$2b is a rounding error in the USA budget
Iran War Cost Tracker
131–140 of 486 posts
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#132Why is the US at war?
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Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should be able to separate the man from his politics and look at this apolitically. I don't see how anyone can see the way his speech patterns have changed over the years and not conclude that he has had a sharp cognitive decline. It's baffling that we don't talk about it, especially after we just went through this with Biden and had the whole retrospective about how that was ignored. Now here we are doing the…
Anybody who has observed somebody age over decades knows that there is a huge difference between being 70 and 80. And it’s another big decline when they approach 90. The democrats denied this with Biden and now the republicans are denying it with Trump. Maybe we should get people that are way beyond normal retirement age out of political Leadership?
Voters primarily vote for people that look and act like them, and retired people are a massive voting block. Chris Christie saying off-the-cuff that if young people voted in any significant numbers then he would care about what they had to say was a huge money quote. We get geriatrics because people moan about how our vote doesn't matter while not voting.
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#134Wouldn’t most of these costs have been going for a few weeks, given the build up?
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US! Can you imagine the scale of this number? 3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network
The Sentinel ICBM project (already at 2x initial budget, and set to balloon further) will be the most expensive project since the interstate freeway system was built. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/the-air-forces-new-icb... So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget.
well yeah. the pentagon wastes 1 trilly per year. a lot of stuff can be paid for with that kind of money.
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now. (As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
The strait of hormuz is the opposite of protected right now. Insurance companies aren't willing to cover ships if they enter the strait to pick up a load of oil, so little commercial traffic is occurring.
The real cost should include the spike in oil prices, the world consumes about 100 million barrels a day, so every $10 increase costs the world a $1 billion a day. We're already up ~$10, and it might continue to rise depending on how things go. You probably should include LNG in there too. If this oil halt is protracted, your stocks and bonds will be dragged down as well.
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#137This doesn't include generational damage in sentiment: * Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas * Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now * Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine * Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensiv…
The disruption in gas supply will be very short. Weeks, at most. The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone, they are living in its shadow for a long time now. Now, Ukraine and Israel need very different kinds of support, and things like US withholding intelligence from Ukraine have nothing to do with Israel.
I wonder why Israel should get any support, do you support killing children and bombing schools?
Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.
Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term.
Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily.
Surely? It's far from clear that the benefits of these initiatives would be net positive.
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing. Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran. Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.
If it were that straightforward, right now the US would (A) have a consistent set of demands/goals that include shipping security and (B) a large international coalition of support. Neither are true. P.S.: Plus, of course, the whole problem where "protecting global sea lanes" typically requires a different approach than "start a war by assassinating the leadership you were negotiating with."
JD vance whined that we shouldn't protect middle east shipping lanes because he believes it helps Europe more than the US.
Re: Iran War Cost Tracker
#140Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries. Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “f…
Remember: The opinions of people that either didn't vote or voted for Trump are all that really matter this November (unless the Democrats somehow lose voters, but the polls suggest that is unlikely).
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.