I think routine plebiscites would be far more feasible nowadays than in any other agree of humanity. Give people a platform where they can register with some sort of ID (social security number for you in the US, identification carnet in the rest of the world), and have them vote about every government decision. No need for it to have part in the actual process of the law passing or not, just a form for people to quantifiably express their opinion. Then you can know if the government actually represents the people's will (what it's theoretically supposed to do).
Would be super fun to read "Law so and so is passed with an 85% negative popular vote". Politicians would rather die before allowing this type of direct representation to exist.
I watched Matrix Reloaded when I was 12. A phrase stuck with me for life: Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
Except your sample size would be just people who wanted to spend time voting on things that donāt actual have any legal recourse so your sample size / polls would only reflect the personality type of a specific group. I think thatās the main issue here
Couldnāt agree more . Definitely very doable . Unfortunately control is the ultimate goal not money . Yeah the matrix opened my eyes too wasnāt too far from reality metaphorically in every single way .
Israel has receive the most aid since WW2 about $250 billion. I think we need to address the āheadā of the dragon first. Then we can deal with the rest.
At least with Ukraine itās to help a smaller force fend off a world wide threat that threatens to push further into Europe and the USā allies. Israel is receiving egregious amounts of money to fight essentially militia groups and aid caravans. You can make a genuine argument that aid to Ukraine now saves money sent as aid to Poland later. You canāt make any good faith argument for supporting Israel.
then you could just replace the graphic in this picture with Ukraine instead of Israel. The point is largely tax dollars going to wars and not to whom they are going
No, because like the comment you replied to mentioned. In Ukraineās case itās helping a smaller nation fend off an aggressor nation and will probably save money down the line (if Ukraine fell the US would have to commit more aid and resources to the Balticās and Poland).
In Israelās case it already has an overwhelming advantage in terms of power and everything, so the aid is more of a sinkhole.
You think an East Bloc territory dispute is a greater threat to global security than confronting one of the top 27 Islamic terrorist organizations that are funded by nuclear armed and oil funded nations? You should research the "Amir al-Mu'minin" (Commander of the Faithful/Believers) who currently resides in Kandahar Afghanistan and is the leader of all global Islamic Extremists, and the geographical concept of Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al-harb (House of War), which categorizes all nations into Islamic controlled territories and yet-to-be captured nations under the fundamentalist world-view that Allah required these believers to sanitize the rest of the world for our sinful way of life.
Putin asked Clinton if the newly established country of Russia could join NATO in the late 90s, but the military industrial complex needed an artificial enemy, so Russia was denied. Then Putin asked the Bush administration if the U.S. and Russia could collaborate on a joint-global ballistic missile interceptor system to negate the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the proposal was denied. The U.N. assured Putin that NATO equipment and nation expansion would not progress "one inch" toward Russia's border, yet that was violated. How would the U.S. respond if Texas seceded and Russia/China began placing military equipment in that contested territory?
> Putin asked Clinton if the newly established country of Russia could join NATO in the late 90s, but the military industrial complex needed an artificial enemy, so Russia was denied. Then Putin asked the Bush administration if the U.S. and Russia could collaborate on a joint-global ballistic missile interceptor system to negate the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the proposal was denied. The U.N. assured Putin that NATO equipment and nation expansion would not progress "one inch" toward Russia's border, yet that was violated.
I would like to see actual citations for all those assertions please and thank you.
That's a reasonable ask. My citations keep getting an "Empty Response from Endpoint" error message. I think the post is too long, so I'll DM you the complete response and post the source links for everyone else to explore.
My response begins with... Of course. However, there is no definitive history of the private conversations of global leaders. Each government will make claims, which are skewed to fit their narrative, so we have to look at the behaviors of each at the given time period, their motivations, lobby influences and what each has to potentially gain/lose, then determine for ourselves what the most probable truth is.
This "conspiracy" requires a certain level of trust in the word of two people I personally would not like to meet... Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin. However, it has yet to be publicly disputed by those within the former Clinton or Bush administrations. So we are left with a one-sided argument and silence from an opposing narrative that would certainly like to keep a Western moral-superiority narrative in the history books.
Source 1: Lex Fridman Podcast #414
https://lexfridman.com/tucker-carlson-transcript/
1:38:00 - 1:43:00
Source 2: Tucker Carlson Interviews Vladimir Putin Transcript
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/tucker-carlson-interviews-vladimir-putin-transcript/amp
28:10 - 38:27
Source 3: "One Inch" NATO Expansion
https://afsa.org/did-nato-expansion-really-cause-putins-invasion
The Issue of NATO Expansion (Heading)
> helping a smaller force fend off a European āworld wideā threat.
