17 ms·

To those here riffing on the theme of “this misrepresents the volume and beneficiaries of the transactions involved” - you’re not wrong. Accurate representation

by el_jay 5y ago

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 theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” In a strictly limited sense, I’d rather get my cross of iron at 66% off than for the full $6.4T. Better yet would be universal healthcare, enough homes to go round, clean, sustainable energy production systems, and bridges that keep on bridging.

Smoosh 5y ago
I think of this when people say we can't afford to mitigate climate change.
- api 5y ago
  If climate change were being caused by communists or Islamists to attack America we would have converted to post-carbon by now. Human adversity pushes buttons in our brain stem that natural processes or random threats do not.
- robomartin 5y ago
  It isn't that we can't afford to mitigate climate change. We cannot mitigate climate change, period. In other words, you could throw all the money on the planet at it and it would not make a dent. No purported solution passes the math and physics tests. It's easy to make a mess. This can be done with very little energy, resources and time. On the other hand, cleaning-up the mess takes far more energy, time and resourced than what went into creating it in the first place. That's the problem. We don't have it. Energy, resources or time. You are far more likely to kill everything on this planet than to fix climate change.
  - WaxProlix 5y ago
    That may or may not be true right now. Was it true 10 years ago? 20? 30? There exists a point at which it was not true, and we're talking about taking that investment over a 20+ year historical period, not as a lump sum right now. Lots of fossil fuel aligned people have pivoted from "everything is fine" to "there's nothing we can do now", and echoing the latter might be factually correct, but in the context it smacks of disingenuity.
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      There might be an escape velocity to this: as technology evolves it is easier to clean pollution, and perhaps the innovation moves faster than the added pollution. So maybe the best time to start cleaning is 30 years into the future?
      - gruez 5y ago
        >There might be an escape velocity to this There's a better term for this rather than "escape velocity", because a similar problem exists for interstellar travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...
        sgregnt 5y ago
        Thank you for sharing!
      - anyfoo 5y ago
        That's like saying the best time to start saving for retirement is 30 years into the future, because by then investment returns may be higher.
        sgregnt 5y ago
        It's a nice saying... but may I push back? Maybe it's like saying instead of insisting to keep a positive balance, take a debt and go study in a callege. Then profit for the rest of your life?
- sgregnt 5y ago
  Maybe we can use our soft military power to force other countries to reduce pollution to at least to our levels? China looking at you....
- pizzapill 5y ago
  China and the USA are responsible for roughly half of global Green House Gas emissions. A few years ago China pledged to invest trillions into environmental protection over the next decades. We can only hope that the USA takes similar steps. Both countries can afford it and both have access to know how other countries have build up in this effort.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has: - Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%) - A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%) Meanwhile for the same period China has had - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%) - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007 So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
    - pizzapill 5y ago
      There is a lot of headroom until China even reaches US levels of pollution per capita though. The USA is emitting ~2.5x as much GHG per capita than China. Also China is the workbench of the world, other nations just shift their GHG load there, first and foremost the US.
- sollewitt 5y ago
  The US military is a bigger fossil fuels user than most developed countries all by itself.
- alexose 5y ago
  At $100/ton (the currently accepted rate), that would have paid for the removal of 64 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. Roughly two years worth of emissions. Although at that scale, you wonder if you could get down to $10/ton... in which case you'd have removed all of the carbon emissions from 2001 until now.
sgregnt 5y ago
I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the voters to decide. I hope humanity lives in peace some day and there will be no more need for armies but that is a distant future. Until then, you do need an armed force to protect all the good things the free society has created, how much force you need vs civilian infra? An open question...
- SteveNuts 5y ago
  What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.
  - handedness 5y ago
    It's not (just) about overkill. Nobody else underwrites global free trade, and that's incredibly expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
    - rland 5y ago
      This argument dissolves under even the lightest scrutiny. Let's assume for a second that there is a dollar amount to "underwriting global free trade" (spurious to begin with). What actually is that dollar amount? Is it 3x more than what we're spending? 10x less? How could we ever know? As it turns out, whatever we are currently spending, that's the amount required. We could double the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, jet fighters, missiles, spy satellites, military bases; we could start another war, another engagement, another "peacekeeping mission," do another few "surgical strikes"... And yep, that would be exactly what's required for freedom.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
There is no doubt that a lot has been misspent, trillions almost certainly but let's not be naive and say that it could have magically been spent on "better more sensible things" by the same people who misspent it in the first place (congress) and second let's all appreciate that perhaps 1 or 2 trillion a year, perhaps more, is the cost of western civilization not being immediately stomped out by very bad people like nazi china.
- redandblack 5y ago
  in what way is nazi-china different from fascist neo-cons/neo-liberals. it is all a projection of power - and the victims are uncounted and faceless
- bllguo 5y ago
  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.
  - abc_lisper 5y ago
    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
    - crummy 5y ago
      When has the US ever done anything but whatever the hell they wanted?
      - abc_lisper 5y ago
        Hmm. US conducted itself in much saner way than any equivalently powerful country before. Look at pre WWII Britain/Germany and others for examples
NonContro 5y ago
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 widescale reprisals.
- redandblack 5y ago
  in that sense Biden's legacy is cleaning up the mess and not leaving it to the future president
  - khuey 5y ago
    He was pretty adamant about that in his speech today.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Did you happen to catch his press conference last week? "The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way" "I also assured Ghani that U.S. support for the people of Afghanistan will endure" "I intend to maintain our diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, and we are coordinating closely with our international partners in order to continue to secure the international airport" "the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable." "The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
      - enkid 5y ago
taf2 5y ago
I’d be happy with funding schools even if we don’t see the benefit for 20 years it’s work it- IMO
mc32 5y ago
