Accurate except for the “instead” part. Road maintenance comes from local taxes, whereas military aid comes from federal taxes.
Well if you really want to get technical about it… No programs or spending are really funded by taxes anyway, the government just says “OK” and the numbers in the bank accounts of the companies implementing said program go up. Taxes funding things is just a myth. Taxes just delete money. So technically, nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void.
Edit: People seem to be down voting because they think this is tinfoil hat BS or something. It’s not. Look up modern monetary theory. Governments with fiat currency don’t need to collect money to pay for things. They just invent and issue more currency. See this video: https://youtu.be/75udjh6hkOs?si=dVpp9V5f96kLDV4-&t=1628
the wikipedia page says:
MMT is controversial, and is actively debated with dialogues about its theoretical integrity, the implications of the policy recommendations of its proponents, and the extent to which it is actually divergent from orthodox macroeconomics. MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory and has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists.
i don’t think your comment properly highlights how controversial MMT is. i’m not an economist, but i don’t think it’s fair to use language like “taxes funding things is a myth” and “technically nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void”, when those claims rely on such a controversial theory.
It’s not worth your time to refute one giving youtube link as a backing reference.
Yes this is all true, MMT is a theory. It’s in the name. Yes, it’s controversial.
But those points have nothing to do with the validity of the statements I made, including the ones you quote. It’s a very broad economic theory covering how things should be done etc etc.
My point is not founded on MMT, I referred to it as a “look this stuff up by starting here”. That’s why it’s only mentioned in the edit. The mere fact that this is an even remotely acceptable implies the statements I made is valid - otherwise MMT would fall apart at its seams.
Taxes funding things is indeed a myth, and they’re essentially a money void. Go read up on those specifics if you want to get into it. The video I linked has a literal explanation of this like 30 seconds later. When congress approves programs, they just allocate new funds to it, and move on. There’s no digging up taxes to point towards it.
You could begin making an argument it has implications for the validity and reliability of the sovereign currency, but it has no real relationship to taxes. That’s just not how modern economics work anymore.
has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists.
In other words… it upsets the rich people that got us into this mess.
I mean this is a cute clever thing that sounds smart that isn’t.
The government pays for things. The government funds that through monetary policy that includes printing money, as well as raising money via taxes. Whether the government deletes a dollar you give them and prints another dollar vs transferring the dollar you gave them into their spending budget is super irrelevant.
It’s functionally the same and either way, your tax dollar, whether “deleted” and replaced or transferred is still your proportional allocation of funding.
This is real “I am very smart” vibes.
Same could be said about your post. It’s very “haha I have a gotcha” vibes.
Yes the government deletes money. And they also create money. That doesn’t mean they do or have to do the same amount of each. They can and do create more than they delete. They’re not funding programs and then making sure they delete the same amount in your taxes. That’s not how modern economics work.
Of course not. But none of that changes the fact that your taxes, in part, pay for what the government spends money on.
For state taxes, where the states don’t control monetary policy, it’s even less true. But it’s not really true for the federal government either.
Everyone who is paid in USD or pays in USD, in addition to people who pay taxes, pay for whatever we spend money on in one way or another.
It’s not a gotcha. Nothing was got. It’s just an absurd thing on the face of it. That while technically correct (in the sense that dollars are fungible) your dollars given in taxes will make up a percentage of total dollars spent this year by the federal government, and thus, you are paying for whatever they are doing. Along with other people.
That has real sovcit vibes.
Not at all. Look up MMT. Modern monetary theory and economics are well beyond “spend taxes to fund programs”. Governments that issue debts in their own made up currency don’t need to “spend” money, they just give money to the programs they support.
So money goes in and gets deleted, and then they create money and they give it away?
When I think of it, I do the same thing every time I buy something.
The money in my bank account doesn’t get transferred, the bank just deletes it on their servers and then they create money and give it to the store.
Yes, they both create and delete money. That doesn’t mean that the two processes need to be equal or balanced.
