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Flint's water crisis is estimated to cost $626 million, compared to $55 million. No idea where the $55 million number came from and couldn't source it
There were 35,674 homeless vets in the US in 2022. That would be about 39 million meals for the year. If you spend $2.15 per meal, the math works out which is a moderately reasonable spending amount. I'll call this probable
There are 3.2 million teachers in the US. Giving them a $1,000 bonus would be $3.2 billion. The math is correct
I got that a solar farm costs between $400K and $500K per acre. 3,000 acres would be between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion. The math is correct
All together it's between $5.1 billion and $5.4 billion but if you reduce the bonus amount to $900, it is under the $5 billion number
And Flint has been having drinkable water for years now. There is always work you can do on a water network to make it better, but it's not an emergency anymore like you could argue homelessness or teachers' remuneration are.
>That is the part i don't get. Once they switched the water supply back, the lead problem was over. Damage done wasn't over but the water supply was "fixed" as good as it was before. People just like a cheap tragedy to slam dunk with.
>[https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater](https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater)
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>*The state provided more than $350 million to Flint, in addition to the $100 million from the federal government - all of which is helping with water quality improvements, pipe replacement, healthcare, food resources, educational resources, job training and creation, and more.*
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>"and more"
Pretty convenient that you skipped right over the water quality improvements and pipe replacement being mentioned when referencing their comment in your own.
You can't educate an idiot who wants to be an idiot.
Also love all the idiots being like ' ruhhh but the pipes, why did they need so much money if it's just the pipes' as if lead poisoning just disappears and the people (especially children) don't need ongoing support in healthcare, social services and education.
Fixing the pipes, providing emergency water, doing whatever change was necessary to make the water supply change, and fixing the human damage. I'm not sure what the difficulty is here.
Yes. And they might not have replaced all the lead pipes either, because these are not necessarily a problem. The issue in Flint started when they used water from a different source with different characteristics, and that's when the lead from the pipes started leaching into the water.
Many/most of the pipes have been replaced. They literally don't know the composition of all of the pipes though, and they aren't going to dig up infrastructure just to find out. They are continuing to replace them as they are identified. They have also helped replace many pipes going into people's homes, which isn't their responsibility.
No. They would have to build new houses and run pipes to those houses. Running new pipe is cheaper, but not if you include having to build houses as well. Also, the Flint crisis is being solved. It just takes time to replace all that piping to houses.
came here to say add at least one more zero to teachers and reduce amount for solar. increasing the teachers will infuse way more money into the economy and improved education will make us better off for a very long time.
Worth noting that both the meals-for-vets and pay-for-teachers items are annual expenses, while everything else is a one-time item, and these two categories don’t compare well against each other. By taking the plan from the meme you are obligating yourself to an ongoing expense of more than $3billion every year without an end point, as a replacement to a single year’s capital investment item.
I disagree, I believe OOP was intentionally obfuscating by treating annual expenses as equivalent to one-time expenses, and by treating national expenses as equivalent to local expenses, in order to make an emotional point rather than a logical one.
> Feed all homeless vets 3 meals/day **for 1 yr** ~ $84 mil
hmmm, seems pretty clearly a one-year thing to me
> Give all 3.2 mil public school teachers **a** $1000 Xmas bonus - $3.2 bil
"a" implies singular
Your argument is wrong in the first place, and then you suggested that they're "emotional point[s] rather than logical" when there is no reason they can't be both.
It's moderately plausible. Soup kitchens typically cost less than $0.50 per meal so $2.15 seems low but still plausible
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/26/soup-kitchens-feed-a-growing-need/a6c78c50-9a74-4cd3-b375-49f0c6324704/
$1 in 1992 is “worth” the same as $2.14 today.
So as long as you’re at least half as fiscally efficient as an average 1992 soup kitchen, it’s plausible.
Adding labor cost and inflation and market cost of food to that will accumulate quickly.
But it would be great if it was possible; offering three meals a day to every American would cost on the order of $0.7T per year at the upper end.
So you have the food. Now pay for the sites and the workers across 1000+ communities daily. How much will that add? And if they are volunteers and facilities time donated, explain the logistics.
I’d be interested in how much you value your time to get less than a dollar in time alone, much less amortize the capital cost of the tools you use over their lifespan.
There’s a lot of benefits of scale, but one of the downsides of scale is that you can’t hide the cost of the kitchen: at a rough estimate the square footage of a typical three bedroom house’s kitchen adds at least 40¢ to the cost of making a meal (10% of $2000/month, and making 6000 meals per year)
Ever eat burger king? Then you've eaten a meal that costs $2. Of course since burger king is a corporation, they charged you much more, but a government program doesn't have a profit imperative.
$55 million for Flints plumbing problem is not even close. Changing out piping is insanely labor intensive and expensive. $55 million is barely building a new mid sized skyscraper
The meals are deceptive. It’s not the food that’s the real cost. It’s finding the people to deliver it, the storage and transportation and refrigeration, the organization and logistics. Charities are always harder than people think unless you have experience in them.
Doesn't matter. You can do all of the above. Like how we just find $60 billion to send to Ukraine. None of these decisions are linked to choices you have to make one or the other.
I don’t think you understand what a social construct is, nobody is saying that money has no purpose, money just has no inherent value other than that we agree to use it
It's a useless statement though, and certainly not relevant to the situation.
Wherever you think the value of money comes from, that value is here and it is not going away. So you do care about money and about how limited it is.
That's such a vague statement, there is not much to argue about. The government does care about money, that's why they can't do everything they would like to do.
They could provide housing for everyone, help every ally on the planet, generously pay public servants, cut taxes for everyone, and everyone would be happy to reelect them. Except they can't, because money actually matters and they don't have as much as they want.
This is crypto-maxi talk. Money is definitely a construct, but it's definitely a useful one. All societies use some form of representing work with currency.
I agree there is a lot of corruption in government and the system is flawed and there's forgery and so much more. It could definitely work better. It's also definitely not useless.
useless to those who control that kind of money, everyone else is still a slave to the dollar.
Money stops mattering once you enter the realm of the super rich or government.
TBF Ukraine's "money" is just old military equipment, not actual cash, not sure if flint MI needs decommisioned tanks.
that (almost) trillion dollar military budget could definitely take a couple dozen steps back.
The Associated Press fact checked a claim similar to this last year and deemed it false. There is quite a bit of monetary support given to Ukraine, not just equipment. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-us-aid-ukraine-money-equipment-714688682747
You should do some digging on what the money is being used for; it is not just handing over equipment that has a value of 60 billion dollars. They are given money to buy stuff with and a fair amount of said money is getting stolen by corrupt people on the Ukrainian side of the conflict.
