Economic costs of war • Hacker News Board

Re: Economic costs of war

#291

Post by smegger001 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #230

throwawaysea wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is likely to gain trillions from their belt and road initiative expanding into Afghanistan and from getting involved with the mining of the $3T in mineral resources identified previously in Afghanistan. China has already recognized the new Taliban government and the Taliban previously welcomed a new relationship with China that would protect Chinese interests, as they put it. China literally met with the incomi…

Riiiight. With all those ports, infrastructure, and nice easy mountain terrain to navigate. And let’s say China does somehow befriend the Taliban and build all this infrastructure, and import hundreds of thousands of workers that somehow the Taliban doesn’t decide are yet another empire to kick out. What do you think they do with these resources? They make iPhones. That westerners buy. And again, even if they do some…

why bring in hundreds of thousands of workers when China can pay the Taliban to force the Afgans to do it and just send some engineers and managers

Re: Economic costs of war

#292

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #197

Alupis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, $20,000 per tax payer is $1,000 per year over the last 20 years we've been in Afghanistan. Which comes out to a whopping $83.33 per month. I think this just illustrates how expensive these UBI plans really are... particularly the ones that flaunt several thousand dollar payments to every tax payer per month.

> I think this just illustrates how expensive these UBI plans really are... One thing to keep in mind is that this is half of the military budget, which is less than half of discretionary spending, which is much less than half of total federal spending. The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the UBI money would be immediately recaptured in income tax. Making it Universal keeps the logistics simpler, but a we…

> And are they suggesting it for normal circumstances where people are able to work?

What would the U in UBI possibly mean if it’s conditioned on someone’s judgment of the recipient being able to work? (If they do earn income, you can tax some of it back, but if they simply choose not to and that means you don’t pay them, it’s by no means “Universal”.)

Re: Economic costs of war

#293

Post by AtlasBarfed » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

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…

Remind ourselves that these unquestioned, unaccounted, massive outlays occurred at major tipping points for global warming. We lost an extra ten years of funding to help prevent an actual existential threat to our existence.

Sad.

Re: Economic costs of war

#294

Post by sul_tasto » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

secondaryacct wrote: post #245

tyre wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They have also invested heavily in their relationship with Pakistan. Pakistan protected Bin Ladin and are deeply involved in Afghanistan. China can lean on Pakistan to compliment its direct relationship with the Taliban. Not to mention that the Chinese are significantly more motivated to make Afghanistan work. As a sign of their influence, the Taliban has said that whatever happens in China’s borders is their bu…

Also they dont humiliate you day and night calling your culture backward, a bonus when you want people to work with you.

I see this pattern a lot in the US. I don’t fully understand where it comes from, the early puritanical religious roots of the colonial period?

Re: Economic costs of war

#295

Post by abc_lisper » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

crummy wrote: post #262

abc_lisper wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When has the US ever done anything but whatever the hell they wanted?

Hmm. US conducted itself in much saner way than any equivalently powerful country before. Look at pre WWII Britain/Germany and others for examples

Re: Economic costs of war

#296

Post by School-Cotton » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

But we can’t afford universal healthcare. Edit: Y’all, every other OECD country doesn’t have the healthcare challenges the US has, and they also don’t light trillions of $fiat on fire waging useless wars. You should care how tax dollars are spent.

> 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.

Re: Economic costs of war

#297

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #237

ineedasername wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the resale value of a secondhand war is very low. "20 Year old slow-burn war available for reasonable price. Population w/ low morale, lots of growth potential! Motivated buyers only please."

Maybe we should see if the first owner wants to buy it back?

I guess that's true, the war was owned by Russia before the US purchased it at a very steep markup, while the Russians probably got a good deal on it from the Brits after it sat on a shelf for a century or so.

I'm hopeful, though not at all optimistic in the short term, that it will now be EOL'ed. Unfortunately, as a product class these things tend to be very durable, and families can pass them down for generations as a curiosity until someone decides to put it back in the market. Or some new startup sees a chance to innovate while moving fast and breaking things.

Re: Economic costs of war

#298

Post by fennecfoxen » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

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 sometimes handy to define tradeoffs as a "question of money" and understand through this that things have costs. Fighter jets don't manufacture themselves. The metal to make guns is smelted in blast furnaces built and maintained by men and materials that someone paid for, using fuel someone paid for, and those people who were paid didn't do it for the decimal(2) value of the dollars involved, they did it for the real value. The soldiers who serve expect to be discharged with the cash which will buy them a home and a car and the other benefits they've been promised. These all require resources; someone else is deprived of the resources they would otherwise have, in order to make these things happen.

It's great if you can measure this process in money. Of course you can print as much as you want, and of course that doesn't mean any more resources exist, and then you need the economists to try their best to make adjustments to the numbers as you go along.

Re: Economic costs of war

#299

Post by travisgriggs » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #180

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"of reducing humans to numbers." Or making them slaves, exploiting children, etc. If the laws allow such

Same difference: "Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things." -- Terry Pratchett Slaves, exploited children, etc. are just resources whose dollar value you try to maximize and whose wages you try to minimize.

HN needs a +50 button for Pratchett references.

Re: Economic costs of war

#300

Post by micromacrofoot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #277

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...

It would still be better to give the US a paid-for healthcare system for 18 months than do whatever it is we did in Afghanistan.