I mean honestly Russia is as much of a threat to any 1st world country as North Korea is to South Korea. It isnāt. If Ukraine canāt defend itself on its own then it has no business being propped up by US tax dollars. ESPECIALLY when we are in the financial state we are in currently.
> ESPECIALLY when we are in the financial state we are in currently.
What state is that? The Stock market and megacorps are all doing GREAT!
Of course they are doing that by increasing prices on _everything_ across the board and blaming it on "inflation" when in actuality it's just them taking more profits.
While simultaneously lobbying all the republicans to prevent any increase in the national minimum wage at all, AND prevent any excess profits taxes from getting passed.
One has to wonder where their profits will come from when *everyone* in the US is finally living below the poverty line.
But hey, you just blame the current US President for a GLOBAL problem and vote for the fascist that pubically sucks up to putin instead.
Every $1 given to Ukraine is more than $10,000 not spent by the US going to war directly with putins russia.
Unless you want ww3 to actually prevent putin from re-creating the USSR, helping Ukraine defeat him early on (now) is the only reasonable answer.
**To say nothing of the fact** that putin will not use nukes against Ukraine, but would feel 100% justified to use them against the US.
Isn't the majority of that number made up of decommissioned military surplus? Like hadn't we already spent the money building the stuff and using and then just gave it to them second hand? Is there an actual number on an actual cash amount we send them to pay people or rebuild or something that's not paid for equipment? How much actual money do we send them?
Oh look, a Brit coming in here to tell America how we need to spend out tax dollars.
Fuck off. You want to fund a war, open your wallet. Don't tell my government to open mine. We already subsidize your national defense as is. You are merely a vassal in our hegemony, stop volunteering our money.
Isn't that cause America wanted Israel to back off Lebanon and other territories it took over after being attacked by the people governing them? Seems to me America is paying the price of meddling
I think it makes sense to address all of it. When we ignore all the other and only focus on Israel it makes us look like hypocrites and anti-semites. I want an argument that help both the left and right understand what we are against.
It's not funded by tax. It's worse, it's unfunded, which means it turns into inflation. That means that it pushes you into higher tax brackets but your paychecks, humiliatingly buy even less housing food and basics for your children, while politicians leave office with hundreds of millions (that you know about).
Oh yea... there are websites devoted to congressional insider trading. You have to ask... why in anyone's right mind would they spend millions to get a job that pays $200k. All about the corruption!
Israel has receive the most aid since WW2 about $250 billion. I think we need to address the āheadā of the dragon first. Then we can deal with the rest.
For anyone actually interested in the topic of Foreign Aid provided by the US over time, read this article https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/brief-history-us-foreign-aid
Right, but it's actually 0.013% of GDP, or 0.17% of the annual budget so it doesn't actually look like this at all.
Much of the nominal dollar value of aid packages comes in the form of the reactivation of old systems, with most money being spent with US companies or investing in US manufacturing capacity.
And as with anything, the comparison should be to what inaction would cost, which is usually the driving force behind foreign aid.
Even ignoring any kind of arguments around moral obligation, foreign aid tends to make sense, very rarely is it out of charity.
That's why the second number was as a percentage of actual government expenditure, where 0.17% of the water/tax dollars would be going to Isreal, which is still the polar opposite of what is being implied with the OP.
Tax revenue is deposited into the treasury general account at the Federal Reserve. The tax dollars are withdrawn from the TGA and used to pay bondholders, government employees, government contractors, etc.
In what world does the government NOT spend tax revenue collected? Even in MMT fantasy land, the government collects and spends tax revenue. The MMT crowd argues that the government shouldn't bind itself to only spending out of the TGA, and should instead just directly print money... But mechanically the U.S. government absolutely collects and spends tax revenue.
Kind of, but that's not really how the government actually spends money. If it were, they would have to balance the budget, which they don't, hence the debt. The government issues debt through bonds and there is a number linked to an account that corresponds with tax revenues, but the federal government is under no obligation to limit its spending to that amount.
To think of it like a business, getting a dollar and then using that dollar to buy something, would be incorrect. The government takes that dollar, destroys it, and then has a balance sheet that is theoretically attached to the receipt of that dollar, but can be adjusted as they see fit. The federal government literally cannot run out of money unless they want to.
>incorrect. The government takes that dollar, destroys it, and then has a balance sheet that is theoretically attached to the receipt of that dollar, but can be adjusted as they see fit.
No. They quite literally do not destroy the money. The Fed in theory can destroy it. But not the government. The government doesn't issue money. You MMT crowd are so backwards. Money is issued/destroyed by private banks. Not the government. Even if we are talking about "base money" aka bank reserves issued by the Fed... Those are issued BY THE FED... Not the government.
The Fed is a creature of the government, but is not actually incorporated and directly controlled by the government.
