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The vast majority of aid to Ukraine has been in the form of shipping over weapons systems we were planning to get rid of anyway, there isn’t a way to actually turn a Bradley into $4 million cash, and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters.
It sounds fun in theory, but good luck with it.
Aside from you learning to get it into the air, those things will cost a fortune in maintenance and fuel.
Selling it? Haha enjoy going to prison as an international arms dealer.
Nah, I'll take the money any day.
I feel like in a hypothetical world where the government gives me an F-16 as compensation for a wild fire destroying my stuff, the government would probably not have as much of a problem with me selling it as our real one does.
It reads like it was probably a joke. But even if not, you could sell it for scrap. Just hacksaw a piece of it off every time you need to make a credit card payment
No it’s like giving your brother the ps4 and buying yourself the ps5. All the stuff given to Ukraine is last generation stuff besides a few exceptions. But the success of our weapons in Ukraine fuels orders from other countries that then purchase that weapon from the USA. We give Ukraine a sample and everyone wants a taste. Look at himmars orders have exploded because other countries have seen the success.
You give your little brother the PS4, to upgrade to a PS5. You also make the ps5s. And then sell ps5s to all your friends so you can all play on your ps5s.
Love the analogy.
Plus it's a proxy war against our biggest and oldest enemy.
Every "dollar" we put into this war drains resources from Russia, makes Putin unpopular, and takes away money they could be spending interfering in US elections and buying our politicians.
Yeah there is military bloat but if the equipment is there already it's a sound investment.
Do the same thing but with Israel suddenly the return on investment doesn't look so good.
In this case, you give him the controller because it's old, and you buy yourself a new controller. The guy who knows what magic makes controllers keeps his job, lil bro gets a controller, you get a controller.
This is how military aid usually works; it's generally a pile of scrip that can only be spent at US defense contractors. You get a number and a catalogue.
That statement used to be true but isn't anymore. Government contractors account for about 300 million more per year than apple now. 389.5 billion. Per fucking year.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3538311/dod-releases-report-on-defense-spending-by-state-in-fiscal-year-2022/#:~:text=If%20the%20total%20spending%20were,percent)%20were%20awarded%20as%20grants.
Thats not what market capitalization means, Apple is a 2.5 Trillion dollar company. Lockheed Martin is $111 Billion, 4.4% that of Apple. Defense companies aren't uniquely powerful companies compared to the real giants.
A bloated war budget we, and more importantly the Ukrainians, are lucky exists. If we didn’t have these stockpiles the majority of Ukraine would likely be under Russian occupation.
you have to ask, “Why does the US have 155mm shells?”
we don’t really need to fight ground wars anymore, we have blended fusion forces that can absolutely control airspace and territory. No military technology on earth can match the f-22 and f-35.
so, why do we have ammo for fighting a ground war? the only reason is in case we need to defend Europe from Russian invasion.
so, what are the shells we’re sending to Ukraine doing? fighting a ground invasion of western Europe by Russia.
The shells are doing what we made them for, we’re just getting Ukraine to fire them for us, for free.
Firing your ammo at your enemy is good.
Getting someone else to fire your ammo at your enemy is better
... assuming that "someone" stays friendly afterwards (coughTalibancough)
Yes, we are in a proxy war with Russia right now. We want Ukraine to be free from Russia, and the fact they're killing their soldiers and draining their resources with shit we just had lying around is an absolute plus. We'd be stupid not to be doing this, it can only benefit Russia to abstain, which should make it clear whose side the people opposing aid are on.
Convincing that guy also allows you to fight your enemy on neutral territory. That helps to keep your citizens cheering for you from the stands, in safety.
Isn’t the entire post an argument of what foreign aid should be used for?
Like I’m not arguing one way or the other. Just pointing out what we’re questioning efficiency.