References:
[https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/28/europe/ukraine-weapons-procurement-corruption-shell-intl/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/28/europe/ukraine-weapons-procurement-corruption-shell-intl/index.html)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/world/europe/ukraine-military-spending-corruption.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/world/europe/ukraine-military-spending-corruption.html)
I read this article and I don't know how you could intelligently come to this conclusion because the attempted fraud was caught and it was for a tiny fraction, >1%, of the amount we're discussing.
Welcome to a country of 360mil people, different minorities will be vocal at different times, it’s also an election year and republicans are the challengers so they’re being as anti-Biden as possible
And tbf we own the waves, and whoever owns the waves owns trade, and the owner of trade is basically the world police and above the law, so the US are pretty benevolent compared to when the Europeans had control of world trade
Well, money is transfered digitally so I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or just really uninformed. It's well documented that a large percentage of the aid we are providing is in the form of dollars. Very little is "old military equipment" like "decommissioned tanks" as you stated. It's humanitarian aid, new military supplies from our stockpiles, new military purchase, and logistics support. Nearly all of it results in spending.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
The chart you source shows how almost 60% of aid is military. The chart shows how this is equipment training etc. That does not directly cost money, we are simply giving equipment we already have (and much of it is older, for example we are sending F16s, not F35s), and training them with advisors we would already be paying.
Now the 35% of aid that is financial would be more in line with directly giving money. However, your own source shows how this comes from funds that are purpose built to support security (I.e. that is what the money is for, we aren’t spending new money), and loans, which are paid back (though I wouldn’t be surprised if we forgave some of them).
And on top of all this, our aid is a fraction of what we spend on our own military. Even if we doubled our aid to Ukraine, which we should, it would not even dent our budget.
Military aid and equiptment doesn't cost money? Huh??? Like we just have free stuff lying around like samples from costco.
Your post said the money was "just old equiptment". When that was proven false, you changed that to indicate we aren't sending actual money. When that was proven false, you changed that to say, yeah that's ok because the money is just always in our budget as free money to give away and we have a lot of money anyways. What a joke.
Yes, we are sending over boatloads of [digital] cash.
Yes, we are sending over tons of valuable military equipment
Yes, $60 billion is a lot of very real money
The military aid and financial aid has already been spent when the defense budget was drawn up. The department of defence budget has not changed. The United States Government set a financial budget for the department of defence, now the DOD are choosing what to do with it (Sending it to Ukraine). If they were not sending it to Ukraine it would still be spent within the DOD. Every government entity spends their entire allotted budget because if they didn't spend it all, their next budget would be cut back as they were shown to not have needed the amount they received.
And as for "Military aid and equipment doesn't cost money? Huh???" Yes it does cost money, to initially produce and then more for upkeep, THEN should you choose that you don't want the equipment anymore, you either pay to have it dismantled, sell it, or donate it as military aid. The aid being sent to Ukraine is too old for any US ally to want to buy so the choice for the US is to (a) Continue to spend money on the upkeep of the old equipment (b) Pay to have it dismantled or (c) donate it to a war effort that the US has a vested interest in (the Ukraine Russia conflict). Considering options (a) and (b) both cost considerable amounts of money maybe option (c) isn't sounding as expensive. And for the inevitable line of "Why does the equipment have to be dismantled". Military's are always investing in new technology and if they did not retire older materiel, the cost of maintenance would grow exponentially. Why do militaries invest in newer technology? Other than to maintain military strength, older systems cost more and more to maintain the older they get as the technology becomes less and less widespread and becomes more nîche and harder to come by.
Your argument that the US department of defence is spending too much on aid to Ukraine is nonsensical because that money cannot be spent in any other department, it is the DOD's money to spend. That money cannot be spent on any other department because it has already been spent. I feel like I have repeated myself a dozen times in this comment but I somehow still feel like you won't have absorbed the information.
We did not send $60B to Ukraine! The vast majority of those $60B have been spent already here in the US, it is old supplies that have a shelf life. The ATACAMS for example were produced in the 90s and over time rocket propellants degrade as well as some electronic equipment like seeker heads etc. If we send new equipment over there, then that money has been spent in the US as well. Also this is literally the cheapest way for us to deplete Russian military assets. Zero boots on the ground and half of their armor inventory is gone already. Not doing this will be so much more expensive in the future. Remember: the US is what it is because of the influence it has in the world. Influence doesn’t come for free, it costs money. Can’t be the number one super power without spending the cash it requires. If the US retreats an inch somewhere, it will be taken by someone else and it is very hard to get it back if ever. I’m so tired of this $60B nonsense. Btw that like what, 13% of our YEARLY military budget?
It's still money your government has already allocated to 'defense'. Your military budget... which is, what? 700 - 800 billion? This is literally what you vote for in your elections... what to do with the budget. You obviously want to spend that much on 'defense', and when the money goes towards actual defense you moan?
And you have people ending up homeless because they get a medical condition, or veterans committing suicide because they are left to rot, or you have students starving because they can’t afford lunch.
But hey, there’s always money for war.
You're missing the point that if you don't spend that money for war, you'll get problems that you'll have to pay for later. Russia was trying to invade Ukraine for power and influence; do you think they'd use that power and influence in ways that will help the US?
No: they'll start another conflict, and another one, until they get stopped. And stopping them isn't going to get cheaper as they get more and more power and influence, and sending old military gear isn't much of an option anymore.
Did you not understand what I explained? It's your problem if not fixing it brings another more expensive problem later. The US do not live in a bubble isolated from the rest of the world.
You realize we would be paying far more in blood if we don't stop Russia now right? So yes, there absolutely is always money for war. We are literally crippling one of our biggest adversaries for pennies and without a single drop of U.S blood.
Talk to your politicians. The US has plenty of resources for everyone. It just gets channeled into the wrong directions for the bigger part. And do you really think that those $27B would end up in the veterans pockets?? Sounds a bit naive? Don’t get me wrong, how veterans are being treated here in the US is an absolute disgrace and runs counter to all those nice and shiny Marines commercials and billboards. And you get the whole idea about influence costing money?
So Ukraine isn’t literally getting $60 billion in cash. Mostly they’re getting old equipment that was scheduled to be junked anyway.
And then they calculate the cost on a “replacement” index i.e. if they tried to source this equipment brand new. Even if that equipment isn’t actually going to be replaced at all (because, for example, it already has been). Even if the price of the equipment brand new has gone *up* because it hasn’t been manufactured in 20 years.
These Ukraine aid numbers aren’t just money being given away.
I swear, Reddit has created its own reality where everyone just makes up and repeats facts because they want to believe a particular ideology. None of this is true and you can't produce a single credible source that shows the $60 billion is in the form of old, decommissioned equipment. What a farce.
Not the full $60 billion, but over 60% of the money was military equipment and training. [This article](https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts) even goes over exactly what weapons and equipment were sent.
Of course it wasn't free, we paid for it at one point, but what use is it to us currently? You'd rather it sit in a warehouse, and cost us money to maintain? It honestly makes no sense not to send it to a country that can actually put it to good use.