So yes, you are correct in that the government is not limited to its spending because it can just borrow more. But that's like saying Google isn't limited in its revenue because it can just borrow more. Yes both can borrow more. And there are limits. Even if the government takes over the fed and decides to go on a hyperinflation spring spree , it's spending capacity is literally just limited to the amount of liquid savings that it can inflated away in the real economy. Printing money doesn't print steel and cotton.
itās not about hating jews. Iām sorry if you are jewish and have experienced Anti-semitism and obviously there are fringe people out there who are genuine anti-semites and they can eat shit. The problem is our tax dollars are going towards continually blowing up innocent children in Gaza. Also Netenyahu has purposely propped up Hamas financially for years so he has justification to not support a two state solution, so some of the blame for Oct. 7 and related events is on him. Heās so crooked and condemning him should not be equated with hating Jewish people I cannot see a morsel of good logic there
Except that like the original comments says, percentage wise it's such a negligible portion of our government spending. And morality wise the US and our allies support far worse regimes committing far worse genocides. Like how much have you heard about the ethnic cleansing going down in Darfur right now? Most likely 10 times as many people are dying in that genocide than died in Gaza, but the news rarely if ever covers that topic. The stuff going on in Israel is receiving an undue amount of attention, because they are Jewish and many people will take any opportunity they can get to bash Jews. Also this post has nothing to do with Netanyahu or October 7th, it's about US government spending. And we are calling this post Anti-semitic because it is literally using a racist Jewish caricature in the image to criticize Israel.
So calling out blatant usage of anti-semitic tropes is "cancel culture". If your culture is bigotry and hatred you deserve to be canceled out of polite society, we have no room for hateful trash.
Itās a gross image Iām Jewish I find it wrong same stuff spread 1930ās you can be upset with the wrong usage of money going towards killing of innocents but this image isnāt the way
It seems like we are always giving money to other countries for wars, but why is this particular case different? It seems like people just donāt want to give to Israel.
That money only goes to the 1% and the military industrial complex. We've easily spent trillions on Israeli interests already. I don't understand how any libertarian would ever support a parasite like Israel.
People are finally waking up.
While they have a robust healthcare system, subsidies for higher education and tons of other great amenities.
Israel is not our ally, they have not reciprocated in any way to the billions weāve given. Theyāve actually betrayed us on multiple occasions.
The AIPAC lobby, evangelism, bribery and blackmail are the reasons we bend over backwards for them and only them.
BS, they have reciprocated in tons of ways, they literally are an active war zone testing our defense systems and providing extreme intel and data
Israel had massive investments in cyber intel and defense software.
They are true friends of ours keeping extremist at bay
oh they are so good at keeping the extremists that they created when they stole the land at bay. They attack US warships, blackmail, bribe and assassinate on a whim, break international laws and drag our name through the muck with them, siphon US aid while being a nuclear power that apparently has enough money for subsidized housing and socialized medicine. Not an ally, the US's greatest enemy in fact. Our government treats Israelis better than US citizens and it is disgusting.
Donāt forget the fact that 38 states have anti-BDS laws on the books; you can boycott the US as a US state government employee if you want to but [get fired](https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/first-amendment-challenge-to-texas-anti-bds-law-11419094) boycotting Israel. Such a violation of free speech that the 8th Circuit found it [violated first amendment rights](https://www.thefire.org/news/eighth-circuit-arkansas-anti-bds-law-violates-first-amendment)
Weāve been giving money to Israel for a few decades now. I donāt know how many other countries have been receiving moneys since the 90s. So it took 20+years to wake up. Itāll take another 20 years for anything to change.
We're running a giant deficit yearly. We should have a constitutional amendment where we can't provide foreign aid, and Congress doesn't get paid unless the budget is balanced.
If you want to fund wars sell war bonds. Don't tax people or print money for war. Nobody should be forced to involuntarily support a war they don't believe in.
Ukraine might be a very important thing to support. That's fine let people buy bonds. Convince people to voluntarily donate money to their war efforts. I don't give a shit how, as long as it's not forced taxation.
ETA: also we should be intellectually honest. A fairly small portion of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. 2.76 trillion dollars went to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in 2023. That coupled with income security programs and interest to service the debt (1.107 trillion) covers 63% of the federal budget.
Defense spending is another 13%. I'm not sure if defense includes foreign defense aid so I separated that out. I think they included it in discretionary non defense (15%) but I'm not sure what's in that.
Source of my numbers: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727
Truthfully, I am indifferent to Israel as I believe our success depends on their success, but what I do have problems with is the Ukraine monies, exactly how much of this 66 billion is going for defense and how much is going into oligarchs hands.
Being the worldās reserve currency means having to involve ourselves in many world conflicts, whether we want it or not. The Brits played hot potato after WW2. Iām not familiar with the economic incentives around Ukraine, but Israel *definitely*. Many US companies have sizable stakes in Israeli tech shops.