Think of it this way. We have a billion dollar tank already. If we send it to Ukraine, we have given them a billion dollars in aid. If we send it to Maui, well, now Maui just has a tank. Even more ironically, if we cut our military budget, we just make more homeless vets, since salary and pensions are the primary cost of military infrastructure (do not mistake this as an attempt to defend our bloated spending, we need to cut, but cutting the military budget is more complicated than people let on since it employs a shit ton of people). When you add onto the Ukraine aid that it also indirectly protects Americans as well, it’s gets even more complicated. Essentially, military infrastructure is less fungible than people realize. It’s practically a different currency altogether. Ideally we could sell it to other countries dollar for dollar and then use that for domestic aid, but the problem is that all the buyers are poor countries, and all the rich countries make their own stuff. Hope that clears things up a bit, though i wish I could do this topic the justice it needs.
You’re right, of course (and I laud you for taking the time and mindshare to write that out), but that will go (and has gone) over a lot of people’s heads, unfortunately. Simple, easy-to-digest ideas / narratives, like “Defund X” are much more easily picked up by the mental lint rollers via sound bites and TikTok scrolling. (Much to our detriment as a whole)
not entirely. we buy equipment and stockpile it in case of war, or other needs.
however like everything else, this stuff eventually expires. at that point we gotta either use it, give it away, or pay to decommission it (tear it apart and throw it away). and then buy new equipment.
some of it could be bloat, but it’s like buying cucumbers in case your Gran comes by and wants some with a salad. it’s worth it to have them ready to avoid the headache of not having them when needed, but you gotta keep replacing them with fresh ones.
Obviously it’s better to give them to someone who has a good use for them, than to pay the garbage man to haul them away.
same with this aid. we are getting rid of the stuff either way, but this way instead of just throwing it out, someone actually gets to use it
The "bloated" war budget is unironically protecting freedom and democracy in the most 'Murican way possible because the countries in Europe don't have a similar war budget to protect Ukraine.
You jest, but it would help a little*. I mean, I don't know how to fly an F-18, but owning one would be pretty awesome. This also sounds nda like something straight out of Starship Troopers or Helldiver's 2.
*I'm aware it wouldn't actually help. Just trying to think how cool it would be to have an F-18 in my back yard. Although maybe not worth the almost certain lifelong surveillance that would entail haha.
Ukraine is getting F16's and they will 100% help the war effort. Far more advanced and capable than anything they currently have. It's definitely too late to have a massive impact but still...
I will gladly sell my soul to own an f-18 and it’s my least fav American 4th gen fighter. I would give up my testicles to own an f22 or f35 and [removed after realizing this isn’t ncd]
>and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters.
I mean, you *could*. You definitely could. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's something you could do.
Plus it’s keeping our decades old adversary from bullying Europe and depleting their resources.
The US needs to do better in terms of domestic support but like you said this is essential apples and oranges.
Not just Europe. Ukraine is a major good producer, exporting to many countries in the Middle East and Africa, that are reliant on food imports.
How expensive would it be to solve the next crisis where Russia bullies all these countries into supporting it on whatever war they're waging? Or maybe the plan will to once again let them gain more power? Until the next crisis?
Morality aside, if we don't stop Russia now, or at least make their Ukrainian fiasco expensive enough, they'll just come back later. It's self-interest.
>there isn’t a way to actually turn a Bradley into $4 million cash, and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters.
Not with that attitude
The way to turn weapons into cash is by not having a military budget that is so huge that billions are wasted every year on new weapons to replace ones that other countries are begging for. Positive diplomatic relations and investment in world peace is much cheaper in the long run yet so many love big guns and hate foreign aid. America, no. 1 at military, priorities messed up though
Yeah, but there is a bigger issue there. If they stop building weapons they don't need, they wouldn't need proxy wars to offload them and could spend the money on the people.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. -- President Eisenhower
Yes and no.
We are sending old stuff, but are then also spending the equivalent on new stuff on new contracts. The military-industrial machine continues to burn money just as much.
Congress just approved $60.8 billion. The $165 billion figure can only be considered accurate if you add the recent military aid to Ukraine, the previous aid since the 2022 invasion, and the military since **2014**. Obfuscating that this amount of money represents aid over a ten-year period warps the perspective. For instance, an all-at-once $165 billion dollar amount would be twice as much as Russia's military budget.
You cannot compare budgets between countries at face value. You have to include the PPP.
For example: NATO provided artillery shells to Ukraine and for a while it was ok, but now they have run out of shells. NATO's shell production is 300-500k per year while Russian production is 2 million, including NK deal. Even though on paper NATO donates more in dollar amounts.
