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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#431

Post by asdff »

runawaybottle wrote: post #13
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #5

Deaths 9/11 2,996 Deaths Covid-19 USA 621,000 207x Lack of understanding of large numbers is a flaw in the human mind we have to figure out how to fix.

Some related numbers for just Afghanistan: American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448. U.S. contractors: 3,846. Afghan national military and police: 66,000. Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144. Afghan civilians: 47,245. Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191. Aid workers: 444. Journalists: 72. https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afgh…

They did a hard pass on that one when their commanders were embezzling their resources and they were expected to defend a nation with shoestrings and no backup or any more resources on the way. It was a suicide mission to not give up, plain and simple.

Re: Economic costs of war

#432

Post by throwawaysea »

epistasis wrote: post #345
throwawaysea wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that Afghanistan was due to oil, and not due to the most direct motivations, like Taliban sheltering Al Qaeda (as they still do)? This seems like a conspiracy theory.

The purpose of invading Afghanistan was to enact revenge for the September 11th attacks. The reasons for the attacks that directly relate to the US are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11... * US support for Israel (specifically Lebanon) -- support that the US gives as a strategic ally in the oil-rich Middle East. Without oil in the region, we would not be expending as much effort on this su…

Come on - it was not to enact "revenge". That is hyperbolic editorialization. It was because the Taliban had consistently been harboring Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, had close ties with Al Qaeda (who attacked the US), and they would have granted those same terrorists safe harbor again if left alone. The Taliban continues to maintain close ties with Al Qaeda today (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/taliban-k...), which is why handing them back Afghanistan is an incredible failure of leadership for the US. The rest of your alleged oil-motivated acts all have other motives as well, so I remain unconvinced by your overall argument.

Re: Economic costs of war

#433

Post by cma »

nostrademons wrote: post #149
thechao wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discretionary income for a lot of families is — functionally — zero. The result is that any sort of financial issue becomes a devastating (possibly lifelong) burden. Most of these issues are single-occurrence and probably fall in the 200–500$ range. A 1000$ a year UBI would be life-changing for them. And by "them" I mean, like, 50% of the country. I'm in Texas, and the maximum amount of cash assistance possible — mar…

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.

Re: Economic costs of war

#434

Post by colordrops »

datavirtue wrote: post #398
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…

Who says they are heading toward democracy at all? Do you stop at fascism along the way? Afghanistan was essentially our state. It was beginning to prosper and experience the rights and freedoms already established by our presence--why do "they" need to create a government if we already have one that works and that their people seemed to like? We should open up to voluntarily annexing states like Afghanistan and Puer…

Puerto Rico and Afghanistan have virtually nothing in common. Puerto Rico is not next to Russia and the Middle East, and doesn't cost hundreds of billions to keep stable.

Re: Economic costs of war

#435

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

> This thinking has undermined our actions in every major war since then, with the exception of GWI.

Kosovo? Bosnia?

Re: Economic costs of war

#436

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

> Better yet would be universal healthcare

True universal healthcare would more than likely save the USA money, not require more spending. That European countries have universal healthcare at all is that after WA2 they couldn’t afford accessible private systems like the USA has been able to dump a lot of money into.

The USA will get universal healthcare when they can no longer afford their crazy healthcare system anymore. So maybe this excessive spending on wars will bring us closer to, not farther away from, universal healthcare.

Re: Economic costs of war

#438

Post by spoonjim »

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…

Exactly. Basketcase governments are products of basketcase societies. Go in and topple the government and you now have the impossible task of developing a sustainable high quality government on top of a low quality society/culture.

Re: Economic costs of war

#439

Post by ErikVandeWater »

NonContro wrote: post #170
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…

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…

Why would we have to do support bombing runs? What we chose to do could not appear any more embarrassing than letting the ANA get slaughtered/immediately disbanding.

Re: Economic costs of war

#440

Post by cm2187 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #435
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…

> This thinking has undermined our actions in every major war since then, with the exception of GWI. Kosovo? Bosnia?

Lybia, Syria, Panama
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