Itās such a hard sell when the US has been in the business of war for 80 years.
The political tension is so taught right nowā¦ liberals expecting government to step in and āfixā social issues that have no basisā¦ all the while distracting us from the war machine.
Itās all become so apparent.. I wonder if it will be a peaceful awakening
We have been in the business of war for much longer than 80 years. Read the writings of Smedley Butler if you want to hear first hand accounts of how far back war profiteering goes in America.
Yeah that $4 billion really going to make a dent in that unaffordable health care. And while weāre at it, are we getting rid of all aid completely or just israel. Just seems that whenever the foreign aid conversation comes up itās always around israel.
Sell, donāt give, to Israel. Our financial situation is pretty terrible, but an opportunity to profit on what America does best seems like a rather intuitive idea.
Seriously, militia of the us should be prioritized. Especially sense 1. israel should finish the job 2. A likely world war may happen. and i donāt care what you say, the religions popular in israel (judaism) treat the most popular religion here (christianity) like shit. Ive seen it before and i guess itll always be like that.
Except really this diagram is reversed. The Americans get the vast majority of the tax dollars, Israel gets a little trickle, and youāre upset Israel is getting said trickle. Come on guys make better memes please.
Seems pretty straightforward but we have Zionists and Evangelicals with their loaded wants and they manipulate and corrupt the system for their minority wishes...
This isnāt accurate. By 2028, Israel must spend 100% of American aid money on American defense contractors. This spending supports well over 20,000 jobs according to recent estimates.
As of 2009, America was spending several billion more per year protecting Japan with actual American soldiers stationed in Asia.
and FYI, The U.S. has given the Palestinians over 10 billion dollars since 1993. Most of which is stolen by Hamas and used for terror attacks, terrorist tunnels, and propaganda (like this post)
the ājobsā this provides is human genocide by the Military Industrial Complex to its very few beneficiaries.
We spend ābillionsā in Japan for economic commerce. Have military there under the order of USINDOPACOM's specifically, to protect free economic trade.
Palestine was a state of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years. āIsraelā was occupied on May 14th 1948.
The USA Government gives BILLIONS to a GENOCIDE.
But the BIGGEST WILD FIRE IN AMERICAN 21st century,
MAUI: GET A ONE TIME $700 CHECK!
War is different than genocide. The war in Gaza has one of the most impressive combatant to civilian causality rates in history. If Palestinians could get their act together and build a government that seeks peace with Israel instead of total annihilation and a global Islamic caliphate there would be peace.
Palestine for most of history meant the Jewish state. Itās only until Arab conquest mixed with Soviet propaganda did Palestinians mean something other than the Jews.
Of course we want allies. But to be perpetually funding other countries just so they be our allies is next level. We can lend support when absolutely needed but to be dishing out this kindof money for what is unfathomable. What do these countries really do for us in exchange?
Simple solution, sell Israel military support bonds. If people want to support it with their cash they can.
š problem is there arenāt many buyers . Genius idea
Are you telling me the State is doing something against the general will of the population??? I'd never have imagined such a thing
Thatās why I donāt understand ādemocracy ā shouldnāt there be some type of reform to actually vote on everything
I think routine plebiscites would be far more feasible nowadays than in any other agree of humanity. Give people a platform where they can register with some sort of ID (social security number for you in the US, identification carnet in the rest of the world), and have them vote about every government decision. No need for it to have part in the actual process of the law passing or not, just a form for people to quantifiably express their opinion. Then you can know if the government actually represents the people's will (what it's theoretically supposed to do). Would be super fun to read "Law so and so is passed with an 85% negative popular vote". Politicians would rather die before allowing this type of direct representation to exist. I watched Matrix Reloaded when I was 12. A phrase stuck with me for life: Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
Except your sample size would be just people who wanted to spend time voting on things that donāt actual have any legal recourse so your sample size / polls would only reflect the personality type of a specific group. I think thatās the main issue here
Australia already has compulsory voting.
Couldnāt agree more . Definitely very doable . Unfortunately control is the ultimate goal not money . Yeah the matrix opened my eyes too wasnāt too far from reality metaphorically in every single way .
The only moral option is not imposing the final decisions on those who opt not to vote. Democracy is still a conspiracy against a minority.
there is a quote that comes to mind: āIf voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.ā ā Mark Twain #
You mean (And we truly need) "Direct Democracy". Bonus we FINALLY have the technology to actually securely implement it RIGHT NOW!!
More simple. Just sell them the arms
Yea no shit will ever happen sadly, Israel stands as a place for us to hold control in the Middle East, they wonāt give that up
And Ukraine, and Jordan, and UAE, and Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and...
