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Economic costs of war

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Re: Economic costs of war

#501

Post by busymom0 »

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. - smedley butler

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. - smedley butler

War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. - smedley butler

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye",[1] was a senior United States Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, and Central America; the Caribbean during the Banana Wars; and France in World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (along with Wendell Neville and David Porter) and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.

In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.

Butler later became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences. In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he describes and criticizes the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those in which he had been involved, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them.

I would highly recommend the audiobook of his book from 1920s:

Warning from 1920s: WAR IS A RACKET by Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler - FULL AudioBook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26O-2SVcrw0

Re: Economic costs of war

#502

Post by dragonwriter »

mc32 wrote: post #366
dragonwriter wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gulf War One, we went in, did the job and got out. No, we didn't, we were perpetually militarily engaged in Iraq, at a lower level, between the 1991 war and the 2003 war. We weren't occupying or administering Iraq, but we didn't leave, either. > Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars Both of the long wars started under Bush had Congressional authorization.

>We weren't occupying or administering Iraq, but we didn't leave, either. I mean, we never left Germany or S. Korea, so... Playing big brother to Q8? I'm not mad. Like other countries, we can pick sides and aid whatever side we think has our interest. I'm not interested in intervening with infantry and all the necessary materiel unless it's to defend ourselves from grave danger. Especially avoid stupid the boondoggle…

> I'm not interested in intervening with infantry and all the necessary materiel unless it's to defend ourselves from grave danger.

Grave danger was cited by the President, and concurred in as justifying war by Congress, in both of the long wars commenced under Bush.

> True, but they gave him blanket authorization for use of military force (open ended) rather than a declaration of war)

The Supreme Court has long recognized exercise of Congress’ war powers without magic words as legitimate declarations of war, and also recognized conditional declarations of war (including, again, those without magic words) as declarations of war. Magic words may be relevant to the application of other domestic law (because Congress may have chosen to make them so), but it does not change the fact that any time Congress, with or without magic words, and unconditionally or conditioned on some other fact (including a Presidential determination) “authorizes” war, it is in fact exercising its Constitutional power to declare war. In fact, it first did so in regard to the Congressional authorization for the Quasi-War of 1798-1800, which was the very first Congressional exercise of its power to declare war.

Re: Economic costs of war

#503

Post by Nkuna »

mc32 wrote: post #484
rayiner wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. spends among the most on education of any developed country, both in absolute terms and a percentage of GDP. Our education spending is over 6% of GDP: https://waterpedia.wiki/image/education-spending-share-gdp-s... . All of the people involved in these foreign war debacles were highly pedigreed. (Fun fact: the President of Afghanistan, who fled Kabul yesterday, is an Ivy League-educated professor who "litera…

The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption. It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet do…

Libya? Plagued by corruption? Oh, you mean _after_ the U.S. destabilised it? Okay.

Re: Economic costs of war

#504

Post by 908B64B197 »

busymom0 wrote: post #498
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…

The proper order to pull out is to: 1. Remove the diplomats, embassy staff, translators and other Afghani helpers who were promised safety in return of helping the Americans first. 2. Remove the military equipment - guns, drones, choppers, humvees etc second so that it doesn't fall in the Taliban's hands. At least destroy these equipment if it can't be logistically brought back. Destroy the bases so Taliban can't use…

> translators and other Afghani helpers who were promised safety in return of helping the Americans first.

Assuming they didn't harbor double allegiances.

Re: Economic costs of war

#505

Post by Glyptodon »

mc32 wrote: post #243
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…

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…

Eh, I think a few of your points are sort-of correct, but transformational goals could work if we were more willing to commit to manpower, occupation, hard measures, and direct control (not saying that we should, or that it fits with modern sensibilities).

On top of that, "preventing the production of terrorists" (to paraphrase) was a stated goal of Afghanistan and it doesn't seem obvious how it can be fulfilled with either the current outcome or an "invade, accomplish, withdraw" operation unless we intended to just entirely massacre the populace to the point that the nation becomes a giant wildlife reserve.

There are relatively few (if any) cases of forced national reform lasting 40+ years with the intent to have a relatively "free democracy" at the end so I'm also having trouble considering your contention about transformation proven. (Though I definitely concur a single birth to adult score of years seems an unlikely interval for success with half-measures.)

