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Over 20 million lives are at risk after the PEPFAR program was suspended. Within a few weeks viral loads will return to pretreatment levels again. This is a hum
by basementcat 2y ago
Over 20 million lives are at risk after the PEPFAR program was suspended. Within a few weeks viral loads will return to pretreatment levels again. This is a human caused public health catastrophe.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/trump-order-set-halt-supply-hiv-malaria-drugs-poor-countries-sources-say-2025-01-28/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoWhy are US taxpayers on the hook for this?
- Clamchop 2y agoLess disease in the world benefits everyone. Very much a social good. It makes me a little sad just reading your criticism.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoAt what cost? How much cost should I personally bear to reduce disease worldwide? When we hit a point of diminishing returns do I still need to pay incrementally more into this?
- spaethnl 2y agoOut of curiosity, what cost do you believe that you currently personally bear for this?
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoHow much should I bear or how much do I actually bear? I should bear 0 cost. It looks like US Foreign Aid is ~1% of the Fed budget, so 1% of my taxes. So again, too much.
- sangnoir 2y agoHow much would you pay to not get Ebola or another haemorrhagic disease, should it find it's way into your community? How much are you willing to pay to hedge against that risk by squelching outbreaks near the source?
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoAbsolutely willing to pay for this. What % of the budget goes to that? Do I need to accept everything else to get this service or can I just whitelist this line item?
- xcrunner529 2y agoUm yes? I am convinced you’re a child with how you think everyone can line pick their own items and only those and somehow that works or would provide enough for the causes lmao. It’s like the people who only wanted 1 or 2 channels and they then realized how much those actually cost without everyone subsidizing.
- ty6853 2y agoYes it's called private services. For instance there are no public roads for miles where I live, so I rented backhoe and made them. There is no police, so I learned how to defend myself. There is no water, so we drilled a well. The whole of public services can be privatized into line items.
- xcrunner529 2y agoUntil you grow up and learn how a neighbor can poison the ground water and you’re fucked.
- sangnoir 2y ago> Do I need to accept everything else to get this service or can I just whitelist this line item? It's a bundled deal, sorry. It's not just governments that avoid admin overheads - no auto insurance I know will let you pick which specific impacts to insure against a la carte, just to reduce your premiums. Also, no 2 people will ever agree on the same government spend (to the nearest million), so I don't see the point of your exercise to personally quantify how ones tax dollars should be directed. The point of having a representative government is so that individual citizens don't need referendum on how much to pay for toilet paper at an USAF base in Japan, or disease reconnaissance in central Africa - but both things benefit US citizens (broadly speaking) and need to be done, so congress allocates the money.
- Clamchop 2y agoI don't know why you're asking me to answer questions that are clearly personal to you, and have no objective answer. All I can say is, probably not none. And maybe a note on diminishing returns, in that we might want to reflect on the eradication of smallpox and the near total eradication of polio, and what it has meant to you and to your community to not really have to worry about those diseases.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago[flagged]
- cma 2y agoWith RFK you're going to see huge populations of unvaccinated, border control won't help in that scenario with how contagious it is, but immigrants will provide a scapegoat. RFK is probably going to push for removing MMR vaccine requirements for legal immigrants too. His organization got many killed in American Samoa from measles.
- Clamchop 2y agoThere is no upper bound here. The eradication of smallpox is money saved and suffering prevented every day for as long as humans are around. Border screening clearly has a high failure rate, our recent experiences with this should be fresh in your mind. Besides threatening public health domestically, outbreaks in foreign nations are nevertheless a major economic liability. If COVID had never left China, we would still have seen a huge worldwide disruption, for example. And anyway, screw them, we got ours is a shit perspective. Empathy should be part of the conversation when talking about so much suffering and death.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago"No upper bound" is not a serious policy position. Sorry, I can't engage that.
- 2y ago
- mu53 2y agoThe US is the wealthiest country in the world, and the US got to that place by having these programs in place. Who makes shoes/other goods, mines the earth, or other dangerous work? The people in those poor countries. These programs are often the stepping stone that western countries use to enter countries and "develop the economy" in these areas to the benefit of everyone. Developing the economy brings jobs then brings peace. Then the cost of goods stays down. Fewer orphans. More experience treating diseases. More stable economies to exchange goods and services with. Very likely these programs pay for themselves via your taxes via price of goods and services. Entirely ignoring the moral good
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoThe US got to this place by winning a world war with virtually no negative impact to our own country. We were literally the last ones standing. All of these programs came after we established our position.
- bamboozled 2y agoAmerica won a world war because Europe, Russia did a lot of the early heavily lifting of and because the USA was already an economic and industrial power?