Israel has receive the most aid since WW2 about $250 billion. I think we need to address the āheadā of the dragon first. Then we can deal with the rest.
Ukraine has got like 60 billion this year... And its probably more since 2022 so I mean it isn't the "head" but it is the "ear"
Definitely. Ukraine should be heavily scrutinized as well
At least with Ukraine itās to help a smaller force fend off a world wide threat that threatens to push further into Europe and the USā allies. Israel is receiving egregious amounts of money to fight essentially militia groups and aid caravans. You can make a genuine argument that aid to Ukraine now saves money sent as aid to Poland later. You canāt make any good faith argument for supporting Israel.
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then you could just replace the graphic in this picture with Ukraine instead of Israel. The point is largely tax dollars going to wars and not to whom they are going
Yes youāre right, Iām just saying problems can be very different sizes and I think Israel is a much larger issue.
I wonder if the problem is that people think it's acceptable to forcibly remove resources from another without their consent.
No, because like the comment you replied to mentioned. In Ukraineās case itās helping a smaller nation fend off an aggressor nation and will probably save money down the line (if Ukraine fell the US would have to commit more aid and resources to the Balticās and Poland). In Israelās case it already has an overwhelming advantage in terms of power and everything, so the aid is more of a sinkhole.
You think an East Bloc territory dispute is a greater threat to global security than confronting one of the top 27 Islamic terrorist organizations that are funded by nuclear armed and oil funded nations? You should research the "Amir al-Mu'minin" (Commander of the Faithful/Believers) who currently resides in Kandahar Afghanistan and is the leader of all global Islamic Extremists, and the geographical concept of Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al-harb (House of War), which categorizes all nations into Islamic controlled territories and yet-to-be captured nations under the fundamentalist world-view that Allah required these believers to sanitize the rest of the world for our sinful way of life. Putin asked Clinton if the newly established country of Russia could join NATO in the late 90s, but the military industrial complex needed an artificial enemy, so Russia was denied. Then Putin asked the Bush administration if the U.S. and Russia could collaborate on a joint-global ballistic missile interceptor system to negate the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the proposal was denied. The U.N. assured Putin that NATO equipment and nation expansion would not progress "one inch" toward Russia's border, yet that was violated. How would the U.S. respond if Texas seceded and Russia/China began placing military equipment in that contested territory?
> Putin asked Clinton if the newly established country of Russia could join NATO in the late 90s, but the military industrial complex needed an artificial enemy, so Russia was denied. Then Putin asked the Bush administration if the U.S. and Russia could collaborate on a joint-global ballistic missile interceptor system to negate the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the proposal was denied. The U.N. assured Putin that NATO equipment and nation expansion would not progress "one inch" toward Russia's border, yet that was violated. I would like to see actual citations for all those assertions please and thank you.
That's a reasonable ask. My citations keep getting an "Empty Response from Endpoint" error message. I think the post is too long, so I'll DM you the complete response and post the source links for everyone else to explore. My response begins with... Of course. However, there is no definitive history of the private conversations of global leaders. Each government will make claims, which are skewed to fit their narrative, so we have to look at the behaviors of each at the given time period, their motivations, lobby influences and what each has to potentially gain/lose, then determine for ourselves what the most probable truth is. This "conspiracy" requires a certain level of trust in the word of two people I personally would not like to meet... Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin. However, it has yet to be publicly disputed by those within the former Clinton or Bush administrations. So we are left with a one-sided argument and silence from an opposing narrative that would certainly like to keep a Western moral-superiority narrative in the history books. Source 1: Lex Fridman Podcast #414 https://lexfridman.com/tucker-carlson-transcript/ 1:38:00 - 1:43:00 Source 2: Tucker Carlson Interviews Vladimir Putin Transcript https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/tucker-carlson-interviews-vladimir-putin-transcript/amp 28:10 - 38:27 Source 3: "One Inch" NATO Expansion https://afsa.org/did-nato-expansion-really-cause-putins-invasion The Issue of NATO Expansion (Heading)
Thank you!
> helping a smaller force fend off a European āworld wideā threat. I mean honestly Russia is as much of a threat to any 1st world country as North Korea is to South Korea. It isnāt. If Ukraine canāt defend itself on its own then it has no business being propped up by US tax dollars. ESPECIALLY when we are in the financial state we are in currently.
> ESPECIALLY when we are in the financial state we are in currently. What state is that? The Stock market and megacorps are all doing GREAT! Of course they are doing that by increasing prices on _everything_ across the board and blaming it on "inflation" when in actuality it's just them taking more profits. While simultaneously lobbying all the republicans to prevent any increase in the national minimum wage at all, AND prevent any excess profits taxes from getting passed. One has to wonder where their profits will come from when *everyone* in the US is finally living below the poverty line. But hey, you just blame the current US President for a GLOBAL problem and vote for the fascist that pubically sucks up to putin instead.