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 One, we went in, did the job and got out. I'm not sure we should have gone in in the first place, but at least we didn't try to artificially change the government there. It's disheartening to see the admins of Bush and Obama arrogantly and foolishly pursuing a transformational goal. It does not work. A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. They have to experience an organic, sometimes violent, process of progression toward democracy for themselves. Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars and give them sole war-powers with the exception of immediate threats.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  > 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.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    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...
    - markus_zhang 5y ago
      US elites mostly only care about the trough. They know it but apres moi le deluge is the silent motto of many. The Democratic is no radical different from he Republicans, they simply have a nicer face.
refurb 5y ago
$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/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  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.
- mjevans 5y ago
  6.4T / 20 Years ~= 320B for one year Offhand, the entire broadband portion of the budget for the next 5-20 years was 65B. Maybe healthcare lacks effective resource management. I sure as heck know I always hear quoted prices in other first world countries that are far less, often 1/10th of what we pay in the US.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Here in Ontario with our single payer system the health care budget sits at around $60B a year, for a population of ~14M, or per-capita about $4.6k (CAD) per person. If you extrapolate that out to a nation of 328 million, that's about $1.5T CAD / $1.1T USD a year. For a larger population comparison, let's use the UK. NHS budget for 2018 was 114B UKP, or ~$158B USD. For a population of about 66 million people, that works out to about $2.4k USD per person per year and about a $775B USD/year budget. $3.8T a year on health should pay for universal on demand health care for 100% of the population. Crazy that it's not.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      For context 1: "U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2019, reaching $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent." According to the US Gov "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services", in 2019 (pre pandemic) the US was already spending 3.8 trillion (~3.5x the estimate) or $11,582 per person and not fully serving everyone in the process. Maybe the medical bickering/billing departments raise the price 2-3 times. 1: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
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.
systemvoltage 5y ago
We should also see to it that US military is a good ol' defense business: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/02/mapped-americas-collective-defense-agreements/135114/ https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/02/mapped-americas-col...
tootie 5y ago
Eisenhower didn't understand how the Fed worked.
fny 5y ago
The problem is none of the other initiatives sell. Reflexive war is easy, unquestioned. In the wake of 9/11 it was unpatriotic to ask whether the war was worthwhile or expansions of executive power such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force were justifiable. Mention infrastructure, healthcare, or clean energy and suddenly a million special interests pop up and the deficit suddenly starts to matter.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> 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.
titzer 5y ago
It's hard for us to admit it. My own journey, after spending 7+ years living abroad, and recently completing a (most epic yet) cross-country roadtrip, it is clear that America is in decline due to generations of mal-investment. We've squandered blood and treasure in quixotic and wrong-headed misadventures and dumped gargantuan amounts of money into nothing but destruction. We've been led by bravado and glory, by craven merchants of death, and greedy megacorporations with no scruples. Our political leaders are corrupt, our institutions rotting. We should have printed out all those dollars and just set them on fire for goddsakes. The partisan bickering over just 1.6 trillion in infrastructure spending, after having lit another 3 trillion on fire to prop up the stock and housing markets for another few years, losing money hand over fist, electric grids going down at the slightest breath, and overall decay and mismanagement of all our common infrastructure...America is past its peak, stumbling now, and all that remains is angry tribalism and finger-pointing. We can't even unite against a deadly enemy that is impossible to love or anthropomorphize--a virus. We failed to invest in fundamentals for so long.... On some days I find myself, as an American, hoping we split up. We don't really want to live together anymore. We hate each other. Not a dollar for those bastards' kids!
- someguydave 5y ago
  can you convince your side to leave the other side alone?
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Fuck sides man what we need here is a little solidarity!
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  I dont think the US can help war mongering. Its the basis on which it was formed and came to be a superpower through war. It figures. Almost every US diplomatic relationship is tied to their military in some shape or form. Which is absurd. But yes. The US has been in decline for a while, possibly propped up by tech and financial markets but there too is a paper fire. The rest of the world has the skills to run their own financial markets and tech but without the excess central bank printed money that passes as capital in that part of the world. The solution really is simple though. Stop spending so much money on the military, get your house in order, and make some real friends. Sortie when a real war is threatening peace. Might take a while to do but its simple and easy.
archibaldJ 5y ago
I hope one day we will come to some form of collective enlightenment. I have always wondered, from an evolutionary perspective, what is the underlying thing that encourages the emergent collectivism of unicellular oragnisms that eventually gave rise to us? Could that be something related to consciousness in a way we do not yet understand? Would it be possible to replicate a phenomenology similiar to that which drives billions of cells to collaborate (and act together to help "the organism" to stay alive) to occur at the species level so there'll be no more wars and conflicts as we help one another to live more fulfilling lives? (e.g. through the utilization of psychedelics and BCI?) I think what made humans special is that perhaps we're already half-way there. Unlike other animals, we collabrate with one another at a much greater scale, and have accomplished so many unthinkable things so far. We are perhaps at a unique point in history after enjoying so long the state of being post-animals that we're finally starting to reflect what it means to go beyond all the humans conflicts and shenanigans.
dc443 5y ago
It's hard for me to believe that a modern brick school costs the same as 1.667 miles of concrete pavement, but it does not change the point he makes. It just makes concrete pavement sound really, really expensive.
new_realist 5y ago
Total U.S. assets amount to about $225 trillion. Spending 1/700th of that per year for the past 20 years to protect those assets seems a reasonable investment. That’s not to say this money was spent wisely, in hindsight (which is always 20/20).
- kwere 5y ago
  those number are inflated and the efficacy of that spending is very low, more a feelgood waste
C19is20 5y ago
Mr E left out "x...politicians lining their pockets".
prossercj 5y ago
For anyone like me inspired by this quote, here is an audio recording and transcript: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/april-16-1953-chance-peace https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeche...