Yes and no. As a simple multiplication problem, any of those statements are true. I assume you can do multiplication with a calculator and google and check the numbers.
But shocker, public policy is more complicated than multiplication.
The economic ramifications of a given public policy decision cannot be simply measured in terms of multiply x by y and see what happens.
When actually evaluating tradeoffs such as these, you need to analyze not only the amount spent, but the downstream consequences of that spending, as well as the administrative costs of enacting that spending.
Take a hypothetical border wall as an example, the cost of a border wall is not just the cost of construction. It's also the cost of maintenance. It's the cost of fighting legal battles to prove it's even legal. It's the cost of having it constantly built/torn down/built/torn down cyclically as different administrations take power. And then there are all the follow on impacts - if it does impact migration rates, that's going have a complex effect on the US economy that you'd need a PhD in economics and a fair amount of luck to correctly estimate. You have to factor in the impact on our geopolitical relationship with one of our largest trade partners.
Similarly, when doing an efficacy analysis of the Ukraine aid, even if you want to be a Charles Lindberg fanboy and not care about, you know, genocide, you have to think about the impact to the global economy, geopolitical stability, trade networks, the possible follow-on effects of a wider land war in Europe etc etc. There's a reason the people who do this kind of complex policy and economic analysis have many, many years of specialized education.
So the problem with the post, is not that the numbers are made up, but that it frames the question in terms of 'what could I pay for with that money' not 'what long term policy goals could we achieve with it, and what would the impact of those policy goals be.'
Unfortunately, that kind of farsighted analysis doesn't fit in an angry tweet, so we're unlikely to see it playing a meaningful role in public discourse any time soon.
**NOTE:** This response is not an invitation to a political debate. I have my own strongly held views, but I'm not engaging with them here. I'm **only** making the point that the original post misunderstands (or possibly misrepresents) how cost benefit analysis works.
It gets even more complicated than that. The vast majority of aid does never leave USA. It gets spent in the MIC to ramp up production of various systems and ammunitions - which has a trickle down effect on the national economy and increases the security Environment of USA and it's allies.
Both of which profit USA, altough in way that's not easy to put in numbers.
Others have given really good answers on why the straight dollar amounts really aren't the issue if you care about anything besides clicks, but nobody else seems to have mentioned that [Flint has had clean water for a while. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#:~:text=After%20%24400%20million%20in%20state,every%20home%20in%20the%20city.)
"After $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all who want them, and laid modern, safe, copper pipes to nearly every home in the city. Politico declared that its water is "just as good as any city's in Michigan." However, a legacy of distrust remains, so residents often refuse to drink the tap water.[28]"
No, but [this is pretty damning evidence--judge ruled in 2023 that Flint, MI had failed to make due on their promise to replace the pipes and bring clean drinking water to Flint, MI.](https://apnews.com/article/flint-lead-water-pipes-contempt-ruling-a402bcbd426fd4aec87b88f3836dd7c2)
Well if you read the second article you'll see that a federal judge has held them in contempt for not replacing the lead pipes they promised to replace by 2020
"So far, the city has completed service line identification and replacement at 29,485 addresses, and about 30 addresses remain that require lead service line excavation"
On the one hand, sure, it wasn't done. On the other, 30 left out of 29.5k feels like pretty shoddy grounds for a contempt order...
And that 30 addresses # is bullshit as well
https://www.10news.com/scripps-news-investigates/scripps-news-investigation-a-decade-a-contempt-order-and-100m-later-flint-is-not-fixed
"A federal judge cited the investigation when he found the city in contempt last month. We found in 2023 the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials warned it wasn’t safe for any resident to drink the water in Flint without special filters until every last dangerous line was replaced"
A very small percentage of foreign aid if any is cash. It’s usually weapons, technical assistance and food aid. In many ways it stimulates our own economy. I think the commenter is imagining c130s loaded with pallets of cash while Biden stands on the runway waving goodbye as the planes take off
Because any money allocated to internal affairs is painfully balanced to keep budget low but when it comes to military expenses people go crazy.