Your purchases do, or someone is owed their portion of the transaction. That’s not the case when the government is writing bonds or appropriating funding to programs. They can create money freely, regardless of the tax they collect. Taxes serve a different purpose.
That would increase inflation drastically, which is something governments absolutely don’t want.
They want inflation to be around 1-2%. Less is no good, because rich idiots would just hoard money instead of investing it. More is also no good because saved money would just disappear quickly.
Tell that to Japan. One of the highest spenders. Still stuck in perpetual de flation for over 20 years at this point.
It’s not that simple.
You are aware of the fact that central banks are usually independant institutions and whenever the government meddles with them, that countries currency gets fucked by the market?
Also in todays interconnected financial and real economy there is only so much control any government canexert iver its currency, because the currencies values is significantly determined by the exchange from imported and exported goods.
While both points are true, that still doesn’t change whether taxes fund these programs.
Sure there are other complexities like “how much is too much? Can we just keep doing it forever?” but those questions have more to do with the labor force of said country and their exports, and almost nothing to do with their tax rates.
The central banks control the amount of money based on the tasks they were given for their operation. That does not relate directly to the way the government is spending or taking money.
It is simply not the governments taxes and spending that is making or deleting money. It is the system of how the private banks can borrow or deposit money at the central bank with a certain interest rate,that is making or deleting money.
And youll have noticed that it is not the central bank granting loans to the government but bonds being sold on the market for the government to take debt.
MMT is techbros just trying to say, “don’t look behind the microvaluation curtain, it doesn’t matter.” But in the amounts that they’re trading on, it absolutely does matter.
It’s actually anarchocommunists mostly.
Sorry about all the broken veterans with TBIs. We could have invested in better healthcare infrastructure, TBI treatment research even better armor and helmets for our troopers dealing routinely with IEDs. But instead we got experimental tanks with active camo, a shitty plane which we’re phasing out and aid to Israel to perpetuate their ancient religious genocide program.
It’s just that US soldiers are poor and expendible and people with money tell us who and what is important.
And there are literal laws of nature that would prevent that from ever changing.
I mean, potholes in my area get fixed pretty quickly, because the local government takes its job relatively seriously.
Really hoping self-healing asphalt tech advances quickly in the next decade.
That must be nice.
Please, not fixing potholes have been around longer than the current Palestinian/Israeli and also a completely stupid reduction of the complexity of this whole fucked up situation.
There’s nothing complex about it. Israel imprisons an entire people and every time the UN tries to do something about it the US vetoes it.
The “it’s complex” excuse is used to have people look the other way by turning it into a hopeless situation.
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There would be no Hamas if israël hadn’t invoked it. It was a response against the occupation and slaughtering israël had been doing since more than 70 years ago until now.
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after Israel removed their settlements and ended the occupation of Gaza.
You seem to be living in an alternate universe where those things actually happened.
Here’s the reality: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Also what does fascism mean? That’s a rhetorical question by the way, we all know you’re going to Google it and then delusionally shoehorn your interpretation in it.
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Maybe you shouldn’t use those psychopaths are a political props to validate your political position.
Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
The symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, The Hill, October 22, 2023
Netanyahu’s policy, however, was in direct opposition to most of the Israeli defense and security establishment, which viewed cooperation with the PA to be in Israel’s security interest. Fans of the Netflix series “Fauda” will recognize that cooperation. Most security experts felt the PA needed to be strengthened, not weakened.
Since returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu made no secret of his desire to keep Hamas and the PA apart for his own political purposes. For example, in 2017, the PA and Hamas were negotiating a possible takeover by the PA of civilian control of the Gaza Strip. Even though the United States and Egypt supported this reconciliation, Netanyahu was adamantly opposed — lest it empower the PA.
Why Netanyahu helped fund Hamas and how that backfired for Israel, India Today, November 1, 2023
“Whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu as saying in 2019.