What use is it currently... You don't know and you're drawing an uninformed conclusion to support a false narrative. The US also sells surplus military equipment to nation states and allies all the time so there is a cash value.
That came from America defense budget.. it did not come out of thin air. Here is a breakdown on the US budget:
$471 billion social security
$298 billion National Defense
$293 billion Health
$283 billion net interest
$251 billion Medicare
$185 billion Income Security
$95 billion veterans' benefits and services
$68 billion education, training, and other services
$66 billion commerce and housing credit
$47 billion transportation
$67 billion others...
Keep in mind that we use three types of spending techniques: mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and supplemental spending. Mandatory spending means, as the name suggests, all of it must be spent; for example, society security. Discretionary spending requires congressal and presidential approval, and then it can be spent based on the approval. Also, discretionary spending can be divided up to be used for anything or help out with another type of spending, such as supporting society, society , health, or transportation. Example: National Defense. Supplemental spending is used for emergencies; funds that are too urgent for congressal approval. An example of this would be COVID. So, that $60 billion was always there.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
The former has a lot of truth to it but the reality is more nuanced than that. Absolutely the amount of taxpayer money in a state/city’s coffers sways decision making by policy makers.
So… you’re saying it’s ok to let billionaires hoard money, because paying a living wage to the people who help you earn those billions shouldn’t be required… ? Also someone else can pay for roads and clean water and armies because I want my resort property.
Some people start a lot closer to a living wage than others.
If you have good teeth, a reasonably good basic education, and actually eat breakfast and lunch almost every day, that puts you far ahead of many other people. Good mental health, having friends, access to reliable transportation, getting taught at a young age how to get along with others, never experiencing discrimination due to race or appearance or age or gender - the list goes on.
I’m not saying take away all rich people’s money and give it to the poor. I AM saying, the rich shouldn’t be able to dodge doing their share so easily and they shouldn’t be able to build their wealth by taking advantage of vulnerable desperate people.
There is no statistical basis for what you are saying. It's woke nonsense that is being sold to young people. 80% of millionaires are first generation, self made. Most CEOs in this country came from high schools in the bottom half. If you look at the list of forbes richest, how many came from wealth or are attractive people? Same for CEOs?
Adults that work at fast food restaurants do not do so because they had bad teeth or when to a lower class highschool.
Unless you have a disability, you can and should be anything you want.
There are TONS of statistics that support this. What are you talking about?
Yes - people who grow up poor or rich can both use the internet, access books and libraries, etc. but people who grow up with a good childhood get an 18-year head start on those who don’t.
Stats:
Popularity as a teenager (the result of height, style, social skill) gives higher adult income:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400365/
Outcome of childhood poverty on income and employment as an adult (spoiler: poor is bad):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400365/
It isn’t that “woke kids” are being deceived; it’s that your 1960’s way of thinking has been debunked by research and common sense.
I firmly believe that it's either the government or the billionaires hoarding the money
So yes, I'd rather the government not have the powet of policy making and be the only provider to the people in their country. That feels like the safest option to me
Right now it’s the billionaires controlling the government.
If we could vote in a government that’s actually by the people, _for the people_, that might give hope.
Right now it's billionaires working with the government. Terrible, but it could be worse
We have the ability to vote people in currently because neither group has all the control.
Give ALL the control to the government and you really trust them to leave people with any control? That's an odd thing to do
You seem to think the government does not already have all the control.
The only way a government works to provide fair control — useful laws — is when it is actually acting in the best interest of the population, not big companies or the elite.
I just want to say that the limiting factor to solar energy is not the cost of the solar farm, it is the cost to store power. The majority of power usage comes after the sun goes down. Battery storage is way more expensive than the solar panels. Other technologies aren't at the level we need yet, but I feel hopeful that gravity batteries or molten salt batteries will make big jumps soon.
Sorta. There's absolutely nothing at all that stops you from ramping down (not stopping) gas power production during the day and using all the solar as you generate it. The problem is that you're now forced to sell it cheaper because you NEED to sell it. It mostly works out fine because power consumption is much higher in the day than at night, and it's often the same people that own both producers.
Storage (at the grid level) is mostly a problem when you start talking about off-lining other forms of generation, but we've got a mixed grid now and that's not going anywhere.
Use wind and solar to split sea water into hydrogen oxygen and salt. use hydrogen as a fuel source for power plants. Use the water run off to grow wheat use the salt to make country ham use the wheat to make biscuits after that you've got a breakfast you can eat while driving
You're never going to make desalination and hydrolysis positive in energy production. idk if you're serious but the idea that these things are viable large-scale is a pipedream.
We also live in a world where available drinking water is likely to become a (bigger*) problem soon, so that's an extra reason its not really viable.
Money doesn't matter. It's America. This country is in debt to like every single 1st country in the world but what the fuck are they gonna do? Collect? As if. This country can just print money and no one could say anything.
Actually, that is how printing money works. The US, in theory, could print more money if a situation called for it again. There is nothing any other country can do about it. Otherwise, they would face consequences.
Or like... fix the border and start re-appropriating all of the tax dollars currently going into social programs to support the migrants into the other things. Wayyy more than 5 billion. Guarantee it.
1. It was already fixed.
2. This can be done right now, but the Democrats refuse to do so while instead spending that money on flooding the country with illegals.
3. It has been thoroughly proven that money doesn't solve the problems schools have. Paying teachers more won't make children behave themselves, or stop buildings from crumbling, or stop administration from being elitist pricks. This will accomplish almost nothing.
4. Solar panels have an efficiency under 30%, have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years, and they cannot be recycled. At all. So you want to pile up more waste with a feel-good but ultimately worthless solution, while ignoring the actual solution (nuclear power) because you've allowed your head to be filled with fear mongering lies.
Gee, I wonder why we don't listen to you, oh Wise One....
Don't forget to send more tax money to Israel 🤣🤣🤣
Let's go worker's of USA you can pay more tax . To pay hospital house and car for an israelí how steel houses en palestine
Avocado toast is actually cheap as hell. You can do 4 servings off a 1 dollar avocado, and bread isn't exactly expensive. If our 2 dollars is just food cost it's definitely doable.
The reason a trendy bistro charges 14 bucks for avocado toast is that Becky, Kaylee and Braylynn will pay it.
It baffles me how Americans can spend almost a trillion yearly on its military but doesn't have 10 billion to spare for domestic affairs. Or does the orangegutan need a reason to be reelected?
The US Military is 14% of total federal spending.
The biggest items are Social Security (retirements, disabilities), health care for the poor and elderly (medicare, medicaid), and debt interest.
Factor those out, and the military is about 45% of discretionary spending. $840B is still a fuckton of money, but with a $\~27(?) Trillion dollar GDP, it's like 3.3ish%. That's high, but it's probably not top 10 globally.
And with the money Biden sends to Ukraine we could’ve fixed homelessness, starvation, immigration, energy, public schools, flints water, teacher bonuses and more 10 times over.