by el_jay 5y ago

Smoosh 5y ago

I think of this when people say we can't afford to mitigate climate change.

api 5y ago
If climate change were being caused by communists or Islamists to attack America we would have converted to post-carbon by now. Human adversity pushes buttons in our brain stem that natural processes or random threats do not.
robomartin 5y ago
It isn't that we can't afford to mitigate climate change. We cannot mitigate climate change, period. In other words, you could throw all the money on the planet at it and it would not make a dent. No purported solution passes the math and physics tests. It's easy to make a mess. This can be done with very little energy, resources and time. On the other hand, cleaning-up the mess takes far more energy, time and resourced than what went into creating it in the first place. That's the problem. We don't have it. Energy, resources or time. You are far more likely to kill everything on this planet than to fix climate change.
- WaxProlix 5y ago
  That may or may not be true right now. Was it true 10 years ago? 20? 30? There exists a point at which it was not true, and we're talking about taking that investment over a 20+ year historical period, not as a lump sum right now. Lots of fossil fuel aligned people have pivoted from "everything is fine" to "there's nothing we can do now", and echoing the latter might be factually correct, but in the context it smacks of disingenuity.
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    There might be an escape velocity to this: as technology evolves it is easier to clean pollution, and perhaps the innovation moves faster than the added pollution. So maybe the best time to start cleaning is 30 years into the future?
    - gruez 5y ago
      >There might be an escape velocity to this There's a better term for this rather than "escape velocity", because a similar problem exists for interstellar travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...
      - sgregnt 5y ago
        Thank you for sharing!
    - anyfoo 5y ago
      That's like saying the best time to start saving for retirement is 30 years into the future, because by then investment returns may be higher.
      - sgregnt 5y ago
        It's a nice saying... but may I push back? Maybe it's like saying instead of insisting to keep a positive balance, take a debt and go study in a callege. Then profit for the rest of your life?
sgregnt 5y ago
Maybe we can use our soft military power to force other countries to reduce pollution to at least to our levels? China looking at you....
pizzapill 5y ago
China and the USA are responsible for roughly half of global Green House Gas emissions. A few years ago China pledged to invest trillions into environmental protection over the next decades. We can only hope that the USA takes similar steps. Both countries can afford it and both have access to know how other countries have build up in this effort.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has: - Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%) - A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%) Meanwhile for the same period China has had - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%) - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007 So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
  - pizzapill 5y ago
    There is a lot of headroom until China even reaches US levels of pollution per capita though. The USA is emitting ~2.5x as much GHG per capita than China. Also China is the workbench of the world, other nations just shift their GHG load there, first and foremost the US.
sollewitt 5y ago
The US military is a bigger fossil fuels user than most developed countries all by itself.
alexose 5y ago
At $100/ton (the currently accepted rate), that would have paid for the removal of 64 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. Roughly two years worth of emissions. Although at that scale, you wonder if you could get down to $10/ton... in which case you'd have removed all of the carbon emissions from 2001 until now.