Prince Turki al-Faisal’s accusation against Israel comes days after a report by Reuters, citing a source privy to the matter, stated that Qatar’s financial aid to the Palestinian families in Gaza passes through Israel. The funds are transferred electronically from Qatar to Israel, following which Israeli and United Nations (UN) officials hand-carry the same over the border to the Gaza Strip.
How Netanyahu’s Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel, CBC News, October 28, 2023
Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that “if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas’s strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister.”
In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu’s “strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.”
Netanyahu’s current finance minister, West Bank settler Belazel Smotrich, explained the approach to Israel’s Knesset channel in 2015: “Hamas is an asset, and (Palestinian Authority leader) Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden.”
“But each time Netanyahu was asked, ‘Why don’t you negotiate with Abbas,’ he would say, ‘I can’t negotiate with a Palestinian Authority that doesn’t represent all Palestinians.’ And so he would use Hamas and this division to justify his absolute objection to any negotiated peace agreement.”
“Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas, as though it was an environmental organization. This is a policy of submission to terror,” he said, adding that Israel was paying Hamas “protection money” to maintain the calm.
The prime minister also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
not fixing potholes have been around longer
They haven’t been fixing potholes since 1949? Those potholes must be huge.
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LOL! Let me rephrase, then…
They haven’t been fixing potholes since the 1970s? Those potholes must be huge.
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little. Ho hum.
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little. Ho hum.
While you may boast about valuing ignorance over knowledge, there are others on this site that might appreciate learning a little history. So my time may have been wasted on you, but not wasted for the others people on this site.
Being proud over being a waste of other people’s time LOL.
Let me rephrase that for the terminally bewildered, then…
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little.
Ho hum.
Ok keyboard warrior, maybe you should turn off your computer and go outside.
Not actually all that good at OSINT, are you?
Try thousands of years bc. This didn’t “start” in 1949.
No, it started in 1949.
The idea that there’s anything coherent about Zionist justifications for a modern-day Israel based on thousands-year old scripture is pure and absolute white supremacist and antisemitic hogwash.
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TBH, The US pays more for healthcare than defense. Hell social security is the number 1 expense.
It’d be way more effective if the road pictured wasn’t absolutely perfect and pothole free
For the meme, maybe, but IRL maybe the road is no as nice as that one section.
This isn’t a problem if your thought process is slightly more sophisticated than an 8 year old’s.
Someone can’t take a joke
Can’t imagine what about the subject matter would fill anyone with anything less than the giggles.
Love the false equivalence. Your city taxes can’t fix the potholes because your federal taxes pay for a military.
Those federal taxes cannot be allocated to state funds which cannot then be allocated to city funds to maintain roads?
No because they must be spent to kill Palestinian children. Get your Merican priorities straight.
Federal tax funds the maintenance of the Interstate Highways.
Where do you see an interstate highway in the pic?
Mobile billboards go where people are. I saw a Pro-Life billboard on a similar truck, where it was parked was not linked to the content on the sign.
and the interstate highways aren’t that bad in terms of shape tho?
You’re not wrong, but original point could still be right, depending in the road. There are many federal highways and interstates, where this equivalence makes sense. However most other roads are state, county or city owned.
All children in Gaza are terriosts! Or potential terriosts! Isreal NEEDS to bomb ambulances, hospitals and water wells because that is where all the terriosts are! ya see?Any amount of infrastructure supports terriosism! Bombing is a nessecity!
It’s outright ghoulish.
“Anyone who runs is Viet Cong. Anyone who stands still is well disciplined Viet Cong.”
How can you shoot women and children?!?!
Easy, you just don’t lead them as much
Well, it‘s actually true that Hamas uses civil infrastructure and civilians as shields, you can’t deny that. Of course that doesn‘t mean that Israel can just bomb everything.
in an area where the population density is 5,300 people/km2 “human shields” is a quite weak argument. It is practically impossible to seperate civillian and military infrastructure in such densely populated areas.
