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>> The victor only gets richer if they get to steal more wealth from the looser than the war cost them, which was not the case of WW2. It isnt quite that simpl
by TuringNYC 5y ago
>> The victor only gets richer if they get to steal more wealth from the looser than the war cost them, which was not the case of WW2.
It isnt quite that simple. Sometimes it is "stealing" from the future and paying to people now. One example would be recent wars where we took from the future (national debt) and gave to people now (war expenditure.)
Another example is "stealing" from the country and re-distributing to select people in the country. An example, again, would be recent wars where we took from the country (national debt; opex) and re-distributed to select people in the country (defense industry; their payroll).
The above two, combined with war reparations (even if net-negative reparations) can equal an overall positive to some parties.
Finally, post-war, the regime for the opposing country can be such that they favor trade with the US (e.g., using Halliburton to build their new oil infra; using Bechtel to build their new civil infra) -- again, the money flows back to the US, albiet in an uneven and sectioned waterfall
- imtringued 5y ago>It isnt quite that simple. Sometimes it is "stealing" from the future and paying to people now. One example would be recent wars where we took from the future (national debt) and gave to people now (war expenditure.) It's actually the opposite. Debt is about giving later and taking now. When you take on debt to pay for a war, the damage is not done to future generations, it's done to the present. 20 years of war in Afghanistan are the price we paid. We could have done something else with the money, that is what we lost. The debt itself is not the problem, because it also created the money that is necessary to pay it back. Some of the dollars in your wallet are backed by the debt taken on for the sake of the Afghanistan war.