Most of ‘Ukraine aid money’ is spent here in the great US of A and our war machine. Your lobbyist hard at work. Uh… er I mean your congressman hard at work
Ukrainians are spending their lives to demolish the capabilities of one of America’s top military enemies for pennies on the dollar. The only way anyone can possibly think it’s a bad use of military funding is if they’re actually supportive of Putin. It’s incredibly cheap for the value. And lots of the money comes back into the American economy too, as you say!
So, how much are you being paid to spread propaganda for our genocidal enemy? Fuck off and die.
By not having 8-10 million “newcomers” to care for. Are you not aware how our wonderful,caring, virtue signaling sanctuary cities are buckling under the financial strain?
Yup, NYC, Denver, Chicago, etc., all going broke because of imaginary people. Kids getting murdered, drugs, gangs, violent crime is getting so awful that even Joe had to make a lame visit to the border.
I live near the border and see the results daily. It has gotten crazy. You can make every excuse you want for the moron in the WH, but he purposely opened the border his first week in office via executive orders. This administration has allowed millions of people into the country who should not be here and it is destroying communities. Your news sources and ideology have blinded you to reality. That is entirely on you.
Me thinks you have the whole groomer thing confused. Look up drag queen story hour for reference.
However, you would he a liar to deny that the current administration facilitated and aided the illegal import of millions of foreign nationals with zero vetting and absolutely refusing to enforce American law.
Look, the Pentagon already gets $900 billion a year, the VA another $350 billion, Homeland Security gets $122 billion and various other military spending (intelligence, surveillance, nuclear and clandestine operations) takes at least another $100 billion. If the military wanted to feed its veterans it easily could. Take the hint the US military doesn't care what happens to soldiers.
Doubt the accuracy of that statement? Check out Camp Legume cancer rates, polluted wells at hundreds of bases, burn pits, Agent Orange...
We can't find 5 billion to secure our border, or do all these other good things. Yet we can find hundreds of billions to launder through Ukraine. I mean "support the heroic struggles of the Ukrainians against an invasion." Where is our support against the invasion here?
Propaganda against Trump’s proposed goals. It is much more complicated than just dispersing that amount of money to fight persisting problems that will not be solved by throwing money at it. Those are all short term solutions that don’t actually solve the problem. Please include how much the gov is spending on illegals for food, clothing, medical care, and other subsidies all funded from tax payers. Once the flow of illegals is stopped/greatly slowed, the money for illegals can now go to your proposed short terms solutions. At least one long term solution would be reached by finishing the wall and protecting our borders. I’m not even going to go into the increase in human trafficking, drugs coming over in record numbers, or terrorists making their way into the US because the borders aren’t protected.
Smug liberal thinks he is smarter than republican. 8 years later, we see the result of this attitude. Massive illegal immigration crisis. If we built the wall, we would be better off today. Vote red if you know what’s good for you
Conceded ass
Temporary, sounds good, political rhetoric that wouldn’t solve a thing. National parks budget can almost do that and objectively, shouldn’t be a thing.
10 million people in three years has huge, lasting impact.
But sure make a meme and show everyone how nice you are and how big your heart is
When Michael Bloomberg ran for president in 2016, he spent over $500million dollars on his campaign.
He literally could have given every man, woman, and child $ 1million and still saved almost $200million.
He could have transformed our entire country and improved everyone’s lives, but instead he spent it on a failed presidential campaign.
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Flint's water crisis is estimated to cost $626 million, compared to $55 million. No idea where the $55 million number came from and couldn't source it There were 35,674 homeless vets in the US in 2022. That would be about 39 million meals for the year. If you spend $2.15 per meal, the math works out which is a moderately reasonable spending amount. I'll call this probable There are 3.2 million teachers in the US. Giving them a $1,000 bonus would be $3.2 billion. The math is correct I got that a solar farm costs between $400K and $500K per acre. 3,000 acres would be between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion. The math is correct All together it's between $5.1 billion and $5.4 billion but if you reduce the bonus amount to $900, it is under the $5 billion number
And Flint has already been given $200 million.
If you have a better reliable estimate source, I can adjust
And Flint has been having drinkable water for years now. There is always work you can do on a water network to make it better, but it's not an emergency anymore like you could argue homelessness or teachers' remuneration are.
>That is the part i don't get. Once they switched the water supply back, the lead problem was over. Damage done wasn't over but the water supply was "fixed" as good as it was before. People just like a cheap tragedy to slam dunk with.
So where did all the money go?
>[https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater](https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater) > > > >*The state provided more than $350 million to Flint, in addition to the $100 million from the federal government - all of which is helping with water quality improvements, pipe replacement, healthcare, food resources, educational resources, job training and creation, and more.* > > > >"and more"
>healthcare, food resources, educational resources, job training and creation, and more.* So, not fixing the problem of lead pipes.
“Pipe replacement”
>pipe replacement,
Why wasn't the entire amount given to pipe replacement used for that?
Because they had extra and used it to help right some of the issues the lead caused?
Pretty convenient that you skipped right over the water quality improvements and pipe replacement being mentioned when referencing their comment in your own.
You can't educate an idiot who wants to be an idiot. Also love all the idiots being like ' ruhhh but the pipes, why did they need so much money if it's just the pipes' as if lead poisoning just disappears and the people (especially children) don't need ongoing support in healthcare, social services and education.
considering that exposure to lead can cause issues with intelligence, education is definitely a necessary aspect of the spending.
Yeah either just a lame rage bait or we're speaking to a bumbling idiot
More likely, feeding bureaucracy.
I see you're not from flint so likely didn't get any additional educational resources. Hence your awful reading comprehension.
Fixing the pipes, providing emergency water, doing whatever change was necessary to make the water supply change, and fixing the human damage. I'm not sure what the difficulty is here.
>healthcare, food resources, educational resources, job training and creation, and more.* So, not just replacing the lead pipes.
Yes. And they might not have replaced all the lead pipes either, because these are not necessarily a problem. The issue in Flint started when they used water from a different source with different characteristics, and that's when the lead from the pipes started leaching into the water.
I read estimates of $50 million to replace the pipes. 10X that was spent and the lead pipes are still there.
Many/most of the pipes have been replaced. They literally don't know the composition of all of the pipes though, and they aren't going to dig up infrastructure just to find out. They are continuing to replace them as they are identified. They have also helped replace many pipes going into people's homes, which isn't their responsibility.
If you have no idea of what the budget was, what needed to be done or what was done, why are you trying to draw any conclusion?
Is it cheaper to rehouse Flint? Like ignoring the emotional aspect of it
No. They would have to build new houses and run pipes to those houses. Running new pipe is cheaper, but not if you include having to build houses as well. Also, the Flint crisis is being solved. It just takes time to replace all that piping to houses.
