351–360 of 618 posts
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in that sense Biden's legacy is cleaning up the mess and not leaving it to the future president
The vast majority of Americans wanted out of Afghanistan. That isn't the issue. The issue is with the way it was done.
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.
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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.
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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…
I always see this argument, but never a deeper reason why. As far as I know, the projections for every developed economy looks like this, is every country going to go bankrupt eventually? If the economy is growing, we can in fact print money with little to no consequence of inflation. The US can "borrow" money incredibly cheaply. Government spending stimulates the economy, we can spend and do much more than we currently are, if we merely choose to build instead of destroy.
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> 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…
Until we get the big showdown about this in the Supreme Court, both the Executive and Legislative will continue to claim they have ultimate authority here.
Whatever. We have all these online sites where we can do battle over politics. Can’t we keep HN as a fun place to talk about tech stuff?
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…
I think of this when people say we can't afford to mitigate climate change.
A few years ago China pledged to invest trillions into environmental protection over the next decades. We can only hope that the USA takes similar steps. Both countries can afford it and both have access to know how other countries have build up in this effort.