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoEurope and Russia were the ones killing each other and destroying each others' economies. So yeah I guess they did the "heavy lifting".
- bamboozled 2y agoEngland basically destroyed the Luftwaffe and the Soviets took care of most of the Germans during the attempted invasion of Russia. So yeah, I think they did more than their fare share. Are you saying they didn’t ?
- snakeyjake 2y ago>At what cost? $14.03 per American per year.
- xcrunner529 2y agoHe’s just too poor I guess.
- conception 2y agoThe entire foreign aid budget is like 75 bucks an American a year. You probably pay less than that.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoOff by an order of magnitude, but even if you were right, it's too much.
- Tostino 2y agoStep back and listen to yourself.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoCost is a fundamental part of the human experience. We need to ask that question on every single human action (singular or collective). There are no free lunches.
- Tostino 2y agoA good number of us have said "yeah, that cost seems worth it", and you act like your opinion is the only one that should matter.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoIt would appear that more voters think the cost is too high.
- Tostino 2y ago[flagged]
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoOf course they didn't know the exact policy mechanism, basically no one did (even well-informed, high-IQ voters). We voted for Trump because he promised massive disruption to the status quo.
- ModernMech 2y ago> basically no one did (even well-informed, high-IQ voters). The policy mechanisms that are coming into play today were the ones proposed in Project 2025. We had been talking about this for months before the election.
- op00to 2y agoAssuming you’re an American, approximately 0.2% of your income goes to healthcare and similar assistance for people outside the US if you pay 20% tax rate.
- ty6853 2y agoIt's turtles all the way down. 0.2% here, 0.2% there, do it 100 times and you save a lot of money. Gutting foreign freebies is an easy starting point, not the end.
- Tostino 2y agoIt's a great way to get rid of the American Empire that we've built up. I mean, you aren't going to like playing second fiddle to China, but that's the choice you are making right now.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoThat tracks with what I said elsewhere in this thread, ~1%. It's too much, cut it off.
- bamboozled 2y agoYou get a LOT in return from that, think about how much you benefit from food and other goods made in those countries. Such an ignorant comment.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoI actually don't think I get much in return for that.
- lenkite 2y ago> Less disease in the world benefits everyone. Very much a social good. Considering the Covid lab-leak theory has been confirmed now, we can confidently say that paying for disease research in the world causes more disease.
- jyounker 2y agoIt hasn't been confirmed.
- preisschild 2y agoIt literally hasn't been confirmed lmao
- llamaimperative 2y agoFor real. The “I can be trusted with nuance” crowd strikes again! These people are beyond logic.
- bamboozled 2y agoNot confirmed and the fact we do tax payer funded research is what stopped the situation from being worse than it could've been?
- viraptor 2y agoThat's just making things up without the numbers. You'd have to compare all research and all benefits from it to the single event of COVID. Even in the COVID context, Paxlovid effectively came from a British scientist.
- Jerrrry 2y ago[flagged]
- pedalpete 2y agoBecause you want people to pay in US dollars, buy US goods and pharmaceuticals. You wanted everyone to admire the US and exported the American dream to be the ideal of the world. Why is it important for America to enforce freedom in every oil rich country - apparently even Canada now! You can take a "mission accomplished" stance and be done with it, but if America wants to maintain it's standing in the world, these sorts of programs will need to continue. Without the US footing the bill for this, China will come in with Chinese aid, and teach these countries how to adopt the Chinese ideology.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoYou may be right. Trump-Americans are indeed rejecting the post-WWII world order. It is no longer serving us. Trump is renegotiating the deal with the rest of the world. It could blow up in our faces or we could end up in a more favorable position.
- lordfrito 2y agoThe post-WWII world order has been slowly falling apart over the last decade or so. America is a bit late to wake up to this reality. We're now in a pre-WWIII world.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoYes! America needs to adjust our spending to reflect this new paradigm
- marginalia_nu 2y agoThe post-WWII world order fell apart when the Berlin wall fell. That order was defined by the tension between the east and the west during the cold war, and it can't be overstated what an existential threat communism was perceived as by the west during this period. Half a century of American politics were based on the premise that if the US did not win against the Soviets, the entire world would live under a world wide oppressive communist regime. Freedom would be a historical footnote. This meant that the US urgently needed to have its shit together at all points, not just function well, but also look good. The war against communism was fought in the hearts and minds of the world's population. Since the Soviet union fell, and with nobody to keep the US honest anymore, it's arguably let itself go. In part it's metaphorically stopped sucking in it's stomach, to hide its flaws and present itself as flawlessly glamorous. Some of the American decline is problems that have existed for a long time that have now been brought to the surface; but I think the lack of competition is also just as big of a factor. New powers have emerged in the vacuum left behind the Soviet union, yes, but these are all knock-on effects, and I don't think they're perceived as the sort of existential threat as the communists were. Some are trying to paint them that way, but it's not nearly the same.