For comparision the Netherlands has about 500 people/km2 and it is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.
There is a difference between the close proximity of military and civilian infrastructure because of a high population density and actively choosing hospitals as military bases.
You are right. Hamas is not acting responsible leave alone lawful in where they put military installations. But that is used by Israel to just bomb anything they feel like bombing, and for that it is a weak arguement. Especially since we have nothing but Israels pinky promise that there were military targets in whatever they bombed.
Given how Israel extensively attacked civillian and ambulance convoys fleeing on the routes designated by Israel to flee to the south, as demanded by Israel, i cannot help the feeling that they are just shooting at random to instill more fear and destruction.
For that again i find it weird, how Israel was entirely unprepared for the terror attacks of Hamas on the 7. October but immediately claimed to know exactly where Hamas is having what installations in Gaza. I remember how the Russian preparations for the Ukraine invasion have been discussed for months and the question remaining was, whether Putin is that insane or not. Now with Hamas that question was moot, so how the fuck did Israel both know exactly where all of Hamas is, but didnt notice any preparations for the attacks?
I cannot shake the feeling that Israel has much less knowledge about Hamas positions than they claim.
Or, that they do know what’s going on, but let the attack happen because Israeli civilians are nearly as expendable as Palestinian civilians, at least to the people who profit from the war machine…
Israel does appear to value its civilians a lot more than Hamas. There have been prisoner swaps where Hamas will hold out swapping one Israeli until Israel agrees to literally hundreds of Palestinians.
What a bargain!
Somebody should tell Israel
it‘s actually true that Hamas uses civil infrastructure and civilians as shields
Riiight… there’s a Hamas “terrorist” hiding behind every Palestinian child… and if you can’t see them, it just proves how sneaky they are, amirite?
Who said this?
Israel’s actions did
a straw man
The dude in my garden who scares away birds does.
Whichever Hasbara the wheel lands on usually. Some are better than others though.
Said no one. Ever. Except you.
We send $5,000,000,000 in outright charity to Israel, not including what our legislators are about to fork over as soon as they get their stock portfolios situated in the best ways to profit from it.
That’s $100,000,000 per state that could be used to fix potholes or help Americans in other ways, but we’re silly geese who 100% support neglecting our own people in favor of war, so we’re getting what we voted for.
It’s been a closer to 3B for a while. Against a budget of $1.7T. It’s not even a rounding error.
It’s always cute how warmongers pretend that those billions wouldn’t make a huge difference for struggling Americans.
I don’t know what in that sentence gives you the confidence to call me a warmonger.
And also, no, it wont really. Unless you redefine “huge difference”. We spend $522B on social/economic assistance programs at the federal level. So a
0.005%0.5% increase? Hardly a huge difference.how did you get 0.005%? 3 x 100 / 522 is a 0.575 percent increase
3/522, no reason to multiply by 100. Not sure why you are.You’re right my bad.
that’s how percentages work lol. if you have 100 usd, 100.5 usd would be a 0.5% increase not a 0.005 percent increase (which you would get by dividing 0.5/100, right?)
You’re quite right, I’m a dummy.
Yeah, just that 3 billion comes out to $60,000,000 if divided equally between all 50 states. Instead it’s being pissed away on other countries’ wars.
By any stretch that is huge.
You’re absolutely using the warmonger’s logic to support your position here, so no need to clutch your pearls.
Except that it’s half a percent. It’s another half a penny on every dollar.
It’s not huge by any stretch.
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Israel already received tremendous amount of money way before the conflict.
The conflict has been ongoing since 1949.
US sends money to Palestine, too. So does much of Europe.
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Well, you forgot to mention the gas and oil field that UK companies and Shell would love to have access to.
With gas coming from Russia is not a sustainable option, this gas field is what they really want.
“Energy Ministry says a total of 12 licenses have been given to six companies, four of which are new players in the exploration of natural gas off the country’s Mediterranean coast”
This happens last week.
Literally last week October 27.