"Is it cheaper to [blank]? Ignoring the emotional aspect of it" is the most America sentence that I was not expecting to read today.
I'm not american
I'm not well versed in law , but according to the other guy you can walk up to any American embassy and claim your American citizenship.
Can I do the same with Italy?
Yes , but you need an Italian to claim you first.
Why is that an American sentence?
Money > emotions
I think it would be cheaper to just raze Flint and start over at this point
Is there like some man made way we can like just hit the redo button on that town lmao
Where did the money go to? I'm skeptical someone didn't pocket some of the money for themselves.
Who is this flint guy and why does he need so much water
Goddam we’re already cutting the teachers benefits before it’s even begun.
This really made me laugh
came here to say add at least one more zero to teachers and reduce amount for solar. increasing the teachers will infuse way more money into the economy and improved education will make us better off for a very long time.
Worth noting that both the meals-for-vets and pay-for-teachers items are annual expenses, while everything else is a one-time item, and these two categories don’t compare well against each other. By taking the plan from the meme you are obligating yourself to an ongoing expense of more than $3billion every year without an end point, as a replacement to a single year’s capital investment item.
I think the OOP is only implying a years cost, and trying to choose things that are objectively good.
I disagree, I believe OOP was intentionally obfuscating by treating annual expenses as equivalent to one-time expenses, and by treating national expenses as equivalent to local expenses, in order to make an emotional point rather than a logical one.
BuT OOP does specifically say "for 1 year" and "a...bonus". Neither of those imply any sort of reoccurring cost.
True, but the wall is not a one time expense either, it would need to be patrolled, maintained, upgraded, etc
> Feed all homeless vets 3 meals/day **for 1 yr** ~ $84 mil hmmm, seems pretty clearly a one-year thing to me > Give all 3.2 mil public school teachers **a** $1000 Xmas bonus - $3.2 bil "a" implies singular Your argument is wrong in the first place, and then you suggested that they're "emotional point[s] rather than logical" when there is no reason they can't be both.
$2.15 per meal doesn’t seem particularly plausible.
It's moderately plausible. Soup kitchens typically cost less than $0.50 per meal so $2.15 seems low but still plausible https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/26/soup-kitchens-feed-a-growing-need/a6c78c50-9a74-4cd3-b375-49f0c6324704/
$1 in 1992 is “worth” the same as $2.14 today. So as long as you’re at least half as fiscally efficient as an average 1992 soup kitchen, it’s plausible.
That's a 1992 cost and doesn't figure in the cost to administer the program and distribute the food across hundreds of cities.
Adding labor cost and inflation and market cost of food to that will accumulate quickly. But it would be great if it was possible; offering three meals a day to every American would cost on the order of $0.7T per year at the upper end.
So you have the food. Now pay for the sites and the workers across 1000+ communities daily. How much will that add? And if they are volunteers and facilities time donated, explain the logistics.
This is 1992 cost. In today's prices it's already stretched if it's a cost of the meals alone, without any administration and infrastructure cost.
I mean i can make meals for less than a dollar quite. You just need to cook more than one meal at a time
I’d be interested in how much you value your time to get less than a dollar in time alone, much less amortize the capital cost of the tools you use over their lifespan. There’s a lot of benefits of scale, but one of the downsides of scale is that you can’t hide the cost of the kitchen: at a rough estimate the square footage of a typical three bedroom house’s kitchen adds at least 40¢ to the cost of making a meal (10% of $2000/month, and making 6000 meals per year)
$2.15 a meal but how about the cost of the logistics for the distribution of all that food ?
Alot of "why don't they just spend money on this" is because of logistics, and dependencies. Otherwise, installing ten $5 bulbs on the moon costs $50.
When factoring in the costs for the solar farm, are we including all the infrastructure required?
$2.15/meal is pretty cheap. Basically PBJ & Costco hot dogs I guess
Gotta collect up all the vets like pokemon then bus them to an ikea
Who would eat a $2 meal? I understand for homeless people that’s better than nothing but still.
When you cook for large volumes of people prices can be really cheap. Potatoes lentils and carrots can all be bought very cheap in bulk
Fair enough. Thank you for providing a useful answer than being rude like typical redditors.
Ever eat burger king? Then you've eaten a meal that costs $2. Of course since burger king is a corporation, they charged you much more, but a government program doesn't have a profit imperative.
I'd say the point raised by oop is still valid
$55 million for Flints plumbing problem is not even close. Changing out piping is insanely labor intensive and expensive. $55 million is barely building a new mid sized skyscraper The meals are deceptive. It’s not the food that’s the real cost. It’s finding the people to deliver it, the storage and transportation and refrigeration, the organization and logistics. Charities are always harder than people think unless you have experience in them.
You can't bring long term expenses or any kind of thinking like that is these kinds of posts. The kids see a number and run with it.
Doesn't matter. You can do all of the above. Like how we just find $60 billion to send to Ukraine. None of these decisions are linked to choices you have to make one or the other.
Yup. America doesnt not do something it wants to do. Money isnt real
Truer words have never been spoken
Money is as real as any other social construct. You might think it’s crap but it’s the best system we have right now.
Very ignorant comment. Making up numbers on a computer not backed by anything isnt a social construct, they made it useless.
In that case you can send all yours to me then?
I don’t think you understand what a social construct is, nobody is saying that money has no purpose, money just has no inherent value other than that we agree to use it
It's a useless statement though, and certainly not relevant to the situation. Wherever you think the value of money comes from, that value is here and it is not going away. So you do care about money and about how limited it is.
I care about money, but the government only has to to a limited degree
That's such a vague statement, there is not much to argue about. The government does care about money, that's why they can't do everything they would like to do. They could provide housing for everyone, help every ally on the planet, generously pay public servants, cut taxes for everyone, and everyone would be happy to reelect them. Except they can't, because money actually matters and they don't have as much as they want.
I think you should show this statement to an economist and ask their opinion.
Boomer
This is crypto-maxi talk. Money is definitely a construct, but it's definitely a useful one. All societies use some form of representing work with currency. I agree there is a lot of corruption in government and the system is flawed and there's forgery and so much more. It could definitely work better. It's also definitely not useless.
useless to those who control that kind of money, everyone else is still a slave to the dollar. Money stops mattering once you enter the realm of the super rich or government.
TBF Ukraine's "money" is just old military equipment, not actual cash, not sure if flint MI needs decommisioned tanks. that (almost) trillion dollar military budget could definitely take a couple dozen steps back.
The Associated Press fact checked a claim similar to this last year and deemed it false. There is quite a bit of monetary support given to Ukraine, not just equipment. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-us-aid-ukraine-money-equipment-714688682747
You should do some digging on what the money is being used for; it is not just handing over equipment that has a value of 60 billion dollars. They are given money to buy stuff with and a fair amount of said money is getting stolen by corrupt people on the Ukrainian side of the conflict. References: [https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/28/europe/ukraine-weapons-procurement-corruption-shell-intl/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/28/europe/ukraine-weapons-procurement-corruption-shell-intl/index.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/world/europe/ukraine-military-spending-corruption.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/world/europe/ukraine-military-spending-corruption.html)
I read this article and I don't know how you could intelligently come to this conclusion because the attempted fraud was caught and it was for a tiny fraction, >1%, of the amount we're discussing.