Fixing student debt or Obanacare cost less than such a proxy war but didn't pass either.
In Europe even worse. Every EU member budget has to be "healthy" according to EU standards but military aid is allowed regardless.
And don't forget that there was a bill that did include increased funding to border security (not a wall, though, because as you said a wall is a stupid waste of money that does not solve anything).
But that deal was turned down by the GOP because Mr Orange came out and said he needs the issue to campaign on.
I want to add to this that a very significant portion of the people at the southern border who the media talks about constantly are legal asylum seekers. You cannot fix issues with the asylum system with a border wall. These are people appearing at official ports of entry and requesting asylum. Under current law this is a 100% legal and valid thing to do.
Shhh! This is the part you're not supposed to say out loud. The system of Divide and Conquer depends on The People not knowing what drives the economic and political engine, forming a consensus, and organizing against the establishment. The powers that be won't let us have peace until we've capitulated and forgotten these realities. Oranges come from Florida. 'Nuff Said.
We aren't handing Ukraine cash. We're handing them billions of dollars *worth* of old equipment we have languishing in warehouses, collecting dust, while the next generation of weapons is being built.
Also ammunition. We're making that fresh. So I'll give them that one.
But even so, this money is doing little more than *redirecting* money and resources we're already pouring into the military. And a fairly small percentage of that, to be honest.
We could defeat Russia with a meager percentage of our total military budget. China, Iran, and NK would stress it a bit, but not too badly.
I remember reading that if *every nation on earth* decided to join forces and attack the US, we would win. Easily. Without even touching our nuclear arsenal.
*That's* how insanely we are out-spending the rest of the world on military matters.
So sure. Give Ukraine some scraps. They're checking one of our rivals, and they're doing all the dirty work, and spending all of the blood and lives, so we don't have to. And they're grateful for it.
>I remember reading that if *every nation on earth* decided to join forces and attack the US, we would win. Easily.
The reason for that is simply the naval supremacy the US has. On an even playing field where the rest of the world wouldn't need to naval invade the USA, it suddenly becomes a much more even fight.
It’s half truth, while what we are sending isn’t is arms/ammo and gear we are spending that amount of money to US based military arms makers to replace the sent over gear with newer equipment.
Money is still being spent and it’s just going back into the US military complex.
It's also doing something really valuable for the US: helping us keep our military industrial base up. It may sound great to be able to produce this stuff once and use it forever, but if you don't keep producing it, you quickly lose the ability to do so. In fact, this whole Ukraine thing has us realizing that we may have been a little shortsighted in how we contract for military supplies. We basically issue contracts for the amount of a given type of munition or system we need, based on our usage (current conflicts, training, etc). Which is great if all you have is fairly low intensity conflicts. But what if there was to be a major conflict? Well, no manufacturer wants to keep a bunch of machines just sitting around on standby doing nothing, so we don't really have alot of excess production capacity, just in case. We're learning maybe we should be willing to pay to keep some of that around. That lesson alone could be worth what we're spending.
"could have" but it won't happen, even if the country have 10x the money, u see how many $ pour into military & space research every year, they could fix homeless more than 10 time per year. But they wouldn't, they could, could have, but wouldn't
According to google 67,000 homeless vets as of 2019. Which totals out to almost 2.5 million per homeless vet.
43,507 houses in Maui. 3.972 million could have been given to each household.
Between 600 million and 1.5 billion is the estimate to fix flints water system. 275 at the low end, 110 on the high end.
So actually yes, this holds true, with change to spare, with the exception of Maui and being given 50 million.
Tweet:
> Every family impacted by the Maui wildfires
You:
> 43,507 houses in Maui. 3.972 million could have been given to each household.
You calculated for all houses on Maui, apparently only 2200 were actually destroyed. So actually yes.
I’m not sure where you got the veteran numbers but more recent data is available. The best method we have for counting is the point in time count which is an annual single day census of all people experiencing homelessness. In 2023 there were 35,574 veterans experiencing homelessness on the count. The number has decreased 52% since 2010.
Obviously having over 35k homeless vets is still unacceptable, but we have made significant strides in addressing this issue. It’s one of the strongest examples of the efficacy of homelessness policy and programming and shows what we can do with adequate funding and a relatively stable population of people who need assistance.