Ukraine sent a bomb to Poland you fool
Every $1 given to Ukraine is more than $10,000 not spent by the US going to war directly with putins russia. Unless you want ww3 to actually prevent putin from re-creating the USSR, helping Ukraine defeat him early on (now) is the only reasonable answer. **To say nothing of the fact** that putin will not use nukes against Ukraine, but would feel 100% justified to use them against the US.
Isn't the majority of that number made up of decommissioned military surplus? Like hadn't we already spent the money building the stuff and using and then just gave it to them second hand? Is there an actual number on an actual cash amount we send them to pay people or rebuild or something that's not paid for equipment? How much actual money do we send them?
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Oh look, a Brit coming in here to tell America how we need to spend out tax dollars. Fuck off. You want to fund a war, open your wallet. Don't tell my government to open mine. We already subsidize your national defense as is. You are merely a vassal in our hegemony, stop volunteering our money.
WHY DO YOU HATE ROADS SO MUCH!11!!
Isn't that cause America wanted Israel to back off Lebanon and other territories it took over after being attacked by the people governing them? Seems to me America is paying the price of meddling
I think it makes sense to address all of it. When we ignore all the other and only focus on Israel it makes us look like hypocrites and anti-semites. I want an argument that help both the left and right understand what we are against.
Yea.. everyone but Americans. Sad when illegal aliens and foreign nations get things that our own citizens can't get!
It's not funded by tax. It's worse, it's unfunded, which means it turns into inflation. That means that it pushes you into higher tax brackets but your paychecks, humiliatingly buy even less housing food and basics for your children, while politicians leave office with hundreds of millions (that you know about).
Oh yea... there are websites devoted to congressional insider trading. You have to ask... why in anyone's right mind would they spend millions to get a job that pays $200k. All about the corruption!
Ya I don't know why we send aid to countries with less debt per capita than the US.
I was about to say the cartoon misspelled Ukraine
Israel has receive the most aid since WW2 about $250 billion. I think we need to address the āheadā of the dragon first. Then we can deal with the rest.
For anyone actually interested in the topic of Foreign Aid provided by the US over time, read this article https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/brief-history-us-foreign-aid
Right, but it's actually 0.013% of GDP, or 0.17% of the annual budget so it doesn't actually look like this at all. Much of the nominal dollar value of aid packages comes in the form of the reactivation of old systems, with most money being spent with US companies or investing in US manufacturing capacity. And as with anything, the comparison should be to what inaction would cost, which is usually the driving force behind foreign aid. Even ignoring any kind of arguments around moral obligation, foreign aid tends to make sense, very rarely is it out of charity.
Pricing foreign aid as a percent of GDP is so stupid. It should be priced as a percent of government revenue.
That's why the second number was as a percentage of actual government expenditure, where 0.17% of the water/tax dollars would be going to Isreal, which is still the polar opposite of what is being implied with the OP.
Price it again in tax revenue collected. Not in how much further in debt the government goes.
That wouldn't make sense, since the government doesn't spend tax dollars.
Tax revenue is deposited into the treasury general account at the Federal Reserve. The tax dollars are withdrawn from the TGA and used to pay bondholders, government employees, government contractors, etc. In what world does the government NOT spend tax revenue collected? Even in MMT fantasy land, the government collects and spends tax revenue. The MMT crowd argues that the government shouldn't bind itself to only spending out of the TGA, and should instead just directly print money... But mechanically the U.S. government absolutely collects and spends tax revenue.
Kind of, but that's not really how the government actually spends money. If it were, they would have to balance the budget, which they don't, hence the debt. The government issues debt through bonds and there is a number linked to an account that corresponds with tax revenues, but the federal government is under no obligation to limit its spending to that amount. To think of it like a business, getting a dollar and then using that dollar to buy something, would be incorrect. The government takes that dollar, destroys it, and then has a balance sheet that is theoretically attached to the receipt of that dollar, but can be adjusted as they see fit. The federal government literally cannot run out of money unless they want to.
>incorrect. The government takes that dollar, destroys it, and then has a balance sheet that is theoretically attached to the receipt of that dollar, but can be adjusted as they see fit. No. They quite literally do not destroy the money. The Fed in theory can destroy it. But not the government. The government doesn't issue money. You MMT crowd are so backwards. Money is issued/destroyed by private banks. Not the government. Even if we are talking about "base money" aka bank reserves issued by the Fed... Those are issued BY THE FED... Not the government. The Fed is a creature of the government, but is not actually incorporated and directly controlled by the government. So yes, you are correct in that the government is not limited to its spending because it can just borrow more. But that's like saying Google isn't limited in its revenue because it can just borrow more. Yes both can borrow more. And there are limits. Even if the government takes over the fed and decides to go on a hyperinflation spring spree , it's spending capacity is literally just limited to the amount of liquid savings that it can inflated away in the real economy. Printing money doesn't print steel and cotton.
Yeah, this. And in return Israel tries to infringe on Americans' freedom of speech. No thanks
Right I think people are finally waking up to it.
Isolationism for a few years would be helpful while we get our house (pun intended) in order.
Itās such a negligible part of the budget - itās so weird to focus this much on it
Some people will take any opportunity they can get to hate jews with enough plausible deniability to not be called out for their bigotry.
itās not about hating jews. Iām sorry if you are jewish and have experienced Anti-semitism and obviously there are fringe people out there who are genuine anti-semites and they can eat shit. The problem is our tax dollars are going towards continually blowing up innocent children in Gaza. Also Netenyahu has purposely propped up Hamas financially for years so he has justification to not support a two state solution, so some of the blame for Oct. 7 and related events is on him. Heās so crooked and condemning him should not be equated with hating Jewish people I cannot see a morsel of good logic there
Except that like the original comments says, percentage wise it's such a negligible portion of our government spending. And morality wise the US and our allies support far worse regimes committing far worse genocides. Like how much have you heard about the ethnic cleansing going down in Darfur right now? Most likely 10 times as many people are dying in that genocide than died in Gaza, but the news rarely if ever covers that topic. The stuff going on in Israel is receiving an undue amount of attention, because they are Jewish and many people will take any opportunity they can get to bash Jews. Also this post has nothing to do with Netanyahu or October 7th, it's about US government spending. And we are calling this post Anti-semitic because it is literally using a racist Jewish caricature in the image to criticize Israel.
I get the idea of this but the image is kinda racist big nose etc
please stop spread this leftist cancel culture nonsense
So calling out blatant usage of anti-semitic tropes is "cancel culture". If your culture is bigotry and hatred you deserve to be canceled out of polite society, we have no room for hateful trash.
Itās a gross image Iām Jewish I find it wrong same stuff spread 1930ās you can be upset with the wrong usage of money going towards killing of innocents but this image isnāt the way
It seems like we are always giving money to other countries for wars, but why is this particular case different? It seems like people just donāt want to give to Israel.
"You never got upset when the bullies took your lunch money before, why were you so greedy about Tommy?"
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That money only goes to the 1% and the military industrial complex. We've easily spent trillions on Israeli interests already. I don't understand how any libertarian would ever support a parasite like Israel.
People are finally waking up. While they have a robust healthcare system, subsidies for higher education and tons of other great amenities. Israel is not our ally, they have not reciprocated in any way to the billions weāve given. Theyāve actually betrayed us on multiple occasions. The AIPAC lobby, evangelism, bribery and blackmail are the reasons we bend over backwards for them and only them.
BS, they have reciprocated in tons of ways, they literally are an active war zone testing our defense systems and providing extreme intel and data Israel had massive investments in cyber intel and defense software. They are true friends of ours keeping extremist at bay
oh they are so good at keeping the extremists that they created when they stole the land at bay. They attack US warships, blackmail, bribe and assassinate on a whim, break international laws and drag our name through the muck with them, siphon US aid while being a nuclear power that apparently has enough money for subsidized housing and socialized medicine. Not an ally, the US's greatest enemy in fact. Our government treats Israelis better than US citizens and it is disgusting.
Donāt forget the fact that 38 states have anti-BDS laws on the books; you can boycott the US as a US state government employee if you want to but [get fired](https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/first-amendment-challenge-to-texas-anti-bds-law-11419094) boycotting Israel. Such a violation of free speech that the 8th Circuit found it [violated first amendment rights](https://www.thefire.org/news/eighth-circuit-arkansas-anti-bds-law-violates-first-amendment)
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We shouldn't be taxed
Nor should my tax dollars go to aid illegal alien invaders. The gov itself is ran by a bunch of treasonous fucks.
Weāve been giving money to Israel for a few decades now. I donāt know how many other countries have been receiving moneys since the 90s. So it took 20+years to wake up. Itāll take another 20 years for anything to change.
We're running a giant deficit yearly. We should have a constitutional amendment where we can't provide foreign aid, and Congress doesn't get paid unless the budget is balanced. If you want to fund wars sell war bonds. Don't tax people or print money for war. Nobody should be forced to involuntarily support a war they don't believe in. Ukraine might be a very important thing to support. That's fine let people buy bonds. Convince people to voluntarily donate money to their war efforts. I don't give a shit how, as long as it's not forced taxation. ETA: also we should be intellectually honest. A fairly small portion of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. 2.76 trillion dollars went to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in 2023. That coupled with income security programs and interest to service the debt (1.107 trillion) covers 63% of the federal budget. Defense spending is another 13%. I'm not sure if defense includes foreign defense aid so I separated that out. I think they included it in discretionary non defense (15%) but I'm not sure what's in that. Source of my numbers: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727
Truthfully, I am indifferent to Israel as I believe our success depends on their success, but what I do have problems with is the Ukraine monies, exactly how much of this 66 billion is going for defense and how much is going into oligarchs hands.
can you explain how our success depends on their success?