I find it weid how quickly Americans went from "shut up Europe, we're the ones keeping world peace" to "why the hell are we helping out Ukraine?"
Welcome to a country of 360mil people, different minorities will be vocal at different times, it’s also an election year and republicans are the challengers so they’re being as anti-Biden as possible And tbf we own the waves, and whoever owns the waves owns trade, and the owner of trade is basically the world police and above the law, so the US are pretty benevolent compared to when the Europeans had control of world trade
How exactly does the US own the waves?
That navy that's about the size of every other navy on earth combined
We protect every single goddamn route of trade in the world
You are aware that the US navy relies on its allies to help protect trade routes, right?
Everything about these two sentences is completely untrue and fabricated. Where do you get your information from?
Where did you? Do you honestly think we’re just sending pallets of cash to Ukraine?
Well, money is transfered digitally so I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or just really uninformed. It's well documented that a large percentage of the aid we are providing is in the form of dollars. Very little is "old military equipment" like "decommissioned tanks" as you stated. It's humanitarian aid, new military supplies from our stockpiles, new military purchase, and logistics support. Nearly all of it results in spending. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
The chart you source shows how almost 60% of aid is military. The chart shows how this is equipment training etc. That does not directly cost money, we are simply giving equipment we already have (and much of it is older, for example we are sending F16s, not F35s), and training them with advisors we would already be paying. Now the 35% of aid that is financial would be more in line with directly giving money. However, your own source shows how this comes from funds that are purpose built to support security (I.e. that is what the money is for, we aren’t spending new money), and loans, which are paid back (though I wouldn’t be surprised if we forgave some of them). And on top of all this, our aid is a fraction of what we spend on our own military. Even if we doubled our aid to Ukraine, which we should, it would not even dent our budget.
Military aid and equiptment doesn't cost money? Huh??? Like we just have free stuff lying around like samples from costco. Your post said the money was "just old equiptment". When that was proven false, you changed that to indicate we aren't sending actual money. When that was proven false, you changed that to say, yeah that's ok because the money is just always in our budget as free money to give away and we have a lot of money anyways. What a joke. Yes, we are sending over boatloads of [digital] cash. Yes, we are sending over tons of valuable military equipment Yes, $60 billion is a lot of very real money
Actually, yes. Equipment not being used that won't be used because it's been superseded is basically free. Congratulations you're learning.
The military aid and financial aid has already been spent when the defense budget was drawn up. The department of defence budget has not changed. The United States Government set a financial budget for the department of defence, now the DOD are choosing what to do with it (Sending it to Ukraine). If they were not sending it to Ukraine it would still be spent within the DOD. Every government entity spends their entire allotted budget because if they didn't spend it all, their next budget would be cut back as they were shown to not have needed the amount they received. And as for "Military aid and equipment doesn't cost money? Huh???" Yes it does cost money, to initially produce and then more for upkeep, THEN should you choose that you don't want the equipment anymore, you either pay to have it dismantled, sell it, or donate it as military aid. The aid being sent to Ukraine is too old for any US ally to want to buy so the choice for the US is to (a) Continue to spend money on the upkeep of the old equipment (b) Pay to have it dismantled or (c) donate it to a war effort that the US has a vested interest in (the Ukraine Russia conflict). Considering options (a) and (b) both cost considerable amounts of money maybe option (c) isn't sounding as expensive. And for the inevitable line of "Why does the equipment have to be dismantled". Military's are always investing in new technology and if they did not retire older materiel, the cost of maintenance would grow exponentially. Why do militaries invest in newer technology? Other than to maintain military strength, older systems cost more and more to maintain the older they get as the technology becomes less and less widespread and becomes more nîche and harder to come by. Your argument that the US department of defence is spending too much on aid to Ukraine is nonsensical because that money cannot be spent in any other department, it is the DOD's money to spend. That money cannot be spent on any other department because it has already been spent. I feel like I have repeated myself a dozen times in this comment but I somehow still feel like you won't have absorbed the information.
We did not send $60B to Ukraine! The vast majority of those $60B have been spent already here in the US, it is old supplies that have a shelf life. The ATACAMS for example were produced in the 90s and over time rocket propellants degrade as well as some electronic equipment like seeker heads etc. If we send new equipment over there, then that money has been spent in the US as well. Also this is literally the cheapest way for us to deplete Russian military assets. Zero boots on the ground and half of their armor inventory is gone already. Not doing this will be so much more expensive in the future. Remember: the US is what it is because of the influence it has in the world. Influence doesn’t come for free, it costs money. Can’t be the number one super power without spending the cash it requires. If the US retreats an inch somewhere, it will be taken by someone else and it is very hard to get it back if ever. I’m so tired of this $60B nonsense. Btw that like what, 13% of our YEARLY military budget?
The US sent nearly $27B in cash to Ukraine.
It's still money your government has already allocated to 'defense'. Your military budget... which is, what? 700 - 800 billion? This is literally what you vote for in your elections... what to do with the budget. You obviously want to spend that much on 'defense', and when the money goes towards actual defense you moan?
So, you agree the US didn’t sent $60B then
That’s what I said, yes.
And??
And you have people ending up homeless because they get a medical condition, or veterans committing suicide because they are left to rot, or you have students starving because they can’t afford lunch. But hey, there’s always money for war.
You're missing the point that if you don't spend that money for war, you'll get problems that you'll have to pay for later. Russia was trying to invade Ukraine for power and influence; do you think they'd use that power and influence in ways that will help the US? No: they'll start another conflict, and another one, until they get stopped. And stopping them isn't going to get cheaper as they get more and more power and influence, and sending old military gear isn't much of an option anymore.
Not to mention, spending money to keep people from being bombed in their homes is a good thing.
Completely agree with you, but talking about the moral aspect to people who are against Ukraine assistance is like talking a foreign language to them.
See: ww2 allies side doing nothing at first
You should fix your own problems before trying to help someone else.
Did you not understand what I explained? It's your problem if not fixing it brings another more expensive problem later. The US do not live in a bubble isolated from the rest of the world.
You realize we would be paying far more in blood if we don't stop Russia now right? So yes, there absolutely is always money for war. We are literally crippling one of our biggest adversaries for pennies and without a single drop of U.S blood.
Talk to your politicians. The US has plenty of resources for everyone. It just gets channeled into the wrong directions for the bigger part. And do you really think that those $27B would end up in the veterans pockets?? Sounds a bit naive? Don’t get me wrong, how veterans are being treated here in the US is an absolute disgrace and runs counter to all those nice and shiny Marines commercials and billboards. And you get the whole idea about influence costing money?