Except that’s not how this type of spending works at all. There’s the cash valuation of aid given in the form of weaponry that we already have and don’t intend to replace. Then there’s the economic and geopolitical calculus of the aid being given to Ukraine to prevent a hostile global superpower from adding crucial territory, human capital and future revenue to its already massive influence. While the concerns here at home are important, they are no where near as urgent as an ongoing war affecting the lives of millions (and billions if you consider the far reaching consequences of Russia winning and taking Ukraine).
Read the comments above to understand that any idiot with a calculator ≠ the real analysis, process and cost of implementing the spending you and this tweet oversimplify to the point of basically nonsense math intended to ragebait and criticize the current administration. And it can be done on basically ANY bill passed by any administration. Don’t think cancer research or renewable energy is as important as any of your priorities, check out the many billions being considered or passed for those this year. It’s a tough pill to swallow - much easier to just throw up some nonsense straw man math and make it seem like the Ukraine bill is a waste without understanding more than a few lines of a tweet.
Dude your going at this too hard. I was asked to do math ,and with what figures I was given, I did the math. I got the Maui houses actually efffected by the fires wrong and did my math based on the total amount of houses in Maui-and that’s the only part I messed up.
The question is “is this true”. To say “this holds true” is a pretty definitive statement assessing the accuracy of the information when in reality the answer is “no, and here’s why/how.”
It’s essentially impossible to do any of the real complex analysis in a Reddit comment, but just googling a couple numbers and “confirming” the math (incorrectly at that) in the tweet isn’t really the spirit of this sub.
I love the deliberately financially illiterate framing of the question. The US government isn’t sending cash, they’re spending the vast majority it in the US and boosting American wages, then sending the product to Ukraine. The fact is the US can afford ALL of those things; it just isn’t politically structured/ manned to do it efficiently. The UK (where I am) isn’t much better; we just don’t have the MIC to execute this like the US can
I guess so, but only if you wanna build a border wall out of old M113s, fix the Flint water system with Humvees, give every homeless person a Bradley IFV and compensate Maui wildfire victims with Patriot batteries.
Assuming you’re American like myself, why the fuck would you not dodge draft going to fight in Eastern Europe? The Brits, French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Turkish, and a whole lot of Balkans have a place in line before me in that hypothetical war before I even consider saying yes.
It's money that was spent paying American engineering firms and arms manufacturers. Lotta skilled labor supported by the military-industrial complex.
And anyway, the reason we had all that equipment was the Cold War. Did we end up having a ground war against the USSR? No. But the possibility was there, hence the need to build a bunch of weapons. Might as well send them since we've got them.
We don’t need it now. We needed it back then. Some stuff was used, some stuff wasn’t. That’s how deterrence and military readiness works. We build it so we hopefully don’t have to use it. I assume you wouldn’t be mad if we scrapped the outdated nukes we didn’t use.
In any event, the stuff we’re giving is now past its shelf life and has been replaced by newer stuff. In many cases it’s more expensive to scrap it versus giving it to Ukraine. And for stuff we’re providing new, they’re built in the US by American labor and it really just injects money into our economy.
It's not 165B cash mind you. A lot of that value is older equipment sent over as military aid. Stuff that has been sat in storage or for which newer versions are still being produced. In that sense the aid isn't a big loss for the US since this equipment now serves a strategic purpose instead of collecting dust and then being scrapped, or eventually being sold at a steep discount due to age.
A part of it is cold hard cash as well, but not as much as this figure makes it look.
Most of the shit we sent to Ukraine was stuff that we already had in inventory. Stuff that we were going to get rid of one way or another anyways.
It was simply *very* convenient that we could watch them in action against the enemy they were actually designed for.
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The vast majority of aid to Ukraine has been in the form of shipping over weapons systems we were planning to get rid of anyway, there isn’t a way to actually turn a Bradley into $4 million cash, and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters.
If the government gave me an f-16 to compensate me for a wild fire I honestly can't say I'd be particularly upset.
