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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.

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.

nightski 5y ago
I feel like most of the resources needed for healthcare already exist as part of the current system. It's simply a matter of policy and how it's paid for. But I am not an expert and could be missing a key point.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  Well, health care services are an ongoing expense. You pay doctors twice a month. Doctors expect to buy new things sometimes, not just "resources that already exist". And it's fine to say "society can afford <x>" in isolation — we obviously have spent the money on the war, we obviously have spent money on health care. It's a question of trade-offs and whether spending money on the war is worth it. And that's really an awful lot of money to have spent on a war. The risk we see today with money is that we're trying to make a lot more of it and we might find that it doesn't mean the resources we expected. Weekly earnings in the US are up $16/wk since January — but adjusting for inflation they're down $9/week.
  - nightski 5y ago
    It's not "society can afford <x>". It's society has already afforded <x> for the entire duration of this 20 year war. That is not speculation. It also had nothing to do with the money printing during covid or the recent signs of inflation.

nightski 5y ago

I feel like most of the resources needed for healthcare already exist as part of the current system. It's simply a matter of policy and how it's paid for. But I am not an expert and could be missing a key point.

fennecfoxen 5y ago
Well, health care services are an ongoing expense. You pay doctors twice a month. Doctors expect to buy new things sometimes, not just "resources that already exist". And it's fine to say "society can afford <x>" in isolation — we obviously have spent the money on the war, we obviously have spent money on health care. It's a question of trade-offs and whether spending money on the war is worth it. And that's really an awful lot of money to have spent on a war. The risk we see today with money is that we're trying to make a lot more of it and we might find that it doesn't mean the resources we expected. Weekly earnings in the US are up $16/wk since January — but adjusting for inflation they're down $9/week.
- nightski 5y ago
  It's not "society can afford <x>". It's society has already afforded <x> for the entire duration of this 20 year war. That is not speculation. It also had nothing to do with the money printing during covid or the recent signs of inflation.