• snooggums
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    5 months ago

    As long as Ukraine wants to defend themselves against Russia I support their choice to do so and wish my government would provide even more support for them to do so.

    • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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      5 months ago

      And this is why we never have any money for investing in domestic programs to improve anything. If it’s not Korea, it’s Vietnam, if not Vietnam, it’s Kosovo, if not Kosovo, it’s Iraq, if not Iraq it’s Afghanistan, if not Afghanistan, it’s Ukraine. Have you ever questioned why there’s always a new crisis that makes Raytheon execs rich, but mysteriously leaves nothing to spend on civilians here at home?

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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        5 months ago

        Have you ever questioned why there’s always a new crisis that makes Raytheon execs rich, but mysteriously leaves nothing to spend on civilians here at home?

        Imagine thinking that’s why we don’t have well-funded social services.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        In 2020, when corporations that had just received three years of outrageously large tax cuts and stock buybacks were frightened of losing revenue, the Repub government fabricated trillions of dollars in handouts to pass around with little to no oversight.

        It is not the spending on Raytheon that is preventing spending on citizens at home. It is that half the country has oppositional defiant disorder about any service or policy that would help poor people.

        • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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          5 months ago

          Yes, all of these handouts to our ruling class are also why we can’t have nice things, but I’d argue engineering marvels that literally murder large numbers of human beings are worse than a direct handout. Maybe we just need welfare for Lockheed Martin. Also, if you want to get super technical about the economics, taxes in a fiat currency economy of our size is actually a purely inflation-management mechanism. There’s no dollar-to-dollar relationship between income and expenditure, really, so a tax cut isn’t really “spending” in the same way, you’re just egging on inflation by failing to remove dollars from the economy (not to be pro-tax cut, obviously inflation is bad and regressive taxation of its own, but its important not to play into the right’s misconceptions of how the economy works).

        • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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          5 months ago

          You got me, there is no war machine. I’m making it up. Eisenhower was lying when he warned us about this.

          • StinkyOnions@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Never said there wasn’t.

            I’m just pointing out that you don’t even know how your own government works, that is, if you’re even American.

            • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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              5 months ago

              You should use this keen awareness of how the government really works for the benefit of mankind. I do like going straight to the Russian bot thing, always a winner.

              • StinkyOnions@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Gee, I didn’t know not being American means you’re automatically Russian. Either way, you’re intentionally missing the entire point of my replies. You don’t know how your own government works. Helping Ukraine in no way is draining tax payer money, ya dunce.

                • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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                  5 months ago

                  I’m all about modern monetary theory, so I get that taxes do not 1-1 equate to spending, taxation is an arbitrary anti-inflationary mechanism while spending is an arbitrary inflationary mechanism when you’re a large country with a big economy people want to business in while printing ‘me’ bucks – and I get the argument that “it’s creating American jobs,” but mostly it’s making defense company execs rich, which is overall inflationary, which is a regressive tax on us all in the end… so… every $100 billion we spend there like it’s nothing isn’t entirely non-impactful on our economy. Also, now that treasury bonds aren’t at effectively 0% anymore this is producing net drag on the budget, insofar as how congress sees it, and they do the budgeting, ergo the $x billion we’re paying on the $y billion we’ve sent to Ukraine is reducing funding to something domestic in budget negotiations, or will eventually when the interest compounds back into the debt and the GOP goes all “Austerity forever!” the next time they’re out of power, which in your ideal world will be next year.

                  • StinkyOnions@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    …you do realize that Ukraine is only getting a surplus of US equipment that was going to be replaced? Totaling the amount of those Ukraine defense bills? There is no money being exchanged, lol.

      • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        And this is why we never have any money for investing in domestic programs to improve anything. If it’s not Korea, it’s Vietnam, if not Vietnam, it’s Kosovo, if not Kosovo, it’s Iraq, if not Iraq it’s Afghanistan, if not Afghanistan, it’s Ukraine. Have you ever questioned why there’s always a new crisis that makes Raytheon execs rich, but mysteriously leaves nothing to spend on civilians here at home?

        It’s absolutely not the reason lol. The reason you can’t invest in domestic programs like universal healthcare or post-secondary education financing reform is because half of your fellow Americans oppose it, and vote accordingly. Convincing others matters.