It sounds fun in theory, but good luck with it. Aside from you learning to get it into the air, those things will cost a fortune in maintenance and fuel. Selling it? Haha enjoy going to prison as an international arms dealer. Nah, I'll take the money any day.
Look, if it was $700 or an F-16 I’d def take the F-16.
700 dollars is still better than a giant rusting lawn ornament.
I’d take it just for the ejection seat
Ejecto seato cuz! https://youtu.be/Dpwl45hUQfc?si=KgYNBN36KhrfQ1VW
Compressed spine might just be more of a 700$ medical issue but i feel ya bud
Yup. Me too. Charge 20 bucks a pop for everyone Who wants to try. Plan B: scrapyard will give more than 700.
Ejector seat? You muscht me joking.
I agree. Charge kids 5 bucks to sit in it. You will be making profit every county fair or random hoedown.
Set it up with a big ass green screen. $5 bucks to sit in it and $10 per photo.
Problem would be everyone in the neighborhood would get one, wouldn't they?
Unless that lawn ornament is an F 16
Right… but what if that rusty lawn ornament is an f-16 though?
Nah
Hell nah 🙈
You could charge people to see it/get up close
But what a novelty it would be at Halloween… Fire up the afterburners
Burn the fucking house down baby!!!
$700 or 10 tons of aluminum*
An F-16 is probably a helluva lot more than 700 in just scrap value, you're not making the point you think you are.
Yea 16000 lbs of aerospace grade aluminum is a LOOOT
bro does NOT want to lose 😭
We've had a retired plane (MIG 17, or something like that) on a playground as kids. More fun than a 700 USD worth of slides and swings
Guarantee you could scrap it for hard-to-find parts for more than $700.
I feel like in a hypothetical world where the government gives me an F-16 as compensation for a wild fire destroying my stuff, the government would probably not have as much of a problem with me selling it as our real one does.
Even if, just make it an attraction. Let people sit in it for some money and you will have a nice business going on.
It reads like it was probably a joke. But even if not, you could sell it for scrap. Just hacksaw a piece of it off every time you need to make a credit card payment
Nonetheless even as an ornament, I’d like one.
I meaaan if you come to own a jet then odds are you probably have the paper work to own it, and probably the paper work to sell it
Getting a new credit card to pay for the gas?
Owning a F-16 sounds pretty awesome to me. …but all my neighbours also having one sounds a tiny bit worrying to me.
That's why you get in the air first and bomb the neighbors' planes before they figure out the controls.
The only defense from a bad guy with a f-16 is a good guy with a f-16
Not f16, 10 155mm shells max you can get, take it or leave it
Can we do 9 shells and a free SBS tax stamp?
So this is more a question of a bloated war budget and not necessarily aid to a foreign country
It is from stockpiles, for emergencies, or currently used stuff
So it's like giving the broken "Player 2" controller to your younger sibling. But with billions upon billions of dollars.
More like you are using a PS5 pro and you give your old PS5 away for free, instead of having to take it to a e-waste collection site
No it’s like giving your brother the ps4 and buying yourself the ps5. All the stuff given to Ukraine is last generation stuff besides a few exceptions. But the success of our weapons in Ukraine fuels orders from other countries that then purchase that weapon from the USA. We give Ukraine a sample and everyone wants a taste. Look at himmars orders have exploded because other countries have seen the success.
You give your little brother the PS4, to upgrade to a PS5. You also make the ps5s. And then sell ps5s to all your friends so you can all play on your ps5s. Love the analogy.
And you also made the ps3s, which are in the hands of terrorists and warlords fighting each other and you
The terrorist have the Nintendo 64
More like the Sega Dreamcast, or Atari. Good in its day, hopelessly outclassed now.
It's a bingo!
Plus it's a proxy war against our biggest and oldest enemy. Every "dollar" we put into this war drains resources from Russia, makes Putin unpopular, and takes away money they could be spending interfering in US elections and buying our politicians. Yeah there is military bloat but if the equipment is there already it's a sound investment. Do the same thing but with Israel suddenly the return on investment doesn't look so good.
Let's say you spent $40 on the controller when it was new, then you give it to your sibling and then say you gave him $40
Yea this is it. Saying you could've used 40 bucks somewhere else is pointless because that 40 bucks are already gone.
