re: Economic costs of war

#326

Post by Sebb767 »

rodgerd wrote: post #150
glitchc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the what, but the how. A terrorist attack on home turf is a slap in the face of every American. Outrage is to be expected.

> A terrorist attack on home turf is a slap in the face of every American. Unless the terrorists are white guys angry that their choice didn't win an election. Then it's tirelessly defended.

Or people of all colors and nations (some of them surely white guys) angry that the "white guy choice" did win the election. DC was quite boarded up [0] and it was not in fear of a Trump loose.

Please don't be a racist and call the factions by what they are, not by their gender or skin color.

[0] https://wjla.com/news/local/a-look-around-dc-hours-before-el...

Re: Economic costs of war

#327

Post by Dylan16807 »

sokoloff wrote: post #292
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…

> And are they suggesting it for normal circumstances where people are able to work? What would the U in UBI possibly mean if it’s conditioned on someone’s judgment of the recipient being able to work? (If they do earn income, you can tax some of it back, but if they simply choose not to and that means you don’t pay them, it’s by no means “Universal”.)

I'm talking about extra money during lockdown.

Re: Economic costs of war

#328

Post by koyote »

throwawaysea wrote: post #225
SilverRed wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Traffic deaths in USA over 2 years ~80,000. Nobody cares. Many people do care about this and advocate for less car infrastructure, safer streets, better walkability and better public transport. Car centric design was the worst mistake of the last few decades.

There is a clear positive return on those traffic deaths. We live far richer lives because of motor vehicles and what quick private transportation unlocks. I think car centric design is great personally.

Do you think that a car centric society such as the US has benefited its residents more than a society which has moved away from car centric city design such as the Netherlands?

Re: Economic costs of war

#329

Post by greedo »

smegger001 wrote: post #291
ericmay wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riiiight. With all those ports, infrastructure, and nice easy mountain terrain to navigate. And let’s say China does somehow befriend the Taliban and build all this infrastructure, and import hundreds of thousands of workers that somehow the Taliban doesn’t decide are yet another empire to kick out. What do you think they do with these resources? They make iPhones. That westerners buy. And again, even if they do some…

why bring in hundreds of thousands of workers when China can pay the Taliban to force the Afgans to do it and just send some engineers and managers

The modus operandi of China is employment for their people. In almost every country they've lent money for infrastructure, they've brought in their own construction people.

Re: Economic costs of war

#330

Post by boplicity »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #324
standardUser wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But neither has there been a lot of resistance; most places surrendered without a fight, from what I can tell. That suggests that the Taliban, for good or ill, have more legitimacy in the eyes of Afghanis, than the government we created and supported for the last 20 years. But, Afghanistan has changed, and who really knows what is going to happen. Cell phones are ubiquitous. They hardly existed in 2001. A whole gener…

> That suggests that the Taliban, for good or ill, have more legitimacy in the eyes of Afghanis,

No, I would say that the Afghanis were literally told that they were going to eventually lose the war and that the Taliban would eventually win. The people put in the position to fight the Taliban made the sensible choice to lose peacefully, as opposed to risking their lives for a lost cause.

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