Is it fake news? Well the one reported this is “Times of Israel” https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel/
How much money in there? UN published a report in 2021 June estimated value for the last 10 years to be around 400 billion.
More details from the UN website: https://unctad.org/publication/economic-costs-israeli-occupation-palestinian-people-unrealized-oil-and-natural-gas
This is not “Isreal vs Hamas” or “Jews vs Muslims” or as some would love to say is a “historical religious war”
This is US and UK companies vs indigenous people masked by layers of “confusion” but their ultimate goal is greed.
The more you look for news it becomes clear what the goals are.
Here are some headlines:
2019 November: Cyprus signs $9 billion gas extraction deal with Israel’s Delek, other firms
2023 February: Israel exports crude oil for first time, with shipment heading for Europe
2023 February: Lebanon and Israel’s historic maritime border deal P.S. this to allow gas exploration… P.S Lebanon government controlled hizballh and Iran.
2023 March: Israel’s Offshore Gas Attracts Foreign Energy Giants
2023 September: Benjamin Netanyahu holds his map of the “The New Middle East” as he addresses the U.N. General Assembly
P.S. “Netanyahu took out his red marker and drew a diagonal line from Dubai along the Persian Gulf, through Israel and toward the ports of southern Europe. He hailed the supposed advent of a “corridor” of prosperity that threaded together these Arab countries and Israel at the heart of a new axis of global trade connecting Asia to Europe.”
2023 October: Netanyahu says Israel’s response to Gaza attack will ‘change the Middle East’
While the conflict seeems a bit confusing looking into it from US imperialist poont view things make sense.
There are four powers that would stop this exploration. Sadam Iraq, most likely, will attack Isreal and claim it a religious war to have access to this new wealth.
Qaddafi Libya, he was already in dispute with turkey over gas in the area https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/gaddafis-prophecy-comes-true-as-foreign-powers-battle-for-libyas-oil
Syria as Russia allies will never leave a piece of the cake either directly or throu distablization in the region. This cut russia market to eroupe.
And finally, the indigenous people of the land…
Oh for fucks sake. I wish we’d transitioned to renewable, maybe even nuclear, a lot sooner.
How many future doctors, writers, craftsmen and families have been lost in the wind, all for that damnable black gold
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nonsensical war over a strip of land
I’ve struggled to understand why civilians on either side have wanted to continue residing in that specific zone after decades of clashes/violence. I know it’s not as simple as just uprooting your family to move elsewhere, but as a parent I know I’d rather any other option than living in constant fear of unbridled violence erupting at any moment in a highly volatile area.
Well, a part of it is that the people of Gaza are not allowed to leave.
There are only a handful of crossings out of Gaza and Israel controls all but one. The Egyptian crossing leads out into a desolate desert with no services.
Want to hop on a boat and flee that way? Israel will torpedo you. Want to walk up to the wall to see the boundary of your prison? Israel will machine gun you down, no questions asked, no warnings given.
A large portion of the population of Gaza started out as refugees, forced out of their homes and off of their land so that Zionist settlers could have it.
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The photos on Google Maps you shared look pretty desolate…
Even given the option, most if not all will choose to not leave. Since 48 the Palestinians have been chanting “from the river to the sea” and not taking lots of peace treaties offered by Israel and other nations, based on the premise that they’ll stay in their current 67 border.
Not to mention lots of Jews also don’t wanna live in a non-jewish state of fear of prosecution, pogroms and antisemitism, which you can see examples of happening right now in Europe.
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An Israeli I know was given benefits from the government to settle near that area. Luckily he went to his in laws house the second the war started. But the government paying people to live there might have something to do with it
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Isn’t this a photoshop? Boring Dystopia is a lot more poignant when the content it shows has some reality to it.
While the point the image is trying to make does have quite a bit of reality behind it, the shopping is to its detriment.
Just put the babies in the potholes.
Baby bones don’t have a high enough density and material integrity for that to be an appropriate solution.