sgregnt 5y ago

I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the voters to decide. I hope humanity lives in peace some day and there will be no more need for armies but that is a distant future. Until then, you do need an armed force to protect all the good things the free society has created, how much force you need vs civilian infra? An open question...

SteveNuts 5y ago
What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.
- handedness 5y ago
  It's not (just) about overkill. Nobody else underwrites global free trade, and that's incredibly expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640
  - rland 5y ago
    This argument dissolves under even the lightest scrutiny. Let's assume for a second that there is a dollar amount to "underwriting global free trade" (spurious to begin with). What actually is that dollar amount? Is it 3x more than what we're spending? 10x less? How could we ever know? As it turns out, whatever we are currently spending, that's the amount required. We could double the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, jet fighters, missiles, spy satellites, military bases; we could start another war, another engagement, another "peacekeeping mission," do another few "surgical strikes"... And yep, that would be exactly what's required for freedom.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

There is no doubt that a lot has been misspent, trillions almost certainly but let's not be naive and say that it could have magically been spent on "better more sensible things" by the same people who misspent it in the first place (congress) and second let's all appreciate that perhaps 1 or 2 trillion a year, perhaps more, is the cost of western civilization not being immediately stomped out by very bad people like nazi china.

redandblack 5y ago
in what way is nazi-china different from fascist neo-cons/neo-liberals. it is all a projection of power - and the victims are uncounted and faceless
bllguo 5y ago
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.
- abc_lisper 5y ago
  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
  - crummy 5y ago
    When has the US ever done anything but whatever the hell they wanted?
    - abc_lisper 5y ago
      Hmm. US conducted itself in much saner way than any equivalently powerful country before. Look at pre WWII Britain/Germany and others for examples

NonContro 5y ago

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 widescale reprisals.

redandblack 5y ago
in that sense Biden's legacy is cleaning up the mess and not leaving it to the future president
- khuey 5y ago
  He was pretty adamant about that in his speech today.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Did you happen to catch his press conference last week? "The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way" "I also assured Ghani that U.S. support for the people of Afghanistan will endure" "I intend to maintain our diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, and we are coordinating closely with our international partners in order to continue to secure the international airport" "the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable." "The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
    - enkid 5y ago

taf2 5y ago

I’d be happy with funding schools even if we don’t see the benefit for 20 years it’s work it- IMO

mc32 5y ago

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 One, we went in, did the job and got out. I'm not sure we should have gone in in the first place, but at least we didn't try to artificially change the government there. It's disheartening to see the admins of Bush and Obama arrogantly and foolishly pursuing a transformational goal. It does not work. A nation has to work out its own problems for itself. They have to experience an organic, sometimes violent, process of progression toward democracy for themselves. Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars and give them sole war-powers with the exception of immediate threats.

heresie-dabord 5y ago
> 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.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  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...
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    US elites mostly only care about the trough. They know it but apres moi le deluge is the silent motto of many. The Democratic is no radical different from he Republicans, they simply have a nicer face.

refurb 5y ago

$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/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

micromacrofoot 5y ago
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.
mjevans 5y ago
6.4T / 20 Years ~= 320B for one year Offhand, the entire broadband portion of the budget for the next 5-20 years was 65B. Maybe healthcare lacks effective resource management. I sure as heck know I always hear quoted prices in other first world countries that are far less, often 1/10th of what we pay in the US.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Here in Ontario with our single payer system the health care budget sits at around $60B a year, for a population of ~14M, or per-capita about $4.6k (CAD) per person. If you extrapolate that out to a nation of 328 million, that's about $1.5T CAD / $1.1T USD a year. For a larger population comparison, let's use the UK. NHS budget for 2018 was 114B UKP, or ~$158B USD. For a population of about 66 million people, that works out to about $2.4k USD per person per year and about a $775B USD/year budget. $3.8T a year on health should pay for universal on demand health care for 100% of the population. Crazy that it's not.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    For context 1: "U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2019, reaching $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent." According to the US Gov "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services", in 2019 (pre pandemic) the US was already spending 3.8 trillion (~3.5x the estimate) or $11,582 per person and not fully serving everyone in the process. Maybe the medical bickering/billing departments raise the price 2-3 times. 1: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