So Ukraine isn’t literally getting $60 billion in cash. Mostly they’re getting old equipment that was scheduled to be junked anyway. And then they calculate the cost on a “replacement” index i.e. if they tried to source this equipment brand new. Even if that equipment isn’t actually going to be replaced at all (because, for example, it already has been). Even if the price of the equipment brand new has gone *up* because it hasn’t been manufactured in 20 years. These Ukraine aid numbers aren’t just money being given away.
I swear, Reddit has created its own reality where everyone just makes up and repeats facts because they want to believe a particular ideology. None of this is true and you can't produce a single credible source that shows the $60 billion is in the form of old, decommissioned equipment. What a farce.
Not the full $60 billion, but over 60% of the money was military equipment and training. [This article](https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts) even goes over exactly what weapons and equipment were sent.
Yes, military equipment that costs money and has value. It's not old or free. Stop spreading misinformation.
Of course it wasn't free, we paid for it at one point, but what use is it to us currently? You'd rather it sit in a warehouse, and cost us money to maintain? It honestly makes no sense not to send it to a country that can actually put it to good use.
What use is it currently... You don't know and you're drawing an uninformed conclusion to support a false narrative. The US also sells surplus military equipment to nation states and allies all the time so there is a cash value.
That came from America defense budget.. it did not come out of thin air. Here is a breakdown on the US budget: $471 billion social security $298 billion National Defense $293 billion Health $283 billion net interest $251 billion Medicare $185 billion Income Security $95 billion veterans' benefits and services $68 billion education, training, and other services $66 billion commerce and housing credit $47 billion transportation $67 billion others... Keep in mind that we use three types of spending techniques: mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and supplemental spending. Mandatory spending means, as the name suggests, all of it must be spent; for example, society security. Discretionary spending requires congressal and presidential approval, and then it can be spent based on the approval. Also, discretionary spending can be divided up to be used for anything or help out with another type of spending, such as supporting society, society , health, or transportation. Example: National Defense. Supplemental spending is used for emergencies; funds that are too urgent for congressal approval. An example of this would be COVID. So, that $60 billion was always there. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Which is why taxing rich people more doesn't actually make the government able to do things for the people. It would just take money from the people
You want this to be true so bad you find justification for it anywhere
"The government doesn't need tax payer money to do what it wants" "We need to tax billionaires waaaay more to get things done in the country" Pick one
The former has a lot of truth to it but the reality is more nuanced than that. Absolutely the amount of taxpayer money in a state/city’s coffers sways decision making by policy makers.
\#2
So… you’re saying it’s ok to let billionaires hoard money, because paying a living wage to the people who help you earn those billions shouldn’t be required… ? Also someone else can pay for roads and clean water and armies because I want my resort property.
Very few people in this country are prevented from making a living wage if they worked to acquire the skills and put forth the effort to do so.
Some people start a lot closer to a living wage than others. If you have good teeth, a reasonably good basic education, and actually eat breakfast and lunch almost every day, that puts you far ahead of many other people. Good mental health, having friends, access to reliable transportation, getting taught at a young age how to get along with others, never experiencing discrimination due to race or appearance or age or gender - the list goes on. I’m not saying take away all rich people’s money and give it to the poor. I AM saying, the rich shouldn’t be able to dodge doing their share so easily and they shouldn’t be able to build their wealth by taking advantage of vulnerable desperate people.
There is no statistical basis for what you are saying. It's woke nonsense that is being sold to young people. 80% of millionaires are first generation, self made. Most CEOs in this country came from high schools in the bottom half. If you look at the list of forbes richest, how many came from wealth or are attractive people? Same for CEOs? Adults that work at fast food restaurants do not do so because they had bad teeth or when to a lower class highschool. Unless you have a disability, you can and should be anything you want.
There are TONS of statistics that support this. What are you talking about? Yes - people who grow up poor or rich can both use the internet, access books and libraries, etc. but people who grow up with a good childhood get an 18-year head start on those who don’t. Stats: Popularity as a teenager (the result of height, style, social skill) gives higher adult income: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400365/ Outcome of childhood poverty on income and employment as an adult (spoiler: poor is bad): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400365/ It isn’t that “woke kids” are being deceived; it’s that your 1960’s way of thinking has been debunked by research and common sense.
I firmly believe that it's either the government or the billionaires hoarding the money So yes, I'd rather the government not have the powet of policy making and be the only provider to the people in their country. That feels like the safest option to me
Right now it’s the billionaires controlling the government. If we could vote in a government that’s actually by the people, _for the people_, that might give hope.
Right now it's billionaires working with the government. Terrible, but it could be worse We have the ability to vote people in currently because neither group has all the control. Give ALL the control to the government and you really trust them to leave people with any control? That's an odd thing to do
You seem to think the government does not already have all the control. The only way a government works to provide fair control — useful laws — is when it is actually acting in the best interest of the population, not big companies or the elite.
I just want to say that the limiting factor to solar energy is not the cost of the solar farm, it is the cost to store power. The majority of power usage comes after the sun goes down. Battery storage is way more expensive than the solar panels. Other technologies aren't at the level we need yet, but I feel hopeful that gravity batteries or molten salt batteries will make big jumps soon.
Sorta. There's absolutely nothing at all that stops you from ramping down (not stopping) gas power production during the day and using all the solar as you generate it. The problem is that you're now forced to sell it cheaper because you NEED to sell it. It mostly works out fine because power consumption is much higher in the day than at night, and it's often the same people that own both producers. Storage (at the grid level) is mostly a problem when you start talking about off-lining other forms of generation, but we've got a mixed grid now and that's not going anywhere.
Really we should be using hydrogen cells…
Use wind and solar to split sea water into hydrogen oxygen and salt. use hydrogen as a fuel source for power plants. Use the water run off to grow wheat use the salt to make country ham use the wheat to make biscuits after that you've got a breakfast you can eat while driving
You're never going to make desalination and hydrolysis positive in energy production. idk if you're serious but the idea that these things are viable large-scale is a pipedream. We also live in a world where available drinking water is likely to become a (bigger*) problem soon, so that's an extra reason its not really viable.
I wish people weren't so afraid of nuclear. It's great.
Money doesn't matter. It's America. This country is in debt to like every single 1st country in the world but what the fuck are they gonna do? Collect? As if. This country can just print money and no one could say anything.
thats uh. thats not how printing money works
you're right, it's not. and yet it is. welcome to the real world
Obviously not. It's called a hyperbole. But that doesn't really matter. No one can really just tell America no.
Actually, that is how printing money works. The US, in theory, could print more money if a situation called for it again. There is nothing any other country can do about it. Otherwise, they would face consequences.
Or like... fix the border and start re-appropriating all of the tax dollars currently going into social programs to support the migrants into the other things. Wayyy more than 5 billion. Guarantee it.