Re: Economic costs of war

#506

Post by mjevans »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #384
mjevans wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6.4T / 20 Years ~= 320B for one year Offhand, the entire broadband portion of the budget for the next 5-20 years was 65B. Maybe healthcare lacks effective resource management. I sure as heck know I always hear quoted prices in other first world countries that are far less, often 1/10th of what we pay in the US.

Here in Ontario with our single payer system the health care budget sits at around $60B a year, for a population of ~14M, or per-capita about $4.6k (CAD) per person. If you extrapolate that out to a nation of 328 million, that's about $1.5T CAD / $1.1T USD a year. For a larger population comparison, let's use the UK. NHS budget for 2018 was 114B UKP, or ~$158B USD. For a population of about 66 million people, that wo…

For context 1: "U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2019, reaching $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent."

According to the US Gov "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services", in 2019 (pre pandemic) the US was already spending 3.8 trillion (~3.5x the estimate) or $11,582 per person and not fully serving everyone in the process. Maybe the medical bickering/billing departments raise the price 2-3 times.

1: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

Re: Economic costs of war

#507

Post by busymom0 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #504
busymom0 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proper order to pull out is to: 1. Remove the diplomats, embassy staff, translators and other Afghani helpers who were promised safety in return of helping the Americans first. 2. Remove the military equipment - guns, drones, choppers, humvees etc second so that it doesn't fall in the Taliban's hands. At least destroy these equipment if it can't be logistically brought back. Destroy the bases so Taliban can't use…

> translators and other Afghani helpers who were promised safety in return of helping the Americans first. Assuming they didn't harbor double allegiances.

Fair point but we are talking about thousands of people who were promised safety for their help. Safety doesn't necessarily mean a visa straight to America - it could even mean safety in safe 2nd country or something else. Even diplomats and others were left in embassy for the last moment to be taken out. This abandonment of trust is exactly what ruins the reputation and will then get used as propaganda by the Taliban.

Re: Economic costs of war

#508

Post by Ekaros »

pedalpete wrote: post #456
School-Cotton wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every other OECD country doesn’t have the healthcare challenges the US has Right, but they also don’t seem to have the same cost disease issues, or at least not to the same extent. The fact that Germany or Japan spends $x per capita on something doesn’t necessarily imply that it would be possible for the US to achieve the same result for the same price.

The US has the most expensive healthcare because of the healthcare system, not because of the diseases. Canadians get the same medications as Americans, and for the most part the same treatment. Everything is more expensive the US because the healthcare system takes advantage of the sick, before treating them.

Funny thing is that actual free market would likely be cheaper than the current mess...

Re: Economic costs of war

#509

Post by nostrademons »

cma wrote: post #433
nostrademons wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming prices of necessities don't rise to capture that UBI. Which is a very real concern; when all your potential customers have an extra $1000/year, you raise your prices by $1000/year and suddenly you have $(1000 * # customers) extra per year and they're back where they started. To really fix poverty, you need to address shortages , particularly ones in basic necessities. If there's a housing unit available for…

Isn't this assuming competion doesn't exist? For a fixed pool of rare trading cards or something this logic may hold though.

Yes, it's assuming competition doesn't exist, or that competitors are few enough in number that they can collude to not undercut each other.

An increasing number of necessities are reaching that state, though. The U.S. has about 5 big health insurers, and in a given region you might only have a realistic choice between 2-3 of them. Many regions have only one broadband Internet provider, and one electric/gas/water/sewer/garbage utility. Childcare and housing are competitive, but with an undersupply that's gotten significantly worse during the pandemic. My county closed 75% of its registered daycares during lockdown; fortunately births plummeted and some are coming back, but there've already been pretty significant price increases. A lot of small-time landlords were forced out of the market by eviction moratoriums, so expect even more corporate-owned apartment complexes.

Fix the competition issue and I'm all for UBI, but if you just institute UBI without fixing zoning and antitrust and regulatory capture it's just going to enrich a small class of people.

Re: Economic costs of war

#510

Post by imgabe »

symlinkk wrote: post #341
foolinaround wrote: post #253

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 k…

I’ve never heard of “posh houses in the beltway” that are owned by people involved in defense, yet you and another poster both brought this up. Is this actually a thing?

Northern Virginia, and the areas of MD to the northwest of DC are very, very affluent.
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