You’re not using enough. You’ve gotta re-pack the hole once compacted a bit.
Exactly. It’s like he has no idea how to build a road at all.
What if we reinforce them with rebar?
Mr. Swift over here…
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Look everyone, a pro-Israel propagandist with a bunch of easily refuted ‘talking points’ (lies). I’m always surprised they bother with places like Lemmy.
Colonizers and apartheidists really are the scum of the earth.
Just saying you might want to look closer into Hamas’ election. It was a razor thin over Fatah and fewer than 50% of the vote. Then Hamas decided to not hold elections anymore for the past 17 years. Hamas is not popular at all anymore with 70% of gazans wanting the palastinian authority to take over the strip from hamas in a 2023 poll. Hamas saw the writing in the wall and decided to task Israel with creating a whole new generation of grieving and pissed off people which they are quickly doing.
I found a demographic breakdown of the population of Gaza by age and I think about 70% of people there are too young to have voted in the last election. And given the 50ish percent margin Hamas won by, is reasonable that only about max 15% of the current population actually voted for them. There’s a lot of assumptions and hand waving there, but I don’t imagine it’s too far off.
Joey Ramone would be disgusted with you using his face for this proganda genocidal apologist bullshit.
Israel is so kind to have allowed Palestinians to use a small section of the territory they used to occupy entirely less than 100 years ago to create an enclave with some of the highest population density in the world, truly they’re great benefactors!
You know who really fucking sucks? Hamas. You know who else really fucking sucks? The Israeli government.
What does this abstraction contribute to the discourse? Does it rile up support for fixing potholes? Does it rile up support for Palestine?
My feeling is it obfuscates the issues and makes progress seem impossible.
It draws attention to the fact that we are paying money to shoot missiles at innocent Palestinian children.
Ok, but is this the first time? For as long as I’ve been alive there has been pot holes and there has been discontent in the middle east. So if anyone was wondering, yes, I know america has a failing infrastructure and is waging war across the world. In fact, I believe this is common knowledge.
Not everything is about you.
Thus, the common knowledge part.
People are always mad about pot holes and military spending where have you been?
This is my point! At least I know one person gets it.
Perhaps the frustration is exacerbated by the lack of progress relative to the amount of money spent and time since these issues have manifested. It’s also particularly visible in our increasingly globalized and interconnected world.
Weird take.
What’s so weird? Watch last week tonight every week. The problems are known. It’s the solution that we have to tell people about.
“Your tax dollars help protect innocent people against terror”
Terror like bombing civilians in refugee camps?
“(…) Against terror they created opressing random ppl”
This is what I don’t understand is so hard for people. It’s not like Israel has always been there, in that spot in in the Middle East, and that Palestinians teleported into Gaza and the West Bank unannounced one day. Gazans are basically refugees shoved in a tiny plot of territory carved out of what used to be their homeland, walled in, and brutally repressed for almost sixty years now. This doesn’t excuse Hamas targeting innocents, but it goes a very long way towards explaining why Gaza might be home to a hardline anti-Israeli guerilla organization that sees the lives of their own people as cheap and those of their enemies as valueless. That’s kinda the dynamic that the Israelis forced onto them, and now they’re all up in arms that Hamas is acting accordingly.
Don’t get me wrong, Hamas are still bad guys in this particular episode. But that sure as shit doesn’t make Israel the good guys. There are only villains and victims here.
50% of Gazans are children
In a place with the living conditions of Gaza, one has to wonder who is stupid or evil enough to have so many children.
The dystopia will get a whole lot less boring if the civilized world allows Islamic jihadism to achieve its goals.
This is an investment in your future.
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If only the issues involved here were as simple as you apparently need them to be.
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Ethically or EthNically?
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Financially the US is gaining from it all, like she is from the Ukraine war. The point is good, but Israel buying weapons systems from the US means less potholes.
They aren’t being bought. It’s being freely given. All profits go to weapons manufacturers.