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.

systemvoltage 5y ago

We should also see to it that US military is a good ol' defense business: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/02/mapped-americas-collective-defense-agreements/135114/ https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/02/mapped-americas-col...

tootie 5y ago

Eisenhower didn't understand how the Fed worked.

fny 5y ago

The problem is none of the other initiatives sell. Reflexive war is easy, unquestioned. In the wake of 9/11 it was unpatriotic to ask whether the war was worthwhile or expansions of executive power such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force were justifiable. Mention infrastructure, healthcare, or clean energy and suddenly a million special interests pop up and the deficit suddenly starts to matter.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> 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.

titzer 5y ago

It's hard for us to admit it. My own journey, after spending 7+ years living abroad, and recently completing a (most epic yet) cross-country roadtrip, it is clear that America is in decline due to generations of mal-investment. We've squandered blood and treasure in quixotic and wrong-headed misadventures and dumped gargantuan amounts of money into nothing but destruction. We've been led by bravado and glory, by craven merchants of death, and greedy megacorporations with no scruples. Our political leaders are corrupt, our institutions rotting. We should have printed out all those dollars and just set them on fire for goddsakes. The partisan bickering over just 1.6 trillion in infrastructure spending, after having lit another 3 trillion on fire to prop up the stock and housing markets for another few years, losing money hand over fist, electric grids going down at the slightest breath, and overall decay and mismanagement of all our common infrastructure...America is past its peak, stumbling now, and all that remains is angry tribalism and finger-pointing. We can't even unite against a deadly enemy that is impossible to love or anthropomorphize--a virus. We failed to invest in fundamentals for so long.... On some days I find myself, as an American, hoping we split up. We don't really want to live together anymore. We hate each other. Not a dollar for those bastards' kids!

someguydave 5y ago
can you convince your side to leave the other side alone?
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Fuck sides man what we need here is a little solidarity!
vagrantJin 5y ago
I dont think the US can help war mongering. Its the basis on which it was formed and came to be a superpower through war. It figures. Almost every US diplomatic relationship is tied to their military in some shape or form. Which is absurd. But yes. The US has been in decline for a while, possibly propped up by tech and financial markets but there too is a paper fire. The rest of the world has the skills to run their own financial markets and tech but without the excess central bank printed money that passes as capital in that part of the world. The solution really is simple though. Stop spending so much money on the military, get your house in order, and make some real friends. Sortie when a real war is threatening peace. Might take a while to do but its simple and easy.

archibaldJ 5y ago

I hope one day we will come to some form of collective enlightenment. I have always wondered, from an evolutionary perspective, what is the underlying thing that encourages the emergent collectivism of unicellular oragnisms that eventually gave rise to us? Could that be something related to consciousness in a way we do not yet understand? Would it be possible to replicate a phenomenology similiar to that which drives billions of cells to collaborate (and act together to help "the organism" to stay alive) to occur at the species level so there'll be no more wars and conflicts as we help one another to live more fulfilling lives? (e.g. through the utilization of psychedelics and BCI?) I think what made humans special is that perhaps we're already half-way there. Unlike other animals, we collabrate with one another at a much greater scale, and have accomplished so many unthinkable things so far. We are perhaps at a unique point in history after enjoying so long the state of being post-animals that we're finally starting to reflect what it means to go beyond all the humans conflicts and shenanigans.

dc443 5y ago

It's hard for me to believe that a modern brick school costs the same as 1.667 miles of concrete pavement, but it does not change the point he makes. It just makes concrete pavement sound really, really expensive.

new_realist 5y ago

Total U.S. assets amount to about $225 trillion. Spending 1/700th of that per year for the past 20 years to protect those assets seems a reasonable investment. That’s not to say this money was spent wisely, in hindsight (which is always 20/20).

kwere 5y ago
those number are inflated and the efficacy of that spending is very low, more a feelgood waste

C19is20 5y ago

Mr E left out "x...politicians lining their pockets".

prossercj 5y ago

For anyone like me inspired by this quote, here is an audio recording and transcript: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/april-16-1953-chance-peace https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeche...