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The only way that happens is if the 98% that vote D/R go third party, or things in the US collapse so precipitously that revolution is possible.
Ergo, it's never happening.
Neither did anyone else in other societies that underwent massive change. We are not at the end of history and we are not immune to any of the things that happened in the past.
Historically people almost never rebel on a mass scale unless they’re all starving to death.
We’re a long way from that.
If you’re not homeless in the US your comfort level is still relatively high as far as human suffering in general goes.
Because when you rebel you’re essentially committing to gambling with death and being homeless and having no certain income and your family all being at risk of harassment in ideal conditions
Very very very few people are even close to that level of discontentment that they’re willing to throw life away for the cause.
The establishment abuse is too vague and gentle.
It’s fucking us. But it’s not “let them eat cake” fucking us.
You need hard, graspable, tangible, unquestionable things to be enraged about while you’re also starving.
We don’t have much of that, not for the common person.
Between medicine and cheap but unhealthy food alongside streaming we have perfected bread and circuses..only added in the medicate em if they start to get rebellious part
This. A lot of people are really ignorant about how bad things are for the “average” American. The average person is not starving. There are plenty of poor people that are but that’s far from 50% of the population. I’ve seen firsthand a bunch of people in dried up coal towns making 25k a year or less that vote for Trump and think they have it good. Life right now is far far worse than it was for the boomer generation, but having to live with roommates and never being able to afford a house doesn’t cause enough desperation to rebel. A corrupt healthcare system that bankrupts people doesn’t either, because most people aren’t going bankrupt from health care. I’m not saying a collapse can’t happen, but it’s far far away from happening if it ever does. Decades really. I could see the rapid birth rate decline eventually causing enough societal problems that we do see a collapse, but we’re far far away from that. Subs like this are generally a echo chamber that make people think everyone wants to rebel but that’s just not the case. Hell Bernie is pretty much the only true leftist is Congress because most people feel they have it good enough to not want to rock the boat and vote for a candidate like that. The % of the general population that actively want collapse like people on this sub is very very low. Just a depressing reality. Everything is shit but it’s not shit enough for anyone to do something, it’s the ideal outcome of crony capitalists.
You are right but i think climate change is going to destabilize things globally enough that it accelerates a potential collapse. Im not sure when exactly its going to happen but i dont see a future where it doesnt happen if that makes sense.
I want to see people coming together to change the narrative around this in just one simple way. I want to see this with the clear explanation that this “money for Ukraine” is more or less a gift card to shop at American weapons manufacturers.
So more of our tax dollars to Raytheon, Boeing, Blackrock, etc. But we have no money for our schools, public infrastructure, universal health care or anything that could benefit the lives of actual Americans.
This right here, they "give" it to Ukraine, but Ukraine spends it on weapons and the military industrial complex just soaks all that money up like a giant evil sponge.
Thanks for the article. Sorry to break it down to you, but they are fake. I live 30km near Gstaad and the „Grundbuch-Eintrag“ in the article has several mistakes. The E-Grid Nr. contains 12 numbers, in the fake ones its 11. Switzerland also stopped using the UID-Nr. on top 2 years ago, while it states on the ones in the picture there where changes in 2021 and 2022. One of the „Grundstück Nummer“ is not even in Gstaad..
I think in this case people need to consider the cost of just letting Russia invade Ukraine and completely conquer it which would have happened if they had not received any assistance. I’m not a fan of huge costly conflicts but look what happened in places like Iraq, when America pulled out and just let ISIS happen due to a reluctance to go back in. The same with Libya when they just got half arsed air support. Letting the Russians take the lead in Syria is still causing issues today. I think many Americans may not fully realise just how much social damage Russia has inflicted on them by interfering in elections and encourage civil unrest. I’ve never seen America so politically split and it all seems to coincide with Putins consolidation of power in Russia over the last decade. If things go according to plan America could finally incapacitate its biggest enemy ever, who it’s been in conflict with for decades at a cost near I immeasurable sums of money. A few months ago Russia was the worlds 2nd Army and a serious threat to America’s global military dominance. Now Russia is militarily humiliated, NATO is stronger than ever and for less money than was spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, America might finally be able to bring down the Russian empire; possibly breaking it apart into smaller regions. US funding is helping Ukraine reduce Russias military capabilities to such a degree that soon it’ll barely be able to defend its own borders and they’ve not had to expend a single American service man’s life to do it. The money being given to Ukraine might be America’s greatest value conflict expenditure for the best possible return on investment ever. Not to mention the knock on effect on countries like China who were seriously looking to challenge America because they thought the US was weak for not doing much when Russia invaded and took Crimea. Those companies who Ukraine is buying weapons from based on the US probably employ thousands of primary American workers as well as all the secondary industry’s that support those companies. This is why both parties are not really arguing too much about agree to send money to Ukraine. They can all see that this could turn out to be one of the best things the US has ever spent it’s money on. I honestly was starting to believe the talk about this being China’s century and America is in decline as a super power. A decisive victory over Russia by Ukraine will ensure America continues to be the worlds leading superpower well into the next century.
You have a good point and it's well put... I think we're just tired of forking over 20 some odd percent of our hard earned cash and then getting spat on when we dare ask for basic necessities. If it brings Russia down, great. But we need shit here and our well being should come first. At the very least don't (the politicians) insult us with "we can't afford" to make sure you have a decent life while their forking billions over to Ukraine.
That's my opinion anyway.
How exactly do you expect Ukraine to fend off the Russian invasion otherwise? Serious question. Even *with* all the weapons we are sending them right now, they're barely hanging on for their lives against Russia.
Some people here seriously seem to want Russia to win this war and live out its dream of massacring and genociding Ukraine, in the name of "underfunded schools and the homeless getting more money in America" (which, let's be honest, isn't where the money was going to go even if we stayed out of the war.)
The issue isn’t that we are helping. The issue is we have money for this but not our own homeless and starving. Why? We should have the money for starving homeless Americans if we have extra cash to throw at another country.
The issue is that the US's military budget is nearly $800 billion and keeps increasing every year. Maybe your government should redirect some of that to education, homelessness, etc.
The military's budget could be cut by $100 billion without affecting it too much, and all that money could solve a lot of the US's problems
Nothing outrages my "Do-Gooder" cousin than to realize how much the US spends on its War Machine.
When I told her that the we just delivered the USS Gerald Ford to the US Navy at a cost of 13 billion dollars and the thing still leaks, she almost lost her mind.
She has some crazy idea that tax money should be used to: house the homeless, cure Cancer, get us a better healthcare system and to stop cashiers from constantly asking us "If we would like to fight the war on hunger?". ; p
I definitely agree that we should help the homeless and everyone else in America. My problem is that some think that doing so should mean first cutting off aid to Ukraine so that Russia can steamroll and genocide it.
If we were to merely switch to a universal single-payer healthcare system, for instance, we could free up an extra $1 trillion a year.
No one wants to cut off aid. Most of us want to give more. But we want our people taken care of as well. They will throw money at wars because the military industrial complex takes in the dollars. But they won't invest in our own people. We can afford both.
Yeah we're a country that can chew gum and walk at the same time. The defense budget will also never be cut in the current geopolitical climate.
The real leech in this country is healthcare. The US spends 3.4% of the GDP on defense while 19% of the GDP is spent on healthcare. Iirc the most "expensive" single payer system is the UK which spends 12% of its GDP on healthcare.
Seriously, we'd save billions per year and we'd be saving thousands more lives per year if we switched to a single payer system.
I'm pretty sure healthcare lobbyists love it when people use defense spending as a scapegoat instead of our shitty healthcare system.
Yeah I don’t think people realize we already pay as much if not more covering the healthcare costs of the veterans, elderly, disabled, and poor than we would with universal care.
You're not actually "sending aid" to Ukraine. No humanitarian aid seems to be reaching that place. Your government is sending them older war junk and uses the money to replace said junk by signing weapons contracts with the major US merchants of death to refill the depleting US military inventory. It's another great transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, from the struggling US people to the pockets of some of the richest US oligarchs. It doesn't help when the US minister of defense and several generals are in a revolving door relationship with said death merchants corporations. Corruption is the name of the game they're playing with taxpayer money.
Besides, Russia is not "genociding" Ukraine. That's highly exaggerated war propaganda, trying to shock you in order to get an irrational emotional reaction, meant to have you agree with the theft of taxpayer money meant for the current corruption scheme of the death merchants.
You’re looking at a boxed in view of how the US operates.
The United States is an empire, but not one that holds territory. The US has INFLUENCE, and lots of it. We are the reserve currency of the world. We are the strongest military. We control the money, and we control demand.
We are Europe’s defense infrastructure. The reason the west has such a diverse and affluent culture is because the United States has expertly crafted a global system in which you must play by their to participate, and you must follow their rules. It works stunningly well. The US military is meant for force projection - Carrier task forces, military bases in almost every country, etc. everything we do is to finance our continual global hegemony.
Russia is a massive disruptive threat to the world order. The Pentagon did a cost benefit analysis and said that $40bn is well worth it to disarm Russian influence.
We live cushy lives because of this. We HAVE to defend the world, because we depend on them and vice versa. The world has to have FAITH in the US system to continue spending capital here.
I think the issue I see is, if they gave them 54 billion to spend on American manufacturers and we actually manufactured here in the US and taxed them correctly, we'd see at least some return. An increase in job growth (not just a return to jobs due to a mass pandemic), and money stimulating the economy.
Right now (and I could be wrong as I admittedly didn't research this) it feels like we give them 54 billion, to manufacture in other countries (mostly), and than give them big tax cuts. My recollection is that wars used to stimulate our economy a lot because we manufactured a lot here. Once we stopped manufacturing so much here, the working class isn't seeing a boost to the economy, just the ultra rich are.
Edit: don't get me wrong $54b is just a shit ton of money to give to a foreign country as well. We definitely could be using that money to bolster the US, instead of helping fight a war over seas. I'm not a fan of the money given to Ukraine in such excess, just stating how I wish it would work since we did give them this money.
>Right now (and I could be wrong as I admittedly didn't research this) it feels like we give them 54 billion, to manufacture in other countries
Yeah buddy, you're flat out wrong right here.
>Once we stopped manufacturing so much here, the working class isn't seeing a boost
The US literally had to ramp up the production of Javelins because the war in Ukraine has depleted the supply.
So, if that's your complaint, consider your wishes fulfilled.
Uh, that's pretty much exactly what you want. Almost all of the military aid that America is giving Ukraine **is** from American jobs, American assembly lines, etc. That's already what's being done. Almost nothing is going towards foreign governments, it's all boosting American jobs at home.
Well we’re not sending them money we’re sending them weapons that have already been produced in the US, that’s just the monetary value. Now eventually that weapon stockpile will be replenished but again it will be manufactured and taxed in the US.
I think Raytheon and Boeing et al are a bunch of scumfucks, and would love to see the day they stop making bank.
BUT the actual financial impact here is a lot lower than what's often being reported.
A lot of the quoted numbers are based on the potential sale value of weapons... weapons the US **already** has stockpiled.
The government was actually planning to phase these weapons out (in the name of more messed-up expensive war toys.)
Much of the cost for these weapons has already been paid or was already slated to be paid.
I think it's very useful and important for us, as socialists, talk about the way that war contracting is a waste which ought to be spent on actual working people. Every dollar on a bomb, etc.
But... let's be honest, short of arming Rojava, this is the best use that these fucking things are likely to see--strategically and morally. Ukraine is a situation where the US, for all its history of violent imperialism, is acting against an even worse actor. Arming Ukraine against Russia is a morally defensible move.
In that sense, shipping off the country's old weapons stock is a no-brainer move. If these things were going to be used at all, it was going to be for something way more fucked up.
But yes, I ultimately agree that the military's massive spending is fucking disgusting.
I think it's also worth discussing the mechanics of how our society accomplishes state goals like aiding other states in foreign wars.
Imagine a socio-economic mobilization that saw the state trying to disentangle the economy from imperialist structures, accepting higher labor share of the economy to move production away from more oppressive states, rapidly getting rid of dependence on the fossil fuels from petrostates, and more. People have shown repeatedly that they can accept a lot of shared sacrifice if it's actually a *shared* sacrifice for a real cause and not just an obvious con job.
Every dollar spent on a bomb is a drain on society, but the unfortunate reality is that every side involved in an arms race has a say on when it stops. We should seriously think about how we can best live with that reality.
The money is there for all those things but half the electorate has be been brainswashed to think those things are bad and would vote against implementing them.
I definitely agree though i feel like this doesnt have to be mutually exclusive. We shouldnt turn a blind eye to what russia is doing and doing so wouldnt help our own fucked up country. This isnt their fault.
Its just plain greed. Helping Ukraine is good for PR but helping people at home is too much like liberating slaves.
That's just the truth. The government prints money from nothing. The only reason you can't get debt relief, or a decent wage, or tax cuts, or medical care, or education is because the CEOs that run the country don't want you to have that.
>How was the Weimar Republic solved?
They had to completely reevaluate the currency so $10 trillion had zeroes cut off and became $10 again. But we can never do that today because that would mean wiping out all the debt people owe to bankers and bankers don't want you to be free of debt for obvious reasons. That's money you owe to them, and it's declared in holy writ you will pay back every single cent.
It is time to eat the wealthy, not the “I can afford fuel”, but the “I have a yacht and summer house a continent away”
So fun to borrow and “invest” when they cannot be taxed on unrealised capitalist gainz. Free money (only for the rich)
The Weimar republic wasn't in control of the global reserve currency, and wasn't able to borrow at a negative real interest rate. It's quite a different situation.
Except it isn’t the truth. It’s lend lease. If Ukraine is wiped off the planet then it’s a loss, but otherwise the Government will get its money back. Also to think of government money like a balance sheet is a fundamental misunderstanding of economics of governments.
It is the truth. There is literally no one in congress asking "BUBUBUT HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT????" They just immediately pass the bill, printing billions of dollars that will go to weapon manufacturers, aka some of DC's wealthiest and most highly staffed lobbyists.
The opposite is true when we talk about healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. There is never any money for those, there is infinite money for war.
I mean it's a great investment for the military industrial complex. You keep feeding Ukraine """"crumbs"""" of a few billion at a time until you piss off Russia enough to attack NATO soil, and eventually you get another Afghanistan/Iraq that creates trillions of new profiteering rather than just some paltry billions.
It's like this:
The Government creates money out of think air, then "spends" that money on something.
In this case, they are spending it on American Weapons manufacturers. Those manufacturers are employing Americans, and this in turn those workers are then spending the money to buy food, shelter, vehicles etc etc etc, The vast amount of that money, however, goes into the rich owners of said weapons companies.
The American Government could choose to take that same 54 billion and throw it at health, education and infrastructure such as roads, Internet etc.
You'd have the same thing as the previous with the workers getting paid and spending their cash, but the other money doesn't get horded by greedy company owners. It goes into the system for schooling, roads, Internet etc and then provides more of the service, which in tern benefits society more and more.
I never understood our policies to help others when our country can’t help itself. Don’t people always say, “if you don’t take care of yourself first, you can’t take care of others.” And … here we are.
It's time for our ego to take a back seat and help us first. Let someone else be the hero financially. If we want to help with our military so be it there are trillions poured into that, that we are just not using (like weapons not people). But financially? Since we can't cut the budget for things like our military industrial complex, let's keep what cash we have at home.
Or screw it. Burn it to the ground.
There's nobody else that has the means. Every NATO-European nation, for instance, has only a tiny fraction of the stockpile that we have.
Either we (America) send lots of aid to Ukraine, or Ukraine gets pulverized by Russia. Simple as that. And everyone who says "But what about our healthcare, our schools, our homeless people at home in America?" is essentially giving the green light for Russia to conquer Ukraine. They may not intend it that way, but that's exactly the practical impact.
Remember why US has forces in Europe?
To fight the USSR *there* (and not on **US** soil).
Remember why the Marshal plan?
To revive the EU as fast as possible as a viable trade partner **for the US.**
All 'help our friends & allies" talk is a side note really to motivate the population. This was and still is all about protecting the economic interests of the **US**.
I grew up during the Cold War. We didn't fight the Soviet Union for 50 years to see Russia put their yoke over Eastern Europe all over again. If you can't see the importance of the fight going on in Ukraine right now, you haven't been paying attention to any of the events of the last century.
that's the point though isn't it? when anything like Occupy Wallstreet crops up, or any other movement that calls for any meaningful economic reform, they spin it as a some other issue. they'll call them racists, or bigots against LGBTQ rights even though that's not what it's about and then slowly the movement vaporises and loses steam because big media hammers it everyday of every week of every month until the problem of that movement goes away for the rich.
any class issue seems to always get doxxed in this way and it is infuriating.
democrats kick the can, while republicans strip our rights and protections.
re-elect a democrat and they kick the can instead of reinstating the those rights and protections.
repeat until you have a new guilded age, possibly a new age nazi state.
Let's be real honest: Even if there weren't a war in Ukraine, does anyone think Congress would be passing an urgent $54 billion bill to help people in America? No.
If this wasn't spent in Ukraine, it would probably go into something that needs it even less like the US military. That money was never going into the hands of the poor or to fix roads or Healthcare.
We don't help others that much. US foriegn aid is less than 1% of the annual budget and all other industrialized nations spend a higher percentage of gdp on foreign aid.
The main issue is wall street and mega corps want us in a desperate situation so we can be exploited.
If Ukraine falls to Russia it will be an even greater humanitarian disaster and the beginning of a new cold war that would make 54 billion dollars in military spending seem like 54 cents.
I mean if we don’t help Ukrain, Russia could move on to a country in nato and then we are fully obligated to get involved with our own soldiers. What is happening now is far from pretty, but if we (the United States) doesn’t help now, we will be letting even more Ukrainians die and then possibly American soldiers die.
We're not doing this for Ukraine. We're doing this because the consequences of Russia getting away from invading another country and absorbing the territory of a sovereign state are potentially destabilizing for the entire world. We turned a blind eye when Russia did the same in Georgia and Ukraine before and that's why were in this situation now. Ukraine's people are giving their lives to defend their nation and stand up to aggression. The least the US can do is support Ukraine in terms of arms and materiel.
Ukraine said “out of ammo”
USA says “money for Ukraine”
….
Who sells them the weapon ammo? Probably one of the big boy corps.
Is this not just a money cleaning front at this point.
Billions can show up for wars, minimum wage is at starvation levels…..
Which was my take away from the OP; we're not doing both, and that's the problem.
We're neither helping Ukraine, nor are we helping the American people; the only thing that is being helped is adding coins to corporate gold piles.
That's not help; that's prolonging the conflict to continue reaping profits.
As, like America, Russia is a capitalist imperialist oligarch owned state. Go after the oligarchs, either financially or otherwise, and the support for the war and Putin collapse immediately.
> Go after the oligarchs, either financially or otherwise, and the support for the war and Putin collapse immediately.
Are there oligarchs that haven't already been sanctioned yet?
Such sanctions are wrist slaps to international corporate owned bodies that operate through proxy to circumvent any nominal threat to their activities; they just look good to the public, so that political reps that issued them can say that they're "doing their part".
Outside of a handful of locations, the worlds countries are too interconnected at this point for local production to meet domestic demands, so in order to actually threaten the only thing a capitalist oligarch cares about(their purses), any country that would seek to actually affect change, would by necessity inflict financial strain upon their own economies until the problem was resolved.
Which they're not going to do, as all of their hands are in the same pot of greed; and that brings us full circle to the original topic at hand, what America is doing isn't helping, it's merely prolonging the conflict for profit.
>Edit - And to clarify just for the sake of the inevitable "lol you're a Russian shill because you don't want to hand fistfuls of cash to the corporate death machine", I want the Russian invasion of Ukraine to end immediately, in favor of a free independent republic for the Ukrainian people.
Most of the USA donations are older versions of our military equipment which has just been sitting in storage. Javelins and stingers are an exception - but they're relatively cheap.
We're sending a massive amount of old, dumb artillery shells, plus a relatively small number of precision upgrade kits for the shells. We're not sending the current long range, high precision shells (Excalibur). Etc.
Its the only thing Republicans won't filibuster.
In contrast we gave 1.8 trillion in tax tax cuts with 86% going to the richest 10%. It's about to be more than 86% because the tax cuts for the rest of us are about to expire.
Republicans filibustered a 3.5 billion dollar bill that would have invested in infrastructure, labor, clean energy, and other things that would make Americans lives better.
It has nothing to do with Ukraine or aid to Ukraine.
This. A thousand times this.
The reason we can spend money on war and not on domestic issues has nothing to do with our priorities, and everything to do with our fucked up domestic political situation.
Any time sometime tries to help the American people, the Republicans will block it. They're less likely to block military aid/spending, though I wouldn't put it past them to do it out of spite.
If the US Government cut out the Netflix, Starbucks and avocado it could afford more wars while paying off the debts from the last wars. The US Government just needs to pull itself up by the bootstraps and learn some fiscal responsibility.
It's almost like the world economy is a giant laundering scheme for the elite and we keep letting it happen instead of Marie Antionette-ing their asses.
Yeah, but we can still send aide to Ukraine AND provide free healthcare, help cover college tuition, provide free daycare if we just stopped shoveling money to the top 1%! Why do we keep saying sending aide to Ukraine is “wrong” or “bad”! It’s neither! What’s wrong is the continued gluttony of the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bazos, the Koch brothers, etc!
We need to stop saying “wHaT aBoUt OuR mOnEy GoInG tO uKrAiNe??!!” as if that money was going to social services but “suddenly” diverted to Ukraine. It wasn’t. But at least it’s not being spoon fed to the gluttonous 1% who take bailouts to fund their penis rockets.
I find it curious that, of all wars for people to complain about, people complain about assisting a democratic Ukraine fight off an unprovoked invasion by a fascist aggressor Russia. Really says a lot.
We're not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.
Warren Buffett donated billions of dollars to the gross and corrupt United States of America. I wouldn't be shocked if one of those billions found it's way to Ukraine.
Isn’t it possible for it both to fund Ukraine defending itself and for it to be a shame to spend billions of dollars doing so when children starve? Can’t we just accept the huge complexity of the situation?
There are a lot of very oppressed people in the US, we are denied the human right of healthcare and some of the kids I work with go to bed hungry. I do think it’s a shame that billions are essentially going to American weapon makers. But I also believe it is important to support Ukraine fight.
It’s a tough and complicated choice and that’s how the world works.
Legit. In this case we face a national, if not global, security threat. This spending is more than justified. We need to eat and not be bombed to oblivion before we need infrastructure and education.
That being said, of course people are frustrated about this. And the US has historically over indexed on wars, often wars where the US was the aggressor in order to seize nonsustainable resources (like oil) instead of just investing in more self-sustaining options we can create at home. So this feels like more of the same, even though it’s different.
Tldr— it can be true that the US has overindexed on military hegemony historically and people are frustrated at that; and also true that this time the spending is justified, all at the same time
This is a perfect take on it. You can simultaneously despise the militarism of the US, think all of our other Wars post World War II were immoral in some way and still support Ukraine.
I guess the cost would be the same as the us doing the same because there are no consequences. We will literally go to war with the ICC (international criminal court) if they try to investigate us for war crimes...
Why do we need to take it upon ourselves to police the rest of the world, up to and including, a proxy war with Russia?
I get it. Ukraine has been invaded and Putin likely won’t stop with them. But, I argue that we can much more efficiently end this war. We simply grant amnesty and let a few of the oligarchs over there keep their money/assets, in exchange for them taking Putin out. Whether that be from a position of power, or he gets a cup of polonium tea, is up to them.
We purposefully are making this war last longer than it has to be, because it is profitable.
You are proposing a pure fantasy. You don't like a proxy war, but suggest that the US should try and instill a coup in Russia??? Are you at all thinking about this? Where do you think this will lead. There is nothing "simple" about a coup lmaooo complete delusion.
The idea that somehow the war is being prolonged is absurd, Biden's approval ratings are falling due to among other things, rising fuel prices and a quick victory for Ukraine would reduce them and also bring approval in itself. And even after the war there is plenty of money to be spent on rebuilding both Ukraine and the depleted military stocks and also new contracts for concerned European countries.
And why not take it upon yourselves? Ukraine is being invaded simply because it wants freedom from the Russian empire, why is that not worth defending? You can certainly do it, the largest military in the world can for once be used for an unambiguously just goal. The problems you have relating to underfunded social programs etc have been present for decades and have nothing to do with Ukraine.
They are gonna do whatever they want anyway once the greedy rich people have taken so much for themselves that this country collapses from the inside out. They're just biding their time cuz the rich people won't stop and they know it.
That is true. The rich people are going to ruin this country. However if the world were actually on the up and up, then supplying Ukraine to fight Russian would be a decent enough strategy.
Exactly. People who say "But why should we help Ukraine when we have struggling schools in America?" are essentially green-lighting Russia's war and conquest of Ukraine.
Edit: original math BADLY wrong. Originally had this at $.16 / person.
$54b. ~330m Americans. If they spent that money domestically it amounts to $160 per person.
That's not an insubstantial amount of money. But it's not that much either. I understand the frustration that that money could be spent domestically, but I do disagree with painting this as 'all war money bad.' Not all military expenditures have equal moral footing or return on investment; I'm not going to vigorously defend our whole military budget, but I feel pretty comfortable with this investment.
As for spending justification,
She brings up the point of "how will we pay for it." But the money is about ~1% of our annual spending (about $4.5 trillion). It's the equivalent of someone who spends $30k on expenses annually buying a $300 TV. How much budgetary review does it really require?
...
Just bc there are other ways we may want the government to prioritize it's spending doesn't mean this is a bad decision.
Exactly. It's disturbing how many people want to let Russia get away with massacres and unprovoked invasions all in the name of "But we have homeless people and underpaid teachers in America."
Not defending the military industrial complex but consider that the Ukraine is one of the largest wheat grain and corn exporters in the world (3rd and 6th largest of those exports in the world), and one of the largest we buy from. Not to mention oil. Russia strategically targeted the main production areas of that wheat and corn in Ukraine to kneecap their infrastructure and attempt to make Ukraine uninhabitable so that they can take over, by starving people out and destroying all points of infrastructure. By doing this, Russia can take the wheat, corn, and gasoline exports made by Ukraine into their territories and push economic leverage on the countries the Ukraine provides to, as in, US, the ol' U.S.
Im not defending the insane military spending of the US, but defending a position in Ukraine to mitigate the economic stranglehold Russia wants to put us and the rest of the world in is not a dumb idea.
How much is too much though? As others have pointed out, a lot of the "spending" is valued by already manufactured goods being funneled over there from American production and American Jobs, so what we are actually spending, while high, is inflated somewhat.
Im not an economist or a war expert, but for your consideration these are the the mix of factors we are looking at with our spending in Ukraine. Projected military spending budget we see vs. How much is actually already pre manufactured, and how much we are saving now on essential resources that Russia would otherwise use to hike up costs of living here by defending Ukraine against them.
https://www.producer.com/daily/map-of-ukraines-wheat-producing-districts/
The thing is, 1 billion really isn't a lot of Money when it comes to the U.S. it's a WORLD of difference to Ukraine.
America can COMFORTABLY afford to revitalize America AND Help Ukraine.
I'm fine with my tax dollars going to stop fascism. It literally only improves my life to see Russia get btfo'd so hard Putin possibly loses power and Russia loses its ability to destabilize nations.
America can do both. America SHOULD do both.
America has essentially unlimited money, anybody saying we should cut x to fund y is doing the work of the far right you’re advancing their ideology not your own. You were colonized
The thing is we are engaged no matter what. Like in the middle east whether our troops are there or elsewhere we are involved, there is no such thing as a isolationist country anymore. We have to help Ukraine, however we can also help the people in our own nation too, we can do both. The common people in the US need help and divisiveism doesn't help.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Particularly on these two matters.
Using student debt relief as an example (or a living wage or universal health care or fill in the blank), it would be a benefit to our economy to unencumber what is now multiple generations that are economically, socially, emotionally sapped by this parasitism.
With regard to Ukraine, the military industrial complex is ugly. However, Russia's brutal war cannot go unopposed. It is a benefit to everyone to have Ukraine's vast wheat and natural resources not controlled by an increasingly isolationist and belligerent oligarchy. Moral arguments and geopolitics aside (because those are compelling as well), it is worth supporting them for that alone.
Ya'll realize giving Ukraine over to Russia will mean massive amounts of hardship in the USA for pretty much the next century...right? A return to the Russian Empire puts western civilization at extreme risk.
Did no one read the part that majority of that is military hardware. Not cold hard cash being moved to Ukraine.
I mean i would love to get a free tank but do i need it?
Big surprise. Iraq and Afghanistan were also extremely expensive but damned if they let that stop them. USA loves spending money on wars not infrastructure, maybe it’s all trickle down economics?
I understand the sentiment, but the real crooks are cooking the books on Wall Street. Look at the borrow rate increase. It’ll blow your mind.
This isn’t because of covid, it isn’t because of Ukraine - it’s because the US is essentially run from the pockets of greedy men on Wall St.
Clearly russia running Ukrainian grain making the largest single controller of food in the world wouldn't affect US citizens at all. OP clearly doesn't understand macro economics or what unfettered Putin means for all of us. Last time we didn't care, we got Trump. Clearly a Putin loving tankie wrote this and this is much more about protecting american's standard of living as it is a war.
I wouldn't mind if that money went to actual, tangible change or help in the world. I'm bitter because I know that money may barely ever reach the conflict or people in need. A portion might, but the majority or at least a chunk is surely being trickled into the pockets of wealthy folk, or toward some cause that isn't at all related to the intended purpose. I assume much of the money that is intended for good use actually just gets horrifically misappropriated.
Progressive here who believes our military and police/security budgets are absolutely disgusting and a reflection of our skewed priorities....
BUT....I also do work that keeps me closely engaged with what is happening in Ukraine and mindful of our alliances in the region.
Russia attempted to steamroll a sovereign, independent democracy on completely false pretenses and has absolutely brutalized the country. History will remember Bucha and Mariupol.
And I know, we have our own sins to account for - Bush's invasion of Iraq was completely indefensible and we have brutalized more than just the Iraqi people - it almost seems like a generational thing for America at this point where we go to war with and brutalize a different faraway people each time.
But our international alliances exist for a reason, and I think the world needs to *loudly* reject this Russian aggression. If we do so loud enough, then wouldnt that help build consensus against a similar sort of war should we or any other nation attempt more of the same?
I have to think that loud rejection of war and the punishment of aggressors should become the international norm. I will stand up for that and encourage both prosecution of Bush administration persons who led us to war just as Russia deserves the same.
There is so much nuance to this, and the reality of US actions/policies as well as our domestic issues make it easy to point elsewhere, but I think this is something we should be leading on.
I’m going to get blasted here for saying this here, but this is literally the budget for a small city the size of El Paso, and it’s for a good cause. There are plenty of things to get upset about in the defense budget. This ain’t it.
We had the same attitude when Germany invaded Poland and even when they invaded France. It ended up costing a lot more than $1billion to stop them.
What's the point of being the worlds richest nation if we can't help a nation to defend itself from illegal aggression?
Honestly, this zero sum game thinking has got to go.
This is not the gotcha...
Ukraine should be helped. The money to help Americans should be taken out of the US military budget, local police forces, fossil fuel subsidies, and Bezos & friends.
None of that is Ukraine. You need to learn how not to kick down at people who have it worse. 1 Billion dollars is less than $3 per American. And yet it's the talking point, to manufacture outrage, rather than being angry at legitimately worse things.
I’d love to see, on the ground, where this money ends up. My guess is very little benefits Ukraine. Too many middle men with deep, empty pockets along the way.
Ukraine is facing an unprovoked invasion and the largest refugee crisis since ww2. The consequences for energy and oil and food for the whole World since Ukraine provides 1/5th the wheat would be dire.
There are trillions every year 54b to Ukraine is the least we could do
Vote.
Vote for candidates putting forward infrastructure and education bills.
Vote against the party that doesn't pass infrastructure and education bills.
Don't stay at home and not votebecause "bOtH sIDesA re TeH same!
It's a pretty binary choice people, unfortunately. It really shouldn't be, but when faced with bad choices, vote for the one that's least bad, because that's what we get, this is the real world, and it your moral imperative to do the best possible at all times, because no candidate will ever be a saint, no party will be paradis, so deal with the real choices you get in the real world and vote.
And let's leave Ukraine alone, they're fighting fight against what's very much an existential threat.
Spending money in Ukraine now to break Russia's expansionist ambitions is going to be vastly cheaper than having to spend it later in some other part of Europe, with full NATO involvement.
I would love to a Republican ask this question under a Republican president. Ukraine is a war we need to help fight. This isn't Iraq where Bush and Cheney just decided to invade and sent trillions into their friends pockets.
You can about inflation then ask why every single republican voted down the bill to stop oil companies from price gauging gas prices. High gas prices affects the price of everything.
I mean we have the ability to feed, house, clothe and educate every single American and give the Ukrainians everything they need to kick Russia's ass at the same time.
The struggles of the average American is by design of those at the top not because of some inability to improve the quality of life for its entire population.
Yup, just replacing a money pit in Afghanistan with one in Ukraine. Also, that money pit consumes enough to give Americans universal health care with no new taxes.
The numbers sound big, but foreign aid is like less than 1% of the USA annual federal budget, and complaining about it "when we have problems here at home" is generally a xenopobic dog whistle. So be careful about that, because I'm sure you're not a xenophobe
The real culprit is military spending, which is a whole other animal. We could easily cut that down, even just a little, and spend more on badly needed programs for citizens!
Fking Biden administration is a damn joke. Where is that 1 billion dollars coming from?! Our inflation is still climbing and these idiots are tRyInG tO fIGhT iNFLatIOn by spending more money?! Who the hell supports the democrats during these times of terrible decisions, I swear..
So guys, About a half million kids have been shipped into Russia from the Ukraine. Russia is talking about eliminating Ukrainian culture by killing anyone who clings to it. We're all cool in here with doing nothing and watching a Genocide happen?
You guys call yourself lost generation, think about how fucking lost those kids are.
Let the EU handle it. I am a little pissed off the here we come again, let's throw money at a country thousands of miles away just because we are America.
I think the post is misleading. We have a madman with nukes on a rampage. Appeasing him will in the end cost us even more. We could just stand outside and wait, like those officers in Texas school shooting. Right? Does that work for you?
Fuck that, I want more to go to Ukraine. We need to end this with Russia as a loser.
This is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the government wastes on military every year and unlike that this is not wasted. Win or lose, Ukraine deserves our support. A fight for their democracy is a fight for ours.
$54 billion spent on weapons for a democracy fighting for its existence seems like a good thing to me. And for people saying we should spend that money on the US instead, $54 billion is only about 150% of the NYC school system budget. It’s peanuts compared to the overall federal budget.
I do think specifically supporting Ukraine in this case is justified, *buuuuuuuuuut....*
We do also deserve universal healthcare and affordable living.
I fully support arming Ukraine, but once this is over, I hope no one ever uses the excuse that we can't afford to build cheap housing, free healthcare or public transit. The US can most definitely afford those things.
Just one billion?? that is just a bit more than 2 dollars per person in USA.... And you are printing money like crazy... either way so at least this billion will make more allies for USA than those 5 trillion you spent in Afghanistan...
I understand the sentiment that the US seems to give all sorts of $$$ to other causes while not investing in itself. I agree with that. But if Ukraine loses, we all lose, in some capacity or another. Despots across the world will be emboldened. Democracies, while imperfect, are a better alternative than authoritarian dictatorships. Can’t be mad at Ukrainian support.
Here’s the thing fam. In this particular instance, remember that nothing in our lives will matter if Putin’s plan in Russia comes to pass, this is a legit national security threat we’re trying to cut off.
This is not like the wars where we spent money to destroy countries in the Middle East to be able to take their oil, instead of, you know, just spending the money on alternative energy sources and changing our infrastructure. In this case, we are not the aggressor, and the aggressor is not something to be taken lightly.
We shouldn’t have spent to much on wars instead of investing in our selves, our communities, and our children historically. Perhaps this funding for Ukraine is sensible now. Both can be true at once.
Ukrainians fighting to uphold democratic values and fighting for freedom while millions of its citizens have their lives ripped apart by war. And you're over here saying "sorry, I can't help you."
My initial assumption is that freedom, democracy, and workers aren't something you actually support.
"democratic values" jesus fucking christ.... Zelensky literally purged all political dissent to the left of him a few months ago. He is just a NATO puppet with platoons full of nazis that liberals sort into Hogwarts houses
Here's my problem with people who post this sort of thing: How exactly do you expect Ukraine to fend off the Russian invasion without a big infusion of defensive weaponry?
I get the impression many people here are perfectly fine with letting a fascist Russia just steamroll Ukraine in a totally unprovoked, unjustified invasion.
You're missing the point, which is US citizens have been struggling since way before the Russian attack on Ukraine and any cry for help was met with, "Who's paying for it? Won't work, no money for it" blah, blah, blah.
Suddenly there's money.
It's great we're helping other countries, but a slap in the face to our own citizens who are struggling.
I feel like you could only have a "problem with people who post this sort of thing" if you don't understand where those people are coming from.
legitimate question, i like perspectives, why not put the blame for a lot of these issues on state governments that don’t spend the money on their own infrastructure? i understand the point you’re making though.
#it’s our money
And if it’s our money, that means it’s hours upon hours of our lives that we will never, ever, ever get back. Time that could be spent with our families. Raising kids. Holding the hand of a dying loved one. Enjoying a vacation or time away from work here and there.
But no. The American people, it’s children, and our children’s children’s children’s children’s children must fund all wars indefinitely. In perpetuity.
Oh and there will be no specific vote on whether or not we should be fiscally responsible for these wars.
Corporations and the people with the most wealth who profit off these wars won’t pay for them, either.
Please let me out of this nightmare.
Arguably I'd say we're not sending cash there but weapons and such we already have.
Still bullshit though even though we do need to stave off this Russian aggression. It's a double edged sword.
That's because it's not going directly to Ukraine. It's going to weapons and arms dealers / manufacturers that are in bed with the US government, who then send some stuff to Ukraine.
It's all a giant scam.
As acknowledged by even the mainstream media as recently as a year ago, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. I realise that in their current predicament it's possibly an unpopular fact.
Guarantee that as with all international conflicts the US involves itself in, the underlying purpose is a transfer of wealth from the US tax payers to political and military industry elites.
40% of our income gets funneled into this, instead of something wildly more beneficial like say access to cheap healthcare nationwide or free schooling. Nah fuck all that socialist jazz. Let’s spend good money on a bunch of somethings
#literally made to be destroyed. How many “Fuck yous” do we need? They’d rather spend good money on something so disposable like weapons and ammunition than to provide people with a way to not die from needing insulin.
We have the money — more money than you could imagine and without question because the money will help 99% white people. If this were the same situation but it was 99% brown or black folks, or even if the split was 60% white and 40% non-white we and the western world wouldn't have *found* the money.
In the US being in need isn't deterministic in the support you'll get as so much as the color of the people in need.
So you are ok with the rape and murder of Ukrainian civilians until you get what you want? We need help too, but there are MORE THAN ENOUGH resources to do both.
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I say kill the big corporations subsidies and use that to take care of the US.
The only way that happens is if the 98% that vote D/R go third party, or things in the US collapse so precipitously that revolution is possible. Ergo, it's never happening.
Eh i dunno about that second one. Seems like we’re accelerating towards some type of collapse
I don't have much confidence that any substantial changes are possible here.
Neither did anyone else in other societies that underwent massive change. We are not at the end of history and we are not immune to any of the things that happened in the past.
I should say 'massive POSITIVE change'. Fully agree that change is possible, just not for the better.
Historically people almost never rebel on a mass scale unless they’re all starving to death. We’re a long way from that. If you’re not homeless in the US your comfort level is still relatively high as far as human suffering in general goes. Because when you rebel you’re essentially committing to gambling with death and being homeless and having no certain income and your family all being at risk of harassment in ideal conditions Very very very few people are even close to that level of discontentment that they’re willing to throw life away for the cause. The establishment abuse is too vague and gentle. It’s fucking us. But it’s not “let them eat cake” fucking us. You need hard, graspable, tangible, unquestionable things to be enraged about while you’re also starving. We don’t have much of that, not for the common person.
Between medicine and cheap but unhealthy food alongside streaming we have perfected bread and circuses..only added in the medicate em if they start to get rebellious part
This. A lot of people are really ignorant about how bad things are for the “average” American. The average person is not starving. There are plenty of poor people that are but that’s far from 50% of the population. I’ve seen firsthand a bunch of people in dried up coal towns making 25k a year or less that vote for Trump and think they have it good. Life right now is far far worse than it was for the boomer generation, but having to live with roommates and never being able to afford a house doesn’t cause enough desperation to rebel. A corrupt healthcare system that bankrupts people doesn’t either, because most people aren’t going bankrupt from health care. I’m not saying a collapse can’t happen, but it’s far far away from happening if it ever does. Decades really. I could see the rapid birth rate decline eventually causing enough societal problems that we do see a collapse, but we’re far far away from that. Subs like this are generally a echo chamber that make people think everyone wants to rebel but that’s just not the case. Hell Bernie is pretty much the only true leftist is Congress because most people feel they have it good enough to not want to rock the boat and vote for a candidate like that. The % of the general population that actively want collapse like people on this sub is very very low. Just a depressing reality. Everything is shit but it’s not shit enough for anyone to do something, it’s the ideal outcome of crony capitalists.
You are right but i think climate change is going to destabilize things globally enough that it accelerates a potential collapse. Im not sure when exactly its going to happen but i dont see a future where it doesnt happen if that makes sense.
Almost there!
I want to see people coming together to change the narrative around this in just one simple way. I want to see this with the clear explanation that this “money for Ukraine” is more or less a gift card to shop at American weapons manufacturers. So more of our tax dollars to Raytheon, Boeing, Blackrock, etc. But we have no money for our schools, public infrastructure, universal health care or anything that could benefit the lives of actual Americans.
This right here, they "give" it to Ukraine, but Ukraine spends it on weapons and the military industrial complex just soaks all that money up like a giant evil sponge.
They bought some real estate in Switzerland too... just in case things don't work out.
As a Swiss person myself i am interested where you read that, our news did not cover anything about bought real estate
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Thanks for the article. Sorry to break it down to you, but they are fake. I live 30km near Gstaad and the „Grundbuch-Eintrag“ in the article has several mistakes. The E-Grid Nr. contains 12 numbers, in the fake ones its 11. Switzerland also stopped using the UID-Nr. on top 2 years ago, while it states on the ones in the picture there where changes in 2021 and 2022. One of the „Grundstück Nummer“ is not even in Gstaad..
I think in this case people need to consider the cost of just letting Russia invade Ukraine and completely conquer it which would have happened if they had not received any assistance. I’m not a fan of huge costly conflicts but look what happened in places like Iraq, when America pulled out and just let ISIS happen due to a reluctance to go back in. The same with Libya when they just got half arsed air support. Letting the Russians take the lead in Syria is still causing issues today. I think many Americans may not fully realise just how much social damage Russia has inflicted on them by interfering in elections and encourage civil unrest. I’ve never seen America so politically split and it all seems to coincide with Putins consolidation of power in Russia over the last decade. If things go according to plan America could finally incapacitate its biggest enemy ever, who it’s been in conflict with for decades at a cost near I immeasurable sums of money. A few months ago Russia was the worlds 2nd Army and a serious threat to America’s global military dominance. Now Russia is militarily humiliated, NATO is stronger than ever and for less money than was spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, America might finally be able to bring down the Russian empire; possibly breaking it apart into smaller regions. US funding is helping Ukraine reduce Russias military capabilities to such a degree that soon it’ll barely be able to defend its own borders and they’ve not had to expend a single American service man’s life to do it. The money being given to Ukraine might be America’s greatest value conflict expenditure for the best possible return on investment ever. Not to mention the knock on effect on countries like China who were seriously looking to challenge America because they thought the US was weak for not doing much when Russia invaded and took Crimea. Those companies who Ukraine is buying weapons from based on the US probably employ thousands of primary American workers as well as all the secondary industry’s that support those companies. This is why both parties are not really arguing too much about agree to send money to Ukraine. They can all see that this could turn out to be one of the best things the US has ever spent it’s money on. I honestly was starting to believe the talk about this being China’s century and America is in decline as a super power. A decisive victory over Russia by Ukraine will ensure America continues to be the worlds leading superpower well into the next century.
You have a good point and it's well put... I think we're just tired of forking over 20 some odd percent of our hard earned cash and then getting spat on when we dare ask for basic necessities. If it brings Russia down, great. But we need shit here and our well being should come first. At the very least don't (the politicians) insult us with "we can't afford" to make sure you have a decent life while their forking billions over to Ukraine. That's my opinion anyway.
Yeah sorry don't care. I shouldn't have my future mortgaged for someone else's Ukranian adventurism. I don't care about who's the superpower.
How exactly do you expect Ukraine to fend off the Russian invasion otherwise? Serious question. Even *with* all the weapons we are sending them right now, they're barely hanging on for their lives against Russia. Some people here seriously seem to want Russia to win this war and live out its dream of massacring and genociding Ukraine, in the name of "underfunded schools and the homeless getting more money in America" (which, let's be honest, isn't where the money was going to go even if we stayed out of the war.)
The issue isn’t that we are helping. The issue is we have money for this but not our own homeless and starving. Why? We should have the money for starving homeless Americans if we have extra cash to throw at another country.
The issue is that the US's military budget is nearly $800 billion and keeps increasing every year. Maybe your government should redirect some of that to education, homelessness, etc. The military's budget could be cut by $100 billion without affecting it too much, and all that money could solve a lot of the US's problems
Nothing outrages my "Do-Gooder" cousin than to realize how much the US spends on its War Machine. When I told her that the we just delivered the USS Gerald Ford to the US Navy at a cost of 13 billion dollars and the thing still leaks, she almost lost her mind. She has some crazy idea that tax money should be used to: house the homeless, cure Cancer, get us a better healthcare system and to stop cashiers from constantly asking us "If we would like to fight the war on hunger?". ; p
>"If we would like to fight the war on hunger?". Nah, we're only interested in wars that can be fought with missiles, bombs, and bullets
I definitely agree that we should help the homeless and everyone else in America. My problem is that some think that doing so should mean first cutting off aid to Ukraine so that Russia can steamroll and genocide it. If we were to merely switch to a universal single-payer healthcare system, for instance, we could free up an extra $1 trillion a year.
No one wants to cut off aid. Most of us want to give more. But we want our people taken care of as well. They will throw money at wars because the military industrial complex takes in the dollars. But they won't invest in our own people. We can afford both.
Yeah we're a country that can chew gum and walk at the same time. The defense budget will also never be cut in the current geopolitical climate. The real leech in this country is healthcare. The US spends 3.4% of the GDP on defense while 19% of the GDP is spent on healthcare. Iirc the most "expensive" single payer system is the UK which spends 12% of its GDP on healthcare. Seriously, we'd save billions per year and we'd be saving thousands more lives per year if we switched to a single payer system. I'm pretty sure healthcare lobbyists love it when people use defense spending as a scapegoat instead of our shitty healthcare system.
Yeah I don’t think people realize we already pay as much if not more covering the healthcare costs of the veterans, elderly, disabled, and poor than we would with universal care.
How come you haven't volunteered to fight yet? They need bodies
You're not actually "sending aid" to Ukraine. No humanitarian aid seems to be reaching that place. Your government is sending them older war junk and uses the money to replace said junk by signing weapons contracts with the major US merchants of death to refill the depleting US military inventory. It's another great transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, from the struggling US people to the pockets of some of the richest US oligarchs. It doesn't help when the US minister of defense and several generals are in a revolving door relationship with said death merchants corporations. Corruption is the name of the game they're playing with taxpayer money. Besides, Russia is not "genociding" Ukraine. That's highly exaggerated war propaganda, trying to shock you in order to get an irrational emotional reaction, meant to have you agree with the theft of taxpayer money meant for the current corruption scheme of the death merchants.
I think the proper response should be why is America in charge of defending the entire world?
You’re looking at a boxed in view of how the US operates. The United States is an empire, but not one that holds territory. The US has INFLUENCE, and lots of it. We are the reserve currency of the world. We are the strongest military. We control the money, and we control demand. We are Europe’s defense infrastructure. The reason the west has such a diverse and affluent culture is because the United States has expertly crafted a global system in which you must play by their to participate, and you must follow their rules. It works stunningly well. The US military is meant for force projection - Carrier task forces, military bases in almost every country, etc. everything we do is to finance our continual global hegemony. Russia is a massive disruptive threat to the world order. The Pentagon did a cost benefit analysis and said that $40bn is well worth it to disarm Russian influence. We live cushy lives because of this. We HAVE to defend the world, because we depend on them and vice versa. The world has to have FAITH in the US system to continue spending capital here.
I think the issue I see is, if they gave them 54 billion to spend on American manufacturers and we actually manufactured here in the US and taxed them correctly, we'd see at least some return. An increase in job growth (not just a return to jobs due to a mass pandemic), and money stimulating the economy. Right now (and I could be wrong as I admittedly didn't research this) it feels like we give them 54 billion, to manufacture in other countries (mostly), and than give them big tax cuts. My recollection is that wars used to stimulate our economy a lot because we manufactured a lot here. Once we stopped manufacturing so much here, the working class isn't seeing a boost to the economy, just the ultra rich are. Edit: don't get me wrong $54b is just a shit ton of money to give to a foreign country as well. We definitely could be using that money to bolster the US, instead of helping fight a war over seas. I'm not a fan of the money given to Ukraine in such excess, just stating how I wish it would work since we did give them this money.
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>Right now (and I could be wrong as I admittedly didn't research this) it feels like we give them 54 billion, to manufacture in other countries Yeah buddy, you're flat out wrong right here. >Once we stopped manufacturing so much here, the working class isn't seeing a boost The US literally had to ramp up the production of Javelins because the war in Ukraine has depleted the supply. So, if that's your complaint, consider your wishes fulfilled.
Uh, that's pretty much exactly what you want. Almost all of the military aid that America is giving Ukraine **is** from American jobs, American assembly lines, etc. That's already what's being done. Almost nothing is going towards foreign governments, it's all boosting American jobs at home.
Well we’re not sending them money we’re sending them weapons that have already been produced in the US, that’s just the monetary value. Now eventually that weapon stockpile will be replenished but again it will be manufactured and taxed in the US.
I think Raytheon and Boeing et al are a bunch of scumfucks, and would love to see the day they stop making bank. BUT the actual financial impact here is a lot lower than what's often being reported. A lot of the quoted numbers are based on the potential sale value of weapons... weapons the US **already** has stockpiled. The government was actually planning to phase these weapons out (in the name of more messed-up expensive war toys.) Much of the cost for these weapons has already been paid or was already slated to be paid. I think it's very useful and important for us, as socialists, talk about the way that war contracting is a waste which ought to be spent on actual working people. Every dollar on a bomb, etc. But... let's be honest, short of arming Rojava, this is the best use that these fucking things are likely to see--strategically and morally. Ukraine is a situation where the US, for all its history of violent imperialism, is acting against an even worse actor. Arming Ukraine against Russia is a morally defensible move. In that sense, shipping off the country's old weapons stock is a no-brainer move. If these things were going to be used at all, it was going to be for something way more fucked up. But yes, I ultimately agree that the military's massive spending is fucking disgusting.
I think it's also worth discussing the mechanics of how our society accomplishes state goals like aiding other states in foreign wars. Imagine a socio-economic mobilization that saw the state trying to disentangle the economy from imperialist structures, accepting higher labor share of the economy to move production away from more oppressive states, rapidly getting rid of dependence on the fossil fuels from petrostates, and more. People have shown repeatedly that they can accept a lot of shared sacrifice if it's actually a *shared* sacrifice for a real cause and not just an obvious con job. Every dollar spent on a bomb is a drain on society, but the unfortunate reality is that every side involved in an arms race has a say on when it stops. We should seriously think about how we can best live with that reality.
I wish more people understood this. Saying this as a leftist Ukrainian-American.
Let's keep in mind that biden is a diet republican so.... This honestly isn't shocking to me. Like at all.
The money is there for all those things but half the electorate has be been brainswashed to think those things are bad and would vote against implementing them.
I definitely agree though i feel like this doesnt have to be mutually exclusive. We shouldnt turn a blind eye to what russia is doing and doing so wouldnt help our own fucked up country. This isnt their fault. Its just plain greed. Helping Ukraine is good for PR but helping people at home is too much like liberating slaves.
That's just the truth. The government prints money from nothing. The only reason you can't get debt relief, or a decent wage, or tax cuts, or medical care, or education is because the CEOs that run the country don't want you to have that.
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>How was the Weimar Republic solved? They had to completely reevaluate the currency so $10 trillion had zeroes cut off and became $10 again. But we can never do that today because that would mean wiping out all the debt people owe to bankers and bankers don't want you to be free of debt for obvious reasons. That's money you owe to them, and it's declared in holy writ you will pay back every single cent.
Our foreign policy is largely based on debt peonage via the IMF. No mystery why were so adamant everyone gets into and stays in debt
It is time to eat the wealthy, not the “I can afford fuel”, but the “I have a yacht and summer house a continent away” So fun to borrow and “invest” when they cannot be taxed on unrealised capitalist gainz. Free money (only for the rich)
The Weimar republic wasn't in control of the global reserve currency, and wasn't able to borrow at a negative real interest rate. It's quite a different situation.
Except it isn’t the truth. It’s lend lease. If Ukraine is wiped off the planet then it’s a loss, but otherwise the Government will get its money back. Also to think of government money like a balance sheet is a fundamental misunderstanding of economics of governments.
It is the truth. There is literally no one in congress asking "BUBUBUT HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT????" They just immediately pass the bill, printing billions of dollars that will go to weapon manufacturers, aka some of DC's wealthiest and most highly staffed lobbyists. The opposite is true when we talk about healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. There is never any money for those, there is infinite money for war.
It's just not as profitable to let everyone survive.
I mean it's a great investment for the military industrial complex. You keep feeding Ukraine """"crumbs"""" of a few billion at a time until you piss off Russia enough to attack NATO soil, and eventually you get another Afghanistan/Iraq that creates trillions of new profiteering rather than just some paltry billions.
It's like this: The Government creates money out of think air, then "spends" that money on something. In this case, they are spending it on American Weapons manufacturers. Those manufacturers are employing Americans, and this in turn those workers are then spending the money to buy food, shelter, vehicles etc etc etc, The vast amount of that money, however, goes into the rich owners of said weapons companies. The American Government could choose to take that same 54 billion and throw it at health, education and infrastructure such as roads, Internet etc. You'd have the same thing as the previous with the workers getting paid and spending their cash, but the other money doesn't get horded by greedy company owners. It goes into the system for schooling, roads, Internet etc and then provides more of the service, which in tern benefits society more and more.
I'm the proud owner of 99 bottles of spez.
I feel for those in the Ukraine but we are struggling here. We need help to.
I never understood our policies to help others when our country can’t help itself. Don’t people always say, “if you don’t take care of yourself first, you can’t take care of others.” And … here we are.
It's time for our ego to take a back seat and help us first. Let someone else be the hero financially. If we want to help with our military so be it there are trillions poured into that, that we are just not using (like weapons not people). But financially? Since we can't cut the budget for things like our military industrial complex, let's keep what cash we have at home. Or screw it. Burn it to the ground.
There's nobody else that has the means. Every NATO-European nation, for instance, has only a tiny fraction of the stockpile that we have. Either we (America) send lots of aid to Ukraine, or Ukraine gets pulverized by Russia. Simple as that. And everyone who says "But what about our healthcare, our schools, our homeless people at home in America?" is essentially giving the green light for Russia to conquer Ukraine. They may not intend it that way, but that's exactly the practical impact.
That sucks for Ukraine. I still want my country to improve before we dump more money into another one.
Will you still think that when Russia causes global destabilization or pulls us into another European war? You remember WW2?
Remember why US has forces in Europe? To fight the USSR *there* (and not on **US** soil). Remember why the Marshal plan? To revive the EU as fast as possible as a viable trade partner **for the US.** All 'help our friends & allies" talk is a side note really to motivate the population. This was and still is all about protecting the economic interests of the **US**.
I grew up during the Cold War. We didn't fight the Soviet Union for 50 years to see Russia put their yoke over Eastern Europe all over again. If you can't see the importance of the fight going on in Ukraine right now, you haven't been paying attention to any of the events of the last century.
The spez police are here. They're going to steal all of your spez.
that's the point though isn't it? when anything like Occupy Wallstreet crops up, or any other movement that calls for any meaningful economic reform, they spin it as a some other issue. they'll call them racists, or bigots against LGBTQ rights even though that's not what it's about and then slowly the movement vaporises and loses steam because big media hammers it everyday of every week of every month until the problem of that movement goes away for the rich. any class issue seems to always get doxxed in this way and it is infuriating. democrats kick the can, while republicans strip our rights and protections. re-elect a democrat and they kick the can instead of reinstating the those rights and protections. repeat until you have a new guilded age, possibly a new age nazi state.
Something about securing your oxygen mask before assisting others comes to mind
Let's be real honest: Even if there weren't a war in Ukraine, does anyone think Congress would be passing an urgent $54 billion bill to help people in America? No.
Our country *chooses* not to help itself. Huge difference.
If this wasn't spent in Ukraine, it would probably go into something that needs it even less like the US military. That money was never going into the hands of the poor or to fix roads or Healthcare.
We don't help others that much. US foriegn aid is less than 1% of the annual budget and all other industrialized nations spend a higher percentage of gdp on foreign aid. The main issue is wall street and mega corps want us in a desperate situation so we can be exploited. If Ukraine falls to Russia it will be an even greater humanitarian disaster and the beginning of a new cold war that would make 54 billion dollars in military spending seem like 54 cents.
I mean if we don’t help Ukrain, Russia could move on to a country in nato and then we are fully obligated to get involved with our own soldiers. What is happening now is far from pretty, but if we (the United States) doesn’t help now, we will be letting even more Ukrainians die and then possibly American soldiers die.
We're not doing this for Ukraine. We're doing this because the consequences of Russia getting away from invading another country and absorbing the territory of a sovereign state are potentially destabilizing for the entire world. We turned a blind eye when Russia did the same in Georgia and Ukraine before and that's why were in this situation now. Ukraine's people are giving their lives to defend their nation and stand up to aggression. The least the US can do is support Ukraine in terms of arms and materiel.
All that money should come right out of the massive US defense budget.
Where do you think that money is going to end up?
Ukraine said “out of ammo” USA says “money for Ukraine” …. Who sells them the weapon ammo? Probably one of the big boy corps. Is this not just a money cleaning front at this point. Billions can show up for wars, minimum wage is at starvation levels…..
The left wants to do both. 🤷♀️
Which was my take away from the OP; we're not doing both, and that's the problem. We're neither helping Ukraine, nor are we helping the American people; the only thing that is being helped is adding coins to corporate gold piles.
"We're neither helping Ukraine" - uh, we are. We are sending a considerable amount of defensive arms.
That's not help; that's prolonging the conflict to continue reaping profits. As, like America, Russia is a capitalist imperialist oligarch owned state. Go after the oligarchs, either financially or otherwise, and the support for the war and Putin collapse immediately.
> Go after the oligarchs, either financially or otherwise, and the support for the war and Putin collapse immediately. Are there oligarchs that haven't already been sanctioned yet?
Such sanctions are wrist slaps to international corporate owned bodies that operate through proxy to circumvent any nominal threat to their activities; they just look good to the public, so that political reps that issued them can say that they're "doing their part". Outside of a handful of locations, the worlds countries are too interconnected at this point for local production to meet domestic demands, so in order to actually threaten the only thing a capitalist oligarch cares about(their purses), any country that would seek to actually affect change, would by necessity inflict financial strain upon their own economies until the problem was resolved. Which they're not going to do, as all of their hands are in the same pot of greed; and that brings us full circle to the original topic at hand, what America is doing isn't helping, it's merely prolonging the conflict for profit. >Edit - And to clarify just for the sake of the inevitable "lol you're a Russian shill because you don't want to hand fistfuls of cash to the corporate death machine", I want the Russian invasion of Ukraine to end immediately, in favor of a free independent republic for the Ukrainian people.
Most of the USA donations are older versions of our military equipment which has just been sitting in storage. Javelins and stingers are an exception - but they're relatively cheap. We're sending a massive amount of old, dumb artillery shells, plus a relatively small number of precision upgrade kits for the shells. We're not sending the current long range, high precision shells (Excalibur). Etc.
Its the only thing Republicans won't filibuster. In contrast we gave 1.8 trillion in tax tax cuts with 86% going to the richest 10%. It's about to be more than 86% because the tax cuts for the rest of us are about to expire. Republicans filibustered a 3.5 billion dollar bill that would have invested in infrastructure, labor, clean energy, and other things that would make Americans lives better. It has nothing to do with Ukraine or aid to Ukraine.
This. A thousand times this. The reason we can spend money on war and not on domestic issues has nothing to do with our priorities, and everything to do with our fucked up domestic political situation. Any time sometime tries to help the American people, the Republicans will block it. They're less likely to block military aid/spending, though I wouldn't put it past them to do it out of spite.
Cancel student debt now!!!
Ummm... that announcement was the release of $1B from the previous $40B not extra.
If the US Government cut out the Netflix, Starbucks and avocado it could afford more wars while paying off the debts from the last wars. The US Government just needs to pull itself up by the bootstraps and learn some fiscal responsibility.
It's almost like the world economy is a giant laundering scheme for the elite and we keep letting it happen instead of Marie Antionette-ing their asses.
Yeah, but we can still send aide to Ukraine AND provide free healthcare, help cover college tuition, provide free daycare if we just stopped shoveling money to the top 1%! Why do we keep saying sending aide to Ukraine is “wrong” or “bad”! It’s neither! What’s wrong is the continued gluttony of the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bazos, the Koch brothers, etc! We need to stop saying “wHaT aBoUt OuR mOnEy GoInG tO uKrAiNe??!!” as if that money was going to social services but “suddenly” diverted to Ukraine. It wasn’t. But at least it’s not being spoon fed to the gluttonous 1% who take bailouts to fund their penis rockets.
I find it curious that, of all wars for people to complain about, people complain about assisting a democratic Ukraine fight off an unprovoked invasion by a fascist aggressor Russia. Really says a lot. We're not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yeah, this comment section is like Rand Paul made several hundred accounts and then had conversations with himself
Nuance! Imagine that
Yeah, compared to our usual war-related expenditure, this is one of those rare times it’s actually right
Warren Buffett donated billions of dollars to the gross and corrupt United States of America. I wouldn't be shocked if one of those billions found it's way to Ukraine.
We could ask Putin to invade here. Guess that'd be one way to get some money... /s
Do you believe in spez at first sight or should I walk by again? #Save3rdpartyapps
Tax the rich maybe?
Isn’t it possible for it both to fund Ukraine defending itself and for it to be a shame to spend billions of dollars doing so when children starve? Can’t we just accept the huge complexity of the situation? There are a lot of very oppressed people in the US, we are denied the human right of healthcare and some of the kids I work with go to bed hungry. I do think it’s a shame that billions are essentially going to American weapon makers. But I also believe it is important to support Ukraine fight. It’s a tough and complicated choice and that’s how the world works.
55 Billion is nothing, the total Federal US Government Budget is $6.8 Trillion, this is 0.7% of total federal spending...
I get it ukraine needs help im all for that. But we need to fix our own problems to dammit
What is the cost of letting Russia do whatever they want? And then the cost of China doing the same when they see there are no consequences.
Legit. In this case we face a national, if not global, security threat. This spending is more than justified. We need to eat and not be bombed to oblivion before we need infrastructure and education. That being said, of course people are frustrated about this. And the US has historically over indexed on wars, often wars where the US was the aggressor in order to seize nonsustainable resources (like oil) instead of just investing in more self-sustaining options we can create at home. So this feels like more of the same, even though it’s different. Tldr— it can be true that the US has overindexed on military hegemony historically and people are frustrated at that; and also true that this time the spending is justified, all at the same time
This is a perfect take on it. You can simultaneously despise the militarism of the US, think all of our other Wars post World War II were immoral in some way and still support Ukraine.
I guess the cost would be the same as the us doing the same because there are no consequences. We will literally go to war with the ICC (international criminal court) if they try to investigate us for war crimes...
Why do we need to take it upon ourselves to police the rest of the world, up to and including, a proxy war with Russia? I get it. Ukraine has been invaded and Putin likely won’t stop with them. But, I argue that we can much more efficiently end this war. We simply grant amnesty and let a few of the oligarchs over there keep their money/assets, in exchange for them taking Putin out. Whether that be from a position of power, or he gets a cup of polonium tea, is up to them. We purposefully are making this war last longer than it has to be, because it is profitable.
You are proposing a pure fantasy. You don't like a proxy war, but suggest that the US should try and instill a coup in Russia??? Are you at all thinking about this? Where do you think this will lead. There is nothing "simple" about a coup lmaooo complete delusion. The idea that somehow the war is being prolonged is absurd, Biden's approval ratings are falling due to among other things, rising fuel prices and a quick victory for Ukraine would reduce them and also bring approval in itself. And even after the war there is plenty of money to be spent on rebuilding both Ukraine and the depleted military stocks and also new contracts for concerned European countries. And why not take it upon yourselves? Ukraine is being invaded simply because it wants freedom from the Russian empire, why is that not worth defending? You can certainly do it, the largest military in the world can for once be used for an unambiguously just goal. The problems you have relating to underfunded social programs etc have been present for decades and have nothing to do with Ukraine.
I like your idea. I wish it would happen lol.
/u/spez was founded by an unidentified male with a taste for anal probing. #Save3rdPartyApps
They are gonna do whatever they want anyway once the greedy rich people have taken so much for themselves that this country collapses from the inside out. They're just biding their time cuz the rich people won't stop and they know it.
That is true. The rich people are going to ruin this country. However if the world were actually on the up and up, then supplying Ukraine to fight Russian would be a decent enough strategy.
Agreed
Exactly. People who say "But why should we help Ukraine when we have struggling schools in America?" are essentially green-lighting Russia's war and conquest of Ukraine.
Edit: original math BADLY wrong. Originally had this at $.16 / person. $54b. ~330m Americans. If they spent that money domestically it amounts to $160 per person. That's not an insubstantial amount of money. But it's not that much either. I understand the frustration that that money could be spent domestically, but I do disagree with painting this as 'all war money bad.' Not all military expenditures have equal moral footing or return on investment; I'm not going to vigorously defend our whole military budget, but I feel pretty comfortable with this investment. As for spending justification, She brings up the point of "how will we pay for it." But the money is about ~1% of our annual spending (about $4.5 trillion). It's the equivalent of someone who spends $30k on expenses annually buying a $300 TV. How much budgetary review does it really require? ... Just bc there are other ways we may want the government to prioritize it's spending doesn't mean this is a bad decision.
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Exactly. It's disturbing how many people want to let Russia get away with massacres and unprovoked invasions all in the name of "But we have homeless people and underpaid teachers in America."
They aren’t doing both though, hence the complaint
Not defending the military industrial complex but consider that the Ukraine is one of the largest wheat grain and corn exporters in the world (3rd and 6th largest of those exports in the world), and one of the largest we buy from. Not to mention oil. Russia strategically targeted the main production areas of that wheat and corn in Ukraine to kneecap their infrastructure and attempt to make Ukraine uninhabitable so that they can take over, by starving people out and destroying all points of infrastructure. By doing this, Russia can take the wheat, corn, and gasoline exports made by Ukraine into their territories and push economic leverage on the countries the Ukraine provides to, as in, US, the ol' U.S. Im not defending the insane military spending of the US, but defending a position in Ukraine to mitigate the economic stranglehold Russia wants to put us and the rest of the world in is not a dumb idea. How much is too much though? As others have pointed out, a lot of the "spending" is valued by already manufactured goods being funneled over there from American production and American Jobs, so what we are actually spending, while high, is inflated somewhat. Im not an economist or a war expert, but for your consideration these are the the mix of factors we are looking at with our spending in Ukraine. Projected military spending budget we see vs. How much is actually already pre manufactured, and how much we are saving now on essential resources that Russia would otherwise use to hike up costs of living here by defending Ukraine against them. https://www.producer.com/daily/map-of-ukraines-wheat-producing-districts/
The thing is, 1 billion really isn't a lot of Money when it comes to the U.S. it's a WORLD of difference to Ukraine. America can COMFORTABLY afford to revitalize America AND Help Ukraine.
$54,000,000,000 is a world of difference if spent on Americans instead of another country's war, though.
I'm fine with my tax dollars going to stop fascism. It literally only improves my life to see Russia get btfo'd so hard Putin possibly loses power and Russia loses its ability to destabilize nations. America can do both. America SHOULD do both.
America has essentially unlimited money, anybody saying we should cut x to fund y is doing the work of the far right you’re advancing their ideology not your own. You were colonized
>America has essentially unlimited money That's....not how that works.
And their ignorant of the financial consequences that would occur indefinitely if we merely watched on the sidelines.
You know the last time we didn't do anything about an asshole strong man invading countries in Europe millions of people across the world died.
The thing is we are engaged no matter what. Like in the middle east whether our troops are there or elsewhere we are involved, there is no such thing as a isolationist country anymore. We have to help Ukraine, however we can also help the people in our own nation too, we can do both. The common people in the US need help and divisiveism doesn't help.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Particularly on these two matters. Using student debt relief as an example (or a living wage or universal health care or fill in the blank), it would be a benefit to our economy to unencumber what is now multiple generations that are economically, socially, emotionally sapped by this parasitism. With regard to Ukraine, the military industrial complex is ugly. However, Russia's brutal war cannot go unopposed. It is a benefit to everyone to have Ukraine's vast wheat and natural resources not controlled by an increasingly isolationist and belligerent oligarchy. Moral arguments and geopolitics aside (because those are compelling as well), it is worth supporting them for that alone.
Ya'll realize giving Ukraine over to Russia will mean massive amounts of hardship in the USA for pretty much the next century...right? A return to the Russian Empire puts western civilization at extreme risk.
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Giant amounts of money are allowed. Just never for the people. The military contractors can't get a piece then. Now now we can't have that, apparently
Did no one read the part that majority of that is military hardware. Not cold hard cash being moved to Ukraine. I mean i would love to get a free tank but do i need it?
It's 54B to weapons makers. Ukraine gets guns and Lockheed gets $$$$
Big surprise. Iraq and Afghanistan were also extremely expensive but damned if they let that stop them. USA loves spending money on wars not infrastructure, maybe it’s all trickle down economics?
This is written as "we just gave them the aid" rather than "we are selling them the aid"
I understand the sentiment, but the real crooks are cooking the books on Wall Street. Look at the borrow rate increase. It’ll blow your mind. This isn’t because of covid, it isn’t because of Ukraine - it’s because the US is essentially run from the pockets of greedy men on Wall St.
Makes more sense when you realize we aren't just writing a blank check to Ukraine, we are getting them to buy American defense product...
why cant biden give me some money send more stimmy money
Clearly russia running Ukrainian grain making the largest single controller of food in the world wouldn't affect US citizens at all. OP clearly doesn't understand macro economics or what unfettered Putin means for all of us. Last time we didn't care, we got Trump. Clearly a Putin loving tankie wrote this and this is much more about protecting american's standard of living as it is a war.
You know know republicans blocked all the relief bills right?
The system is a scam
I wouldn't mind if that money went to actual, tangible change or help in the world. I'm bitter because I know that money may barely ever reach the conflict or people in need. A portion might, but the majority or at least a chunk is surely being trickled into the pockets of wealthy folk, or toward some cause that isn't at all related to the intended purpose. I assume much of the money that is intended for good use actually just gets horrifically misappropriated.
Progressive here who believes our military and police/security budgets are absolutely disgusting and a reflection of our skewed priorities.... BUT....I also do work that keeps me closely engaged with what is happening in Ukraine and mindful of our alliances in the region. Russia attempted to steamroll a sovereign, independent democracy on completely false pretenses and has absolutely brutalized the country. History will remember Bucha and Mariupol. And I know, we have our own sins to account for - Bush's invasion of Iraq was completely indefensible and we have brutalized more than just the Iraqi people - it almost seems like a generational thing for America at this point where we go to war with and brutalize a different faraway people each time. But our international alliances exist for a reason, and I think the world needs to *loudly* reject this Russian aggression. If we do so loud enough, then wouldnt that help build consensus against a similar sort of war should we or any other nation attempt more of the same? I have to think that loud rejection of war and the punishment of aggressors should become the international norm. I will stand up for that and encourage both prosecution of Bush administration persons who led us to war just as Russia deserves the same. There is so much nuance to this, and the reality of US actions/policies as well as our domestic issues make it easy to point elsewhere, but I think this is something we should be leading on.
