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"Homelessness up 12%? Maybe we shipped our housing budget overseas by mistake.
by hathym 3y ago
"Homelessness up 12%? Maybe we shipped our housing budget overseas by mistake.
- hiddencost 3y agoBad take.
- typeofhuman 3y agoIt's unbelievable how much we've sent Ukraine while Americans are suffering at dire rates. If we had hundreds of billions just laying around for crooked foreign nations, surely we had it for school lunch programs, affordable housing, homeless programs, etc.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoHow much was sent to Ukraine in cash, exactly? And how much of that was taken away from housing budgets? From what I heard, the vast majority of what was sent to Ukraine was military surplus. (That's of course ignoring some pretty serious points you're making more or less implicitly, eg that Americans are suffering in a way comparable to "being shelled by Russians" or that the help is send to encourage their "being crooked" and not, you know, fight back against invading Russians. And you're also basically brushing off the part where the help came in with strings attached in terms of fighting corruption.)
- apwell23 3y ago> military surplus. curious what happens to this if there are no proxy wars to sponser?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- esarbe 3y agoUkraine is not a proxy war. Ukraine is being attacked by Russia. Ukraine fights for its survival. It has been doing that since 2014, when Russia first attacked Ukraine. It has been doing that without help by the US for 8 years. It will continue to do so, with or without US help.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoSome is sold to local police departments. Some is sold to your pick of developing nation warlords. Some is destroyed or used for training. I do agree that it's kind of fucked up that US military spending is so huge that it can make a major difference to the war in Ukraine with mostly equipment it was going to throw away. But (1) that's not a problem that started in 2022 (2) I think there's a huge hypocrisy in complaining about the fact that this equipment is being sent to Ukraine, and not complaining about the fact that this equipment was bought/built in the first place. If you want to make a dent in the US military-industrial complex, look at the F-35 program: the budget overrun alone is more than three times the worth of equipment sent to Ukraine (except it was spent in cash).
- lebean 3y agoThen the war becomes proximate instead. Would you prefer that?
- apwell23 3y agono? why would i prefer that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JacobiX 3y agoNot the OP, but I recently found the following figures from Kiel Institute for the World Economy: - US financial commitments 24.964bn € - Military commitments 43.856bn € - Humanitarian commitments 2.562bn €
- fakeTitsLookSad 3y ago[flagged]
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoHow so? It seems like they just have a different perspective than you.
- esarbe 3y ago[flagged]
- eganist 3y ago> It's unbelievable how much we've sent Ukraine while Americans are suffering at dire rates. Indeed, it's unbelievable how little we actually sent via pallets (compared to past US wars) v. how much we sent in the form of gift cards for Ukraine to buy US surplus military hardware. It's a very cost-effective program we should continue not just to defend our allies against a dictator but to keep our own economy cranking as money circulates among US employees and US companies throughout the military supply chain.
- hathym 3y ago[flagged]
- heyjamesknight 3y agoBorrowing money to pay for things that don’t provide value to the average American is Broken Windows at its best. Every $ we send to Ukraine is borrowed from future generations. You don’t borrow money to spend it on things that don’t give you an ROI.
- eganist 3y agoThe ROI is the mitigation of a third world war by a mad despot and the consequential preservation of lives that would otherwise have been lost. It's a hugely valuable investment once you look at the historical costs of appeasement. Also, to repeat the point with a bit more nuance: most of the money being "sent" doesn't even leave the US economy until it's in the hands of people e.g as wages. US military procurement rules mean that the aid money going to Ukraine for hardware procurement ultimately only goes back to US equipment manufacturers and other US companies in that supply chain. Tldr: each aid package is largely a gift card to spend at the Made-In-USA gun store.