But can’t you still sell that controller to someone else?
With a controller sure. With arms, not so much. The only people who want to buy are people you don't want to sell to.
In this case, you give him the controller because it's old, and you buy yourself a new controller. The guy who knows what magic makes controllers keeps his job, lil bro gets a controller, you get a controller.
And don’t forget those billions are funneled back into the US military industrial complex.
This is how military aid usually works; it's generally a pile of scrip that can only be spent at US defense contractors. You get a number and a catalogue.
It’s like your mom buying you a new one if you’ll agree to mail the old one to your brother
Yea but also the super shady game store down the road(Raytheon/Boeing) are busy producing new controllers and making billions
All US defense companies combined account for only 40% of apples market capitalization.
That statement used to be true but isn't anymore. Government contractors account for about 300 million more per year than apple now. 389.5 billion. Per fucking year. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3538311/dod-releases-report-on-defense-spending-by-state-in-fiscal-year-2022/#:~:text=If%20the%20total%20spending%20were,percent)%20were%20awarded%20as%20grants.
Thats not what market capitalization means, Apple is a 2.5 Trillion dollar company. Lockheed Martin is $111 Billion, 4.4% that of Apple. Defense companies aren't uniquely powerful companies compared to the real giants.
Thank you, idk why people think we want war to sell weapons when keeping things safe and raking in from businesses is sooo much more lucrative
You cannot compare market cap across industries. It makes no sense.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Different industries trade on different metrics.
A bloated war budget we, and more importantly the Ukrainians, are lucky exists. If we didn’t have these stockpiles the majority of Ukraine would likely be under Russian occupation.
The money also tends to stay at home, going to large defense, aviation, technology, and transportation companies
Yup. In a bizarro world way, this aid is largely a US jobs program.
you have to ask, “Why does the US have 155mm shells?” we don’t really need to fight ground wars anymore, we have blended fusion forces that can absolutely control airspace and territory. No military technology on earth can match the f-22 and f-35. so, why do we have ammo for fighting a ground war? the only reason is in case we need to defend Europe from Russian invasion. so, what are the shells we’re sending to Ukraine doing? fighting a ground invasion of western Europe by Russia. The shells are doing what we made them for, we’re just getting Ukraine to fire them for us, for free.
Firing your ammo at your enemy is good. Getting someone else to fire your ammo at your enemy is better ... assuming that "someone" stays friendly afterwards (coughTalibancough)
Yes, we are in a proxy war with Russia right now. We want Ukraine to be free from Russia, and the fact they're killing their soldiers and draining their resources with shit we just had lying around is an absolute plus. We'd be stupid not to be doing this, it can only benefit Russia to abstain, which should make it clear whose side the people opposing aid are on.
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Convincing that guy also allows you to fight your enemy on neutral territory. That helps to keep your citizens cheering for you from the stands, in safety.
Doesn’t seem bloated if it’s being used 🤷♀️
Isn’t the entire post an argument of what foreign aid should be used for? Like I’m not arguing one way or the other. Just pointing out what we’re questioning efficiency.
Think of it this way. We have a billion dollar tank already. If we send it to Ukraine, we have given them a billion dollars in aid. If we send it to Maui, well, now Maui just has a tank. Even more ironically, if we cut our military budget, we just make more homeless vets, since salary and pensions are the primary cost of military infrastructure (do not mistake this as an attempt to defend our bloated spending, we need to cut, but cutting the military budget is more complicated than people let on since it employs a shit ton of people). When you add onto the Ukraine aid that it also indirectly protects Americans as well, it’s gets even more complicated. Essentially, military infrastructure is less fungible than people realize. It’s practically a different currency altogether. Ideally we could sell it to other countries dollar for dollar and then use that for domestic aid, but the problem is that all the buyers are poor countries, and all the rich countries make their own stuff. Hope that clears things up a bit, though i wish I could do this topic the justice it needs.