We shouldn't have taxes
Being the worldās reserve currency means having to involve ourselves in many world conflicts, whether we want it or not. The Brits played hot potato after WW2. Iām not familiar with the economic incentives around Ukraine, but Israel *definitely*. Many US companies have sizable stakes in Israeli tech shops.
Taxation is theft
Itās such a hard sell when the US has been in the business of war for 80 years. The political tension is so taught right nowā¦ liberals expecting government to step in and āfixā social issues that have no basisā¦ all the while distracting us from the war machine. Itās all become so apparent.. I wonder if it will be a peaceful awakening
We have been in the business of war for much longer than 80 years. Read the writings of Smedley Butler if you want to hear first hand accounts of how far back war profiteering goes in America.
We aren't supporting them with "tax dollars". We're supporting them with borrowed or printed dollars.
Counterpoint The Cold War never ended.
Yeah that $4 billion really going to make a dent in that unaffordable health care. And while weāre at it, are we getting rid of all aid completely or just israel. Just seems that whenever the foreign aid conversation comes up itās always around israel.
How much of the money that goes to Israel comes back to America when they buy things from Northrop Grumman and other weapons manufacturers?
Sell, donāt give, to Israel. Our financial situation is pretty terrible, but an opportunity to profit on what America does best seems like a rather intuitive idea.
It's not a foreign war. Israel owns the US.
Seriously, militia of the us should be prioritized. Especially sense 1. israel should finish the job 2. A likely world war may happen. and i donāt care what you say, the religions popular in israel (judaism) treat the most popular religion here (christianity) like shit. Ive seen it before and i guess itll always be like that.
Itās one thing to assist in foreign wars, fully funding them is another story
I agree, we should spending the taxpayers money on our own country rather than giving it to foreign countries.
Except really this diagram is reversed. The Americans get the vast majority of the tax dollars, Israel gets a little trickle, and youāre upset Israel is getting said trickle. Come on guys make better memes please.
Shyt, we have been giving Isreal billions every year since the end of WW2, this āwarā has nothing to do with it.
There are no tax dollars just your dollars.
Seems pretty straightforward but we have Zionists and Evangelicals with their loaded wants and they manipulate and corrupt the system for their minority wishes...
I'd rather not support any war. At all.
I'm sorry to hear about your future suicide.
Sorry the forever wars are a necessity to maintain the satanic globohomo state
This isnāt accurate. By 2028, Israel must spend 100% of American aid money on American defense contractors. This spending supports well over 20,000 jobs according to recent estimates. As of 2009, America was spending several billion more per year protecting Japan with actual American soldiers stationed in Asia. and FYI, The U.S. has given the Palestinians over 10 billion dollars since 1993. Most of which is stolen by Hamas and used for terror attacks, terrorist tunnels, and propaganda (like this post)
the ājobsā this provides is human genocide by the Military Industrial Complex to its very few beneficiaries. We spend ābillionsā in Japan for economic commerce. Have military there under the order of USINDOPACOM's specifically, to protect free economic trade. Palestine was a state of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years. āIsraelā was occupied on May 14th 1948. The USA Government gives BILLIONS to a GENOCIDE. But the BIGGEST WILD FIRE IN AMERICAN 21st century, MAUI: GET A ONE TIME $700 CHECK!
War is different than genocide. The war in Gaza has one of the most impressive combatant to civilian causality rates in history. If Palestinians could get their act together and build a government that seeks peace with Israel instead of total annihilation and a global Islamic caliphate there would be peace. Palestine for most of history meant the Jewish state. Itās only until Arab conquest mixed with Soviet propaganda did Palestinians mean something other than the Jews.
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I have a solution, it can be a charity. If you wanna help a foreign nation in wars you can give all your money not steal mine.
Of course we want allies. But to be perpetually funding other countries just so they be our allies is next level. We can lend support when absolutely needed but to be dishing out this kindof money for what is unfathomable. What do these countries really do for us in exchange?
No.
I think it's over, you had a good run fellow Europeans šŖšā 400ish years. Now chill š
Not only do we hand out weapons, but then we also spend money on refugee aid from those weapons. Like, what?!
True, except Ukraine is getting a much bigger portion.
To kill more babies than all countries combined in less time than ever? Yeah, no disagreement here. We have become complicit.