Using “freely given” and “profits” in the same sentence should’ve set alarms as to how the issue might be more complex than just who buys what from who.
You are wrong and a simple research into the subject reveals how.
jfc i was hoping you weren’t gonna choose to be an idiotic pedant but here we are.
the us government signs incredibly expensive contracts with weapons manufacturers. aka “buys weapons.” then gives those weapons to its allies. https://www.vox.com/world/2022/12/16/23507640/dc-party-invite-military-contractors-money-ukraine-russia-war-us
wtf do you think these votes in the senate about giving military aid mean? the idea that paying defense contractors to replenish our arsenal is somehow funding local infrastructure is utterly deranged.
edit, to be clear, im not saying that supplying our allies is wrong (well, at this point it might be wrong in israel’s case. certainly not in ukraine’s though). I’m just saying that your earlier statement about the wars making money for the US is wrong. Some US companies are making money, but only because it’s being spent by the US government. Not a positive for the rest of us.
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Good lord you’re infuriatingly stupid. That isn’t at all the subject of the article I linked, and you didn’t even read my comment!? “The game of define words” is a game YOU played, not me, moron, by conflating 2 sentences about “freely given” and “profits” without thinking for even a fraction of a second about WHO the weapons are being given to, and WHO is making the profits!
Enough with the “do your own research” bullshit. Either explain yourself or fuck off.
I have explained myself. I don’t see a reason to hold your hand and explain things that are beyond your comprehension to you, when I can just ask you to research before having an opinion on a subject you know nothing of. Personally I think you have all the rights in the world to be as wrong as you want, but I will of course call you out on it. Being misinformed unfortunately seems to be fashionable and it’s either that or plain laziness to research into it that makes you wrong.
I literally work in the business and know a thing or two on how these aid contracts are written.
I only know about the “ink printer” or “Gillette” aspect of the aid contracts. How does the money get back to fixing potholes? You mean through taxes on the consumables?
He’s a liar who has no idea what he’s talking about. “Do your own research” style moron. I’m sure his dad works at Nintendo.
Please don’t waste both of our time by replying to comments you have not read.
The bread and butter of the US Military Industrial Complex is selling weapons/platforms/systems to other governments. Yes, US contractors can’t just directly sell weapons/etc to other countries (without express permission/case by case basis).
What the person you replied to said is accurate: The US is giving these weapons to Ukraine “for free” (i.e. nothing is ever truly free, Ukraine will end up paying for it one way or another if they come out victorious in the end). However, the DoD is still paying the defense contractors who manufacturer these weapons (unless it’s ammunition and certain types of munitions, which the DoD actually makes themselves).
Regardless, I agree that it is a bit complex, but not that complex. The US Military Industrial Complex is well documented and proven, not sure why you’re acting like the US being the world’s largest arms dealer isn’t what it is.
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I literally have colleagues working the Ukraine program within the Army. But whatever, I’m sure the people actively working all of those packages have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
Anyway, I responded politely and you responded like a complete asshat, so I’ll no longer continue this conversation. Maybe grow up and act like an adult rather than pretend to be some sort of expert with zero sources to back up any of your claims (I didn’t ask for any, but I see in other comments here when others pressed for them, you instead responded with equal rudeness and incompetence).
I literally have colleagues working the Ukraine program within the Army
Sure buddy.
Anyway, I responded politely
You responded with some misinformation and I corrected those parts for you, like I have corrected those who commented before you and this meme itself.
You can either get emotional about it or thank me for clarifying these things for you, but I see you’ve already made your choice.
Again, you didn’t dispel any misinformation because you’ve provided zero sources. Here:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-to-send-250-million-in-weapons-and-ammunition-to-ukraine
Where in either of those articles, each a year apart, does it say anything about us sending Ukraine weapons/supplies that are “ancient”? Much of it was purchased brand new, as well as from existing stocks straight from active military units’ inventories.
Well gotta spend money to make money I guess