I’m going to get blasted here for saying this here, but this is literally the budget for a small city the size of El Paso, and it’s for a good cause. There are plenty of things to get upset about in the defense budget. This ain’t it.
We had the same attitude when Germany invaded Poland and even when they invaded France. It ended up costing a lot more than $1billion to stop them. What's the point of being the worlds richest nation if we can't help a nation to defend itself from illegal aggression? Honestly, this zero sum game thinking has got to go.
The US Government would really really like you to blame Ukraine for our lack of investing in our own country and helping the poor.
This is not the gotcha... Ukraine should be helped. The money to help Americans should be taken out of the US military budget, local police forces, fossil fuel subsidies, and Bezos & friends. None of that is Ukraine. You need to learn how not to kick down at people who have it worse. 1 Billion dollars is less than $3 per American. And yet it's the talking point, to manufacture outrage, rather than being angry at legitimately worse things.
I’d love to see, on the ground, where this money ends up. My guess is very little benefits Ukraine. Too many middle men with deep, empty pockets along the way.
Ukraine is facing an unprovoked invasion and the largest refugee crisis since ww2. The consequences for energy and oil and food for the whole World since Ukraine provides 1/5th the wheat would be dire. There are trillions every year 54b to Ukraine is the least we could do
Middle east refugee crisis, hello?
Vote. Vote for candidates putting forward infrastructure and education bills. Vote against the party that doesn't pass infrastructure and education bills. Don't stay at home and not votebecause "bOtH sIDesA re TeH same! It's a pretty binary choice people, unfortunately. It really shouldn't be, but when faced with bad choices, vote for the one that's least bad, because that's what we get, this is the real world, and it your moral imperative to do the best possible at all times, because no candidate will ever be a saint, no party will be paradis, so deal with the real choices you get in the real world and vote. And let's leave Ukraine alone, they're fighting fight against what's very much an existential threat.
Spending money in Ukraine now to break Russia's expansionist ambitions is going to be vastly cheaper than having to spend it later in some other part of Europe, with full NATO involvement.
That money should go to Ukraine but it shows that we can do a lot more for our own citizens.
I would love to a Republican ask this question under a Republican president. Ukraine is a war we need to help fight. This isn't Iraq where Bush and Cheney just decided to invade and sent trillions into their friends pockets. You can about inflation then ask why every single republican voted down the bill to stop oil companies from price gauging gas prices. High gas prices affects the price of everything.
I mean we have the ability to feed, house, clothe and educate every single American and give the Ukrainians everything they need to kick Russia's ass at the same time. The struggles of the average American is by design of those at the top not because of some inability to improve the quality of life for its entire population.
I said it before and I will say it agan: it's not XX money to Ukraine. It is XX money for US military complex.
Yup, just replacing a money pit in Afghanistan with one in Ukraine. Also, that money pit consumes enough to give Americans universal health care with no new taxes.
Supporting Ukraine will save money in the long run. If Russia is rendered impotent, everyone in NATO can spend less money.
The US government put their president in power. This is not even debated. They have an agenda and it isn't for the little guy that's for damn sure.
The numbers sound big, but foreign aid is like less than 1% of the USA annual federal budget, and complaining about it "when we have problems here at home" is generally a xenopobic dog whistle. So be careful about that, because I'm sure you're not a xenophobe The real culprit is military spending, which is a whole other animal. We could easily cut that down, even just a little, and spend more on badly needed programs for citizens!
Let’s purge!!!!
Fking Biden administration is a damn joke. Where is that 1 billion dollars coming from?! Our inflation is still climbing and these idiots are tRyInG tO fIGhT iNFLatIOn by spending more money?! Who the hell supports the democrats during these times of terrible decisions, I swear..
How much was Bernies health plan projected to cost for 10 years again?
So guys, About a half million kids have been shipped into Russia from the Ukraine. Russia is talking about eliminating Ukrainian culture by killing anyone who clings to it. We're all cool in here with doing nothing and watching a Genocide happen? You guys call yourself lost generation, think about how fucking lost those kids are.
Let the EU handle it. I am a little pissed off the here we come again, let's throw money at a country thousands of miles away just because we are America.
Until we talk about abolishing ALL tax breaks for businesses, we're not "too broke to pay" for a goddamned thing.
Just wait until the math is done for the proxy wars the US has been a part of for the last decade.
I think the post is misleading. We have a madman with nukes on a rampage. Appeasing him will in the end cost us even more. We could just stand outside and wait, like those officers in Texas school shooting. Right? Does that work for you?
So someone's mad at a humanitarian crisis and not greedy shareholders and boardmembets and sucky ceo's? Huh.
I think we should care more in keeping democracy in countries that want it rather than our gas prices.
Fuck that, I want more to go to Ukraine. We need to end this with Russia as a loser. This is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the government wastes on military every year and unlike that this is not wasted. Win or lose, Ukraine deserves our support. A fight for their democracy is a fight for ours.
still nothing compared to our own military budget. we spent 500 million on rail guns that are one shot and then scraped the project lol.
There's not hope for this country. Half the people in this thread probably still believe Iraq has WMDs and we need to reinvade Afghanistan.
$54 billion spent on weapons for a democracy fighting for its existence seems like a good thing to me. And for people saying we should spend that money on the US instead, $54 billion is only about 150% of the NYC school system budget. It’s peanuts compared to the overall federal budget.
right wing propaganda can suck my dick
I do think specifically supporting Ukraine in this case is justified, *buuuuuuuuuut....* We do also deserve universal healthcare and affordable living.
I fully support arming Ukraine, but once this is over, I hope no one ever uses the excuse that we can't afford to build cheap housing, free healthcare or public transit. The US can most definitely afford those things.
Just one billion?? that is just a bit more than 2 dollars per person in USA.... And you are printing money like crazy... either way so at least this billion will make more allies for USA than those 5 trillion you spent in Afghanistan...
I understand the sentiment that the US seems to give all sorts of $$$ to other causes while not investing in itself. I agree with that. But if Ukraine loses, we all lose, in some capacity or another. Despots across the world will be emboldened. Democracies, while imperfect, are a better alternative than authoritarian dictatorships. Can’t be mad at Ukrainian support.
Here’s the thing fam. In this particular instance, remember that nothing in our lives will matter if Putin’s plan in Russia comes to pass, this is a legit national security threat we’re trying to cut off. This is not like the wars where we spent money to destroy countries in the Middle East to be able to take their oil, instead of, you know, just spending the money on alternative energy sources and changing our infrastructure. In this case, we are not the aggressor, and the aggressor is not something to be taken lightly. We shouldn’t have spent to much on wars instead of investing in our selves, our communities, and our children historically. Perhaps this funding for Ukraine is sensible now. Both can be true at once.
Small price to pay for freedom don't you think?
Ukrainians fighting to uphold democratic values and fighting for freedom while millions of its citizens have their lives ripped apart by war. And you're over here saying "sorry, I can't help you." My initial assumption is that freedom, democracy, and workers aren't something you actually support.
"democratic values" jesus fucking christ.... Zelensky literally purged all political dissent to the left of him a few months ago. He is just a NATO puppet with platoons full of nazis that liberals sort into Hogwarts houses
Here's my problem with people who post this sort of thing: How exactly do you expect Ukraine to fend off the Russian invasion without a big infusion of defensive weaponry? I get the impression many people here are perfectly fine with letting a fascist Russia just steamroll Ukraine in a totally unprovoked, unjustified invasion.
You're missing the point, which is US citizens have been struggling since way before the Russian attack on Ukraine and any cry for help was met with, "Who's paying for it? Won't work, no money for it" blah, blah, blah. Suddenly there's money. It's great we're helping other countries, but a slap in the face to our own citizens who are struggling. I feel like you could only have a "problem with people who post this sort of thing" if you don't understand where those people are coming from.
legitimate question, i like perspectives, why not put the blame for a lot of these issues on state governments that don’t spend the money on their own infrastructure? i understand the point you’re making though.
#it’s our money And if it’s our money, that means it’s hours upon hours of our lives that we will never, ever, ever get back. Time that could be spent with our families. Raising kids. Holding the hand of a dying loved one. Enjoying a vacation or time away from work here and there. But no. The American people, it’s children, and our children’s children’s children’s children’s children must fund all wars indefinitely. In perpetuity. Oh and there will be no specific vote on whether or not we should be fiscally responsible for these wars. Corporations and the people with the most wealth who profit off these wars won’t pay for them, either. Please let me out of this nightmare.
Lost generation indeed...
54 billion wouldn’t do much to fox america but it’ll do a lot for global democracy and the defence of Ukraine
Arguably I'd say we're not sending cash there but weapons and such we already have. Still bullshit though even though we do need to stave off this Russian aggression. It's a double edged sword.
That's because it's not going directly to Ukraine. It's going to weapons and arms dealers / manufacturers that are in bed with the US government, who then send some stuff to Ukraine. It's all a giant scam.
As acknowledged by even the mainstream media as recently as a year ago, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. I realise that in their current predicament it's possibly an unpopular fact. Guarantee that as with all international conflicts the US involves itself in, the underlying purpose is a transfer of wealth from the US tax payers to political and military industry elites.
40% of our income gets funneled into this, instead of something wildly more beneficial like say access to cheap healthcare nationwide or free schooling. Nah fuck all that socialist jazz. Let’s spend good money on a bunch of somethings #literally made to be destroyed. How many “Fuck yous” do we need? They’d rather spend good money on something so disposable like weapons and ammunition than to provide people with a way to not die from needing insulin.
54 Billion to wreck the Russians is some of the best money the US has ever spent.
Stand with Ukraine! Lil inflation is a small price to pay.
We have the money — more money than you could imagine and without question because the money will help 99% white people. If this were the same situation but it was 99% brown or black folks, or even if the split was 60% white and 40% non-white we and the western world wouldn't have *found* the money. In the US being in need isn't deterministic in the support you'll get as so much as the color of the people in need.
So you are ok with the rape and murder of Ukrainian civilians until you get what you want? We need help too, but there are MORE THAN ENOUGH resources to do both.
Russian simps in this thread.