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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#551

Post by lucb1e »

nerdponx wrote: post #171
lucb1e wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more than the average monthly rent for an apartment Sure so you get, in a good case, 3 months' rent out of it and then you still need to eat. Yes it helps, yes it would be great in addition to other social benefits, but a UBI it is not unless I have a wrong impression of what a UBI is supposed to be.

3 months' rent can be the difference between spiraling into financial ruin and not, or between becoming homeless and not.

Yes,

> but a UBI it is not unless I have a wrong impression of what a UBI is supposed to be.

Re: Economic costs of war

#552

Post by dragonwriter »

mc32 wrote: post #429
aiisjustanif wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 of "nation-building". Not everyone wants democracy right now. It may come later. This short sightedness might cost more in lives globally and money loss from trade and resources being restricted.

While it seems crude, the way we used to do it, the way the Soviets used to do it, the way China does it now, seems to work best for this kind of interest. You invest in a despot let them have their little fiefdom and you let them run what's theirs and you get to take what you think is yours. Nation-building is hubris. Work with someone local who fits hand-in-glove. Is the unstable "stability" worth 6T and thousands…

> While it seems crude, the way we used to do it, the way the Soviets used to do it, the way China does it now, seems to work best for this kind of interest. While it seems crude, the way we used to do it, the way the Soviets used to do it, the way China does it now, seems to work best for this kind of interest.

Aside from ethical issues, the inevitable case is what they think is theirs and what you think is yours end up conflicting, which is how that strategy fell apart with the Soviets in Afghanistan. And with the US and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Among other places.

Re: Economic costs of war

#553

Post by Retric »

risk000 wrote: post #309
Retric wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are paid in a nations currency which creates demand for the currency scaled to their economy. Borrowing money is the only way to get spending > taxes without an exponential increase in the amount of money generated every year. That exponential growth then gets worse as the economy tanks and debt explodes. It’s been demonstrated repeatedly, things get out of control extremely quickly. There is a little wiggle ro…

There are better and deeper ways of understanding money. You think fiscally sovereign nations need to borrow their own currency, and that isn't correct. You think government spending necessarily precipitates a currency crisis, and this is not only incorrect but goes against the demonstrated history of the United States from the 40s until today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba8XdDqZ-Jg It seems like you are conflat…

> You think fiscally sovereign nations need to borrow in their own currency

No, it can be quite beneficial. However, it’s more dangerous to borrow in foreign currency because exchange rates are outside of complete government control.

> You think government spending necessarily precipitates a currency crisis

No, the inability to borrow in their own currency is one possibility. Bad monetary policy is another, losing a war for existence is another.

Re: Economic costs of war

#554

Post by Retric »

risk000 wrote: post #311
Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only up to a point, try borrowing say 50 million dollars while making 50k. Before lending money people look at your existing debt load to determine if your likely to pay it back. The same thing happens to countries, though more smoothly as they first require higher interest rates.

Governments are not households. Using this metaphor only causes more misunderstandings.

Except Greece for example recently hit it’s borrowing limit with spiraling interest rates. If it could have borrowed unlimited money at zero interest nothing bad would have happened, it could have paid debts with new loans.

Re: Economic costs of war

#555

Post by ud_visa »

anticodon wrote: post #538
xyzzyz wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USSR, Ukraine Many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies. Consider, for example, that Ukraine had basically as much democratic tradition as Poland had (big parts of it literally being parts of Commonwealth of Poland for centuries), and yet Poland’s democracy has been doing much better. I agree that culture and traditions matter, but with your examples, you are overstating your case.

I don't know about Poland, but Ukraine is certainly not a democracy. Starting from the fact that the presidents are appointed by oligarchs (you may call it a conspiracy theory, but it's true), the country is plagued by corruption. Ending with the fact that current president and his party are closing media of opposing parties (so much for "freedom of speech"). Nor does it help the Ukraine. All the industry was destroy…

Ukraine is poor. It is corrupted. Its population is declining. It has a chance still: there is a social demand for a different lifestyle and organisation of the state, which eventually will solve many problems Ukraine has and will make it a place not worse that any other East-European country. Now it's on the way of building democracy and it may fail without help, unfortunately. What we need from the West is constant pressure on our establishment to setup effective institutions, especially in the anti-corruption domain.

Source: I'm a Ukrainian still staying in Ukraine because I believe the above is true. Otherwise I'd move to EU with very little effort or to Russia with no effort at all.

Re: Economic costs of war

#556

Post by DSingularity »

mc32 wrote: post #494
DSingularity wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The western democracies are so pure and noble. Definitely not colonizing, dictator supporting, or war mongering countries.

Apparently you have some advice for the State Department about how to stabilize a place that has lacked stability for centuries, I bet they could use some advice about now.

Yeah I do actually : leave them alone.

Re: Economic costs of war

#557

Post by throw0101a »

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…

> 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"

They did not "comply". They came to realize it was better to emulate the US:

> This is not to say that Japan remained fascist (as some left-wing commentators assert). It most obviously and manifestly did not remain fascist. Instead, various leaders who had earlier supported and even participated in fascism decided that liberal democracy was better for the country. One reason they made this decision is that the U.S. had just proven liberal democracy’s economic and military effectiveness by winning WW2. They almost certainly could have restored dictatorship in Japan — the U.S. was clearly willing to tolerate dictatorships among its Cold War allies in Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere — but they chose not to. Instead, they drew from a liberal democratic trend that had existed in Japan well before the military takeover of the 1930s.

* https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-afghanistan-occupation...

Both Japan and Germany had liberal democratic histories before they got taken over by fascists, so it wasn't a stretch. Cultures based on clan/kinship tend to have higher corruption and lower stability:

* https://ideas.repec.org/p/sfu/sfudps/dp17-17.html

* https://www.u4.no/publications/the-kinship-in-public-office-...

* https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...

Re: Economic costs of war

#558

Post by juanani »

surfingdino wrote: post #527
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…

No, education is not the problem. Universities are supposed to be places where different ideas are meant to be discussed openly without fear of persecution. It is easy to criticise ideas that failed after the fact, but that is not the reason to criticise universities or education. We are talking here using a system based of decades of trying different ideas none of which were developed with a guy with grenade launche…

>ideas discussed openly

Ive been under a rock for a good while but did not notice you down here. Where the f you been this whole time? You think US universities are the place this happens today? Wow. In the times of woke culture? Teehee

Re: Economic costs of war

#559

Post by Kye »

vxNsr wrote: post #467
_9rq6 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is it. American taxpayer money went to americans mostly and some of its allies. 6.4T just did not go to poor communities of color.

> 6.4T just did not go to poor communities of color. why? Do they not have jobs? How do you know none of that money went to employing POC?

They were and still are redlined out of most of the places this money flows to.

Re: Economic costs of war

#560

Post by minikites »

sk2020 wrote: post #514
minikites wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Simply passing bills to spend money that we don’t have may get things done, but our children have to pay for it eventually. 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 ca…

Why not round everyone’s bank account up to the nearest $1,000,000,000,000,000? Wouldn’t such unprecedented “stimulus” create unprecedented growth and end poverty forever? Would our newfound quadrillions end scarcity of resources? If not, why not?

How does this nonsensical example refute or even address my argument?
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