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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#271

Post by bllguo »

abc_lisper wrote: post #248
bllguo wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolutely maddening. The US has a network of military bases and armies spread across the world, interjects itself into the affairs of countries worldwide, is by far the greatest warmonger since WW2, are literally on the heels of a colossal failure in Afghanistan that has set the region back decades, yet it's _China_ who are the violent Nazis.

CCP is different from China. If you think CCP has some moral high ground you are deluded. They basically do what the hell they want, as demonstrated many times

yes, heaven forbid a country does what they want rather than what America wants. call me deluded and I'll just say the same to you.

Re: Economic costs of war

#272

Post by JBaudrillard »

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…

> Gulf War One, we went in, did the job and got out.

The Gulf War did not take place.

(It was a police action marketed as a war.)

Re: Economic costs of war

#273

Post by rjzzleep »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #261
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…

> A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. This point being raised, it is time for the US to spend money on education to support its own democracy.

One could argue that the seeds of destruction are so far entrenched, that there might only be 1-3 cycles left before the destruction of its own democracy is ensured. The Iranian clerical leadership was rejoicing on twitter about Trumps election claims and January 6th. This has also been cannonfodder for the Chinese leadership and countless other countries.

I'd say the US elites are still somewhat in denial of what actually happened and that it didn't happen in a vacuum, but was years if not decades in the making. Remember that Bill Barr had the unitary executive theory in mind long before Trump came into power, but previous Republican leadership considered it too radical for the American public to accept.

Those times have changed...

Re: Economic costs of war

#274

Post by PragmaticPulp »

nightski wrote: post #235
hestefisk wrote: post #207

“Medicare for all”, the single payer universal healthcare system in the US, was projected to cost between $16-34T [1] over a decade. I know there are some big questions around the actual cost of US aggression / state terrorism since 9/11 (ie 6.4T vs 2T as per other entries in this thread). A rough 80/20 analysis suggests: * We could have funded free healthcare to roughly one quarter of the US population for 10 years…

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 the debt well into the future.

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

Even cheap debt must still be serviced. A significant portion of your tax bill every year goes to servicing interest on national debt.

So no, it’s not simply a matter of political will to spend all the money we want. There are limits.

Re: Economic costs of war

#276

Post by markus_zhang »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #261
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…

> A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. This point being raised, it is time for the US to spend money on education to support its own democracy.

Nowadays it's already difficult if not impossible. In the age of big data and open manipulation, there is zero incentive for the politicians, corporations and media to promote independent thought for ordinary people, or to put more precisely only independent thoughts that benefit their agendas.

The same goes to millions of middle class employees of those entities. They might want to teach independent thoughts to their own kids but other than that they have zero incentive to promote independent thoughts to their customers because it's profit and power that feeds their family.

I really don't see an easy way out of this downward spiral.

Re: Economic costs of war

#277

Post by refurb »

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…

$6.4T over 20 years sounds like a lot of money, but the US spent $3.8T on healthcare in 2019 alone.

So all of this money could have sustained the US healthcare system for barely 18 months.

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

Re: Economic costs of war

#278

Post by Mizza »

jdavis703 wrote: post #251
Mizza wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot but don't understand why. China has every motivation to prop up the Taliban. A sister comment already noted the mineral resources, but don't forget the main function of Afghanistan as a nation: production of heroin. Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media, but this is the name of the game. Chinese fentanyl has taken over the global opiate…

The Taliban taxes opium farming and manufacturing. It’s believed to be a significant source of revenue for them. But, China probably still has the upper hand in the opiate business here, because fentanyl is far easier to smuggle.

I'm skeptical of this common claim. Perhaps that was true when they were an insurgent force needing funds, but I don't think it will continue now that they are in power. Afghan heroin production was at its lowest - essentially none - after it was completely forbidden the last time the Taliban were in power in 2000/2001.

Re: Economic costs of war

#280

Post by hack-news »

_RPL5_ wrote: post #174
xyst wrote: post #114

Given the current state of Afghanistan, the return on investment is definitely not worth it. Our grandchildren will be paying for this debt. This is $2T that could have went towards this country’s dismal healthcare system, funding social security, public education, and miscellaneous social programs. Instead it has went directly to the DoD companies and private military contracting companies. $2T was literally stolen…

"This doesn’t even include the costs... " that the locals paid. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/ I am sure Brown exaggerates the number of people killed and displaced, but even a conservative estimate is probably a pretty large number.

Americans literally don't care about how many people they've killed, only if it was too expensive to do so.

HN used to just flag these discussions, now given the situation this one will stand for a while and the sentiment will momentarily be more reasonable, but just wait for the next terrorist attack for all these American morons to lose their minds and commit further atrocities.

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