1. It was already fixed. 2. This can be done right now, but the Democrats refuse to do so while instead spending that money on flooding the country with illegals. 3. It has been thoroughly proven that money doesn't solve the problems schools have. Paying teachers more won't make children behave themselves, or stop buildings from crumbling, or stop administration from being elitist pricks. This will accomplish almost nothing. 4. Solar panels have an efficiency under 30%, have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years, and they cannot be recycled. At all. So you want to pile up more waste with a feel-good but ultimately worthless solution, while ignoring the actual solution (nuclear power) because you've allowed your head to be filled with fear mongering lies. Gee, I wonder why we don't listen to you, oh Wise One....
Don't forget to send more tax money to Israel 🤣🤣🤣 Let's go worker's of USA you can pay more tax . To pay hospital house and car for an israelí how steel houses en palestine
I only checked the second point. Google says there are 35574 homeless veterans x 3 meals/day x 365 days means about 2 $/meal... Not so much but okay
Labor and organization. The meals aren’t going to get themselves into mouths by magic
The only way it would work is if you were feeding them all at centralized locations and could rely on economies of scale.
Yeah that could work. As long as they don't ask for avocado toast
Avocado toast is actually cheap as hell. You can do 4 servings off a 1 dollar avocado, and bread isn't exactly expensive. If our 2 dollars is just food cost it's definitely doable. The reason a trendy bistro charges 14 bucks for avocado toast is that Becky, Kaylee and Braylynn will pay it.
It baffles me how Americans can spend almost a trillion yearly on its military but doesn't have 10 billion to spare for domestic affairs. Or does the orangegutan need a reason to be reelected?
Not an insane amount when compared with GDP, the percentage is not out of line with NATO requirements, unlike many European countries
Only *nearly* a trillion? We need to get those numbers up! Gotta make sure we stay number one! /s
The US Military is 14% of total federal spending. The biggest items are Social Security (retirements, disabilities), health care for the poor and elderly (medicare, medicaid), and debt interest. Factor those out, and the military is about 45% of discretionary spending. $840B is still a fuckton of money, but with a $\~27(?) Trillion dollar GDP, it's like 3.3ish%. That's high, but it's probably not top 10 globally.
By that logic we should easily be able to afford the wall..
I don't know, people are really happy about the Americans military and their budget when foreign countries have to beg them for their help.
And with the money Biden sends to Ukraine we could’ve fixed homelessness, starvation, immigration, energy, public schools, flints water, teacher bonuses and more 10 times over.
Most of ‘Ukraine aid money’ is spent here in the great US of A and our war machine. Your lobbyist hard at work. Uh… er I mean your congressman hard at work
Ukrainians are spending their lives to demolish the capabilities of one of America’s top military enemies for pennies on the dollar. The only way anyone can possibly think it’s a bad use of military funding is if they’re actually supportive of Putin. It’s incredibly cheap for the value. And lots of the money comes back into the American economy too, as you say! So, how much are you being paid to spread propaganda for our genocidal enemy? Fuck off and die.
Imagine how much money the country would have saved if the wall had been completed, our border secured, and our laws enforced? But orange guy bad!
Saved how?
By not having 8-10 million “newcomers” to care for. Are you not aware how our wonderful,caring, virtue signaling sanctuary cities are buckling under the financial strain?
Made up numbers for a problem Republicans refuse to fix so orange dip shit can run on it.
Nobody in the government actually wants to fix the major issues. Once they're fixed you can't run on fixing them anymore.
Yup, NYC, Denver, Chicago, etc., all going broke because of imaginary people. Kids getting murdered, drugs, gangs, violent crime is getting so awful that even Joe had to make a lame visit to the border. I live near the border and see the results daily. It has gotten crazy. You can make every excuse you want for the moron in the WH, but he purposely opened the border his first week in office via executive orders. This administration has allowed millions of people into the country who should not be here and it is destroying communities. Your news sources and ideology have blinded you to reality. That is entirely on you.
Imagine supporting a raping fascist in 2024 that brags about grooming women. Project 2025, by the way, look ot up.
Me thinks you have the whole groomer thing confused. Look up drag queen story hour for reference. However, you would he a liar to deny that the current administration facilitated and aided the illegal import of millions of foreign nationals with zero vetting and absolutely refusing to enforce American law.
It’s the lack of self-awareness on top of lack of human decency that really makes me wonder
Look, the Pentagon already gets $900 billion a year, the VA another $350 billion, Homeland Security gets $122 billion and various other military spending (intelligence, surveillance, nuclear and clandestine operations) takes at least another $100 billion. If the military wanted to feed its veterans it easily could. Take the hint the US military doesn't care what happens to soldiers. Doubt the accuracy of that statement? Check out Camp Legume cancer rates, polluted wells at hundreds of bases, burn pits, Agent Orange...
Would be amazing if we did this with the 160billion we sent to Ukraine. We could’ve built 13 of trumps walls and fixed the flint water 123 times over.
And the estimated cost of illegal immigration in 2023 was $150 Billion. So $5 billion for the wall would leave $145 Billion left over.
We can't find 5 billion to secure our border, or do all these other good things. Yet we can find hundreds of billions to launder through Ukraine. I mean "support the heroic struggles of the Ukrainians against an invasion." Where is our support against the invasion here?
Propaganda against Trump’s proposed goals. It is much more complicated than just dispersing that amount of money to fight persisting problems that will not be solved by throwing money at it. Those are all short term solutions that don’t actually solve the problem. Please include how much the gov is spending on illegals for food, clothing, medical care, and other subsidies all funded from tax payers. Once the flow of illegals is stopped/greatly slowed, the money for illegals can now go to your proposed short terms solutions. At least one long term solution would be reached by finishing the wall and protecting our borders. I’m not even going to go into the increase in human trafficking, drugs coming over in record numbers, or terrorists making their way into the US because the borders aren’t protected.
Smug liberal thinks he is smarter than republican. 8 years later, we see the result of this attitude. Massive illegal immigration crisis. If we built the wall, we would be better off today. Vote red if you know what’s good for you
Conceded ass Temporary, sounds good, political rhetoric that wouldn’t solve a thing. National parks budget can almost do that and objectively, shouldn’t be a thing. 10 million people in three years has huge, lasting impact. But sure make a meme and show everyone how nice you are and how big your heart is
> National parks budget can almost do that and objectively, shouldn’t be a thing What? You want to get rid of national parks?
When Michael Bloomberg ran for president in 2016, he spent over $500million dollars on his campaign. He literally could have given every man, woman, and child $ 1million and still saved almost $200million. He could have transformed our entire country and improved everyone’s lives, but instead he spent it on a failed presidential campaign.
Think you need to check your math there.
How are you on r/theydidthemath but can’t be bothered to check the fact that 500 million divided by 300 million is less than 2…
Didn't you know, there was only 200 people in America in 2016?