- sangnoir 2y agoAmerican soft power enables a multitude of benefits to US taxpayers, but as a higher-order effect. Leaders who only apply first-order thinking will disrupt complex systems without understanding them.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoAt what cost to those US taxpayers? Leaders who only look at benefits without understanding costs will bankrupt the American people.
- darth_avocado 2y agoWhy are you not questioning the defense budget then? Aid like this is mutually beneficial. Countries get free medicine, US gets favorable trade deals, the money spent stays with US companies and flows down to US taxpayers in terms of wages and taxes the companies making the drugs pay back. But if you think that’s not beneficial, then why do we need trillions every year for defense?
- throw678937 2y agoThis is not a direct response, but as an aside, defense spending really has fallen in recent decades. It's not the War on Terror days anymore: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...
- 8note 2y agoa naive guess would be about negative 33 trillion dollars cost to US taxpayers, the current debt. but whats the costs overall of changing the official US name of "gulf of mexico" to "golf of mexico" or the cost to everyone of all this disruption? whats the costs ive had to pay from Turmp bungling the covid response? how many bungled responses am i going to have to pay for because trump doesnt want the US to have a leading role in the WHO? the cost of all these deportions? both immediate and future? why am i paying for this RTO mandate that Musk wants to run? whats the cost of all these tariffs trump's about to put in? wheres my opt out?
- r00fus 2y agoBecause it's enlightened self-interest. I personally love paying taxes that go to these functions because they keep people in homes and off streets, they keep people from dying early. You may like the stench of death and despair all around you - I sure don't want to live in that world.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoHow much are you willing to pay for this? If Congress voted for 50% taxation and could somehow prove to you that it was all going to care for those less fortunate than you, would you be okay with that? 75%? 90%? What quality of life are you aiming for the recipients? Do they each get a cot in a shelter? Their own room? Their own apartment or house? Do they get it with no strings attached or do they have to try to improve their own lot while the taxpayer helps them? How long do we want to extend lives for? Surely we all agree on medication and life-saving care for children. Should a 95 year old get hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend their lives for 6 months? These are real questions that Americans are trying to answer right now.
- Bjartr 2y agoThese are questions with long standing answers arrived at iteratively over decades. Should those answers continue to be questioned and iterated upon? Absolutely. Is throwing the baby out with the bathwater all at once while crying "taxes bad!" likely to be an iteration that results in net improvement to American society? Probably not.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoThese questions have not been answered, that's why Americans just voted for someone who vowed to decrease spending
- Bjartr 2y agoIt's not like we rolled dice to get the spending we had. Decisions were made based on information available. There are detailed explanations available for all sorts of spending. Refusing to seek that out isn't the same as it not existing. That's not to say the decisions were perfect, far from it. But thinking we can arrive at better outcomes by just throwing it all away and ignoring all we've learned is the height of insecurity and arrogance, not a sign of strength. Edit: > that's why Americans just voted for someone who vowed to decrease spending The number of people that voted as they did that would switch their vote if only someone would explain where their taxes went in more detail is extremely small.
- vharuck 2y agoBecause their duly elected representatives, senators, and president agreed on the bills that included this money. Even if everyone said "We elected the new president to specifically stop all health funding," the Constitution doesn't let him do that alone. Congress has to do it. We can't even get to debating the merits of bills until people agree on a system for the government to write, debate, agree on, and carry them out.
- craigmcnamara 2y ago[flagged]
- joquarky 2y agoAfter reading that whole thread I couldn't help but recall that even wild animals often demonstrate at least some degree of empathy
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoI empathize with Americans, especially for those for whom the government stopped working and who have been struggling and dying as a result. I don't care at all about foreign aid.
- bamboozled 2y agoA major reason why foreign aid happens is to stop problems growing which will affect you in the USA. Unless you want to lock down the USA, stop all international travel and trade then you need to help other countries or else you will also suffer. It's like society refuses to read history so we need to go back to 1920's every few decades to understand why we have the things we have. Which is sad.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoSorry I don't believe this argument. Let's turn it all off and see if something bad actually happens to Americans
- laurent_du 2y agoPeople are piling on you because they have no sound argument. I admire you for keeping your cool.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoThank you, it's honestly been a ton of fun
- esbranson 2y agoWould this be some sort of A/B testing of humanity with and without America? Sincerely hope you're wrong.
- bastawhiz 2y agoWhat would the hypothesis even be? "If we stop providing aid, will people die?" That's outrageous and generously gives them the benefit of the doubt that they're being ignorant rather than greedy.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]