- heyjamesknight 3y ago> The ROI is the mitigation of a third world war by a mad despot and the consequential preservation of lives that would otherwise have been lost. It's a hugely valuable investment once you look at the historical costs of appeasement. Citation *massively* needed. There is no evidence that a 3rd world war was mitigated. There is substantial evidence that this war has gone on far longer than it would have if the west had stayed out. > Also, to repeat the point with a bit more nuance: most of the money being "sent" doesn't even leave the US economy until it's in the hands of people e.g as wages. US military procurement rules mean that the aid money going to Ukraine for hardware procurement ultimately only goes back to US equipment manufacturers and other US companies in that supply chain. I understand this. What I do not understand is how making a massive wealth transfer from our children and grandchildren to shareholders of the military-industrial complex is viewed as net-positive economic activity. Taking out a loan against the future productivity of your children isn't suddenly made okay because you spend that money with other Americans to send guns to someone in another country.
- bitcharmer 3y agoYou are very naive if you think any of that money would go into helping the people in need. Those huge sums were approved and spent for the benefit of the military complex who traditionally sponsor political campaigns and outright bribe the government and the Congress so that the war machine never stops.
- closeparen 3y agoDropping our Cold War era bomb stockpiles on the NIMBYs would probably work, but that’s a tad excessive, don’t you think?
- Infinity315 3y agoThere's zero reason why the US can't both support Ukraine and help solve homelessness. Homelessness is a product of a restrictive construction policies (namely, many US cities forbid or highly restrict construction of high-density low-cost housing), not a lack of funds.
- esarbe 3y agoDon't buy the disinformation;not much of that money was actually sent to Ukraine, most of the money stays in the US. [0] The US not funding school lunch programs, affordable housing, homeless programs is not a problem of lacking resources. It's an ideological decision. The help sent to Ukraine is actually negligible.[1] There's more than enough money to go around; just look at the US's regular defense budget. This money being pushed to the MIC instead of to citizens in need is a conscious decision. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/ukraine-military-aid-american-economy-boost/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/ukraine-m... [1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
- neves 3y agoUkraine money was to buy American guns and that will enrich a small group of Americans that have no problem with housing. Sending money to foreign countries is a false problem.
- esarbe 3y agoThere's more than enough money to go around. The "money" sent to Ukraine doesn't even make a dent in the budget. [0] The problem is that it is an ideological decision not to give money to the poor, the homeless, the needy, the hungry. The US isn't a socialist country, remember? [0] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
- wageslave99 3y agoAre you sure that if the US gov would not send help to Ukraine, that money will be used to help homeless people?
- dimva 3y agoThe problem of homelessness isn't due to a lack of money. The problem is people don't want housing for the homeless (or any housing at all, usually) built near them. When there's a shortage of housing, there's gonna be homeless people, it's basic logic. The amount of money required to fix the housing shortage is negligible for a country as rich as the US. But money isn't the problem here, politics is. And no amount of money can fix that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spamizbad 3y agoUS homeowners made a decision to use their homes as their primary or secondary investment vehicles so they have little interest in allowing any new construction that could be viewed as lowering their property values. There’s also a good bit of plain old racism involved but people are in denial about it and insist they’re implying something else. For example, in a nearby community they were proposing some “starter townhomes” priced at $295K (median home price in the area is 350K). These were not rentals, low income, section 8a - they were new construction townhomes on the lower end of the pricing spectrum. People FREAKED out, and suggested they’d be bought up by gangs and junkies and all sorts of ne’er-do-wells and the project was killed. Someone stood up at a zoning meeting and said “Do you really want someone who lives in one of these as your neighbor? Do you want their kids going to our schools? I sure don’t!” To thunderous applause. I personally can’t wrap my head around the logic. It’s not like these existing homeowners are rich - in fact the sort of person who scoops up a $300K townhome is probably a young professional with an office job who probably make the same or more as the residents complaining that they’ll bring poverty. It’s nuts!
- jeffbee 3y agoIn my city we've had some success naming and shaming those people. After someone makes a really obscene comment like that we figure out who they are, or often we already knew, then one of my group uses their two minutes to put that speaker's name on the record. After these racist pricks realize we're paying attention, they stop coming to council meetings.
- poszlem 3y agoGreat take. We all know that America has no interests abroad, and it's always better to let the international order unravel. That way, we'll be sending our troops instead in a few years.
- jeffbee 3y agoImagine believing that government budget sizes are anywhere near large enough to address the housing shortage. Only private activity is at the necessary scale.