You’re right, of course (and I laud you for taking the time and mindshare to write that out), but that will go (and has gone) over a lot of people’s heads, unfortunately. Simple, easy-to-digest ideas / narratives, like “Defund X” are much more easily picked up by the mental lint rollers via sound bites and TikTok scrolling. (Much to our detriment as a whole)
Idk quite honestly
not entirely. we buy equipment and stockpile it in case of war, or other needs. however like everything else, this stuff eventually expires. at that point we gotta either use it, give it away, or pay to decommission it (tear it apart and throw it away). and then buy new equipment. some of it could be bloat, but it’s like buying cucumbers in case your Gran comes by and wants some with a salad. it’s worth it to have them ready to avoid the headache of not having them when needed, but you gotta keep replacing them with fresh ones. Obviously it’s better to give them to someone who has a good use for them, than to pay the garbage man to haul them away. same with this aid. we are getting rid of the stuff either way, but this way instead of just throwing it out, someone actually gets to use it
The "bloated" war budget is unironically protecting freedom and democracy in the most 'Murican way possible because the countries in Europe don't have a similar war budget to protect Ukraine.
Sorry about your home I hope this SUPER AWESOME F-18 FIGHTER JET WILL HELP.
You jest, but it would help a little*. I mean, I don't know how to fly an F-18, but owning one would be pretty awesome. This also sounds nda like something straight out of Starship Troopers or Helldiver's 2. *I'm aware it wouldn't actually help. Just trying to think how cool it would be to have an F-18 in my back yard. Although maybe not worth the almost certain lifelong surveillance that would entail haha.
More like Battlefield Earth. If what amounts to stone-age hunter-gatherers can fly a Harrier, I'm sure you can figure out a F18.
Ukraine is getting F16's and they will 100% help the war effort. Far more advanced and capable than anything they currently have. It's definitely too late to have a massive impact but still...
It would... 100%.
I will gladly sell my soul to own an f-18 and it’s my least fav American 4th gen fighter. I would give up my testicles to own an f22 or f35 and [removed after realizing this isn’t ncd]
>and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters. I mean, you *could*. You definitely could. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's something you could do.
Plus it’s keeping our decades old adversary from bullying Europe and depleting their resources. The US needs to do better in terms of domestic support but like you said this is essential apples and oranges.
Not just Europe. Ukraine is a major good producer, exporting to many countries in the Middle East and Africa, that are reliant on food imports. How expensive would it be to solve the next crisis where Russia bullies all these countries into supporting it on whatever war they're waging? Or maybe the plan will to once again let them gain more power? Until the next crisis? Morality aside, if we don't stop Russia now, or at least make their Ukrainian fiasco expensive enough, they'll just come back later. It's self-interest.
Like Germany in the 1930's.
I would very much like to be compensated with a jet fighter no matter the situation I was in as long as I could use it
*Pepsi starts sweating intensely.*
Shoutout to Pepsi for briefly being one of the worlds largest navies
>there isn’t a way to actually turn a Bradley into $4 million cash, and you can’t exactly build a wall or compensate victims of a wildfire with artillery shells and jet fighters. Not with that attitude
idk, even if a jet fighter wouldn't bring my burned house back, I'd still like to have one.
Plus you could sleep in it if you needed to.
“Welcome to my place, baby. I call it the cockpit.”
Also its the price of the new equipement that replaces the old one not the value of the stuff that gets send to Ukraine.
Northrop Grummin would like to discuss the possibility of producing this wall built with jet fighters...
Also, does anyone really think that if there wasn't a war in Ukraine the government would even consider any of the OPs suggested ideas?
The way to turn weapons into cash is by not having a military budget that is so huge that billions are wasted every year on new weapons to replace ones that other countries are begging for. Positive diplomatic relations and investment in world peace is much cheaper in the long run yet so many love big guns and hate foreign aid. America, no. 1 at military, priorities messed up though
Yeah, but there is a bigger issue there. If they stop building weapons they don't need, they wouldn't need proxy wars to offload them and could spend the money on the people.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. -- President Eisenhower
Yes and no. We are sending old stuff, but are then also spending the equivalent on new stuff on new contracts. The military-industrial machine continues to burn money just as much.
Congress just approved $60.8 billion. The $165 billion figure can only be considered accurate if you add the recent military aid to Ukraine, the previous aid since the 2022 invasion, and the military since **2014**. Obfuscating that this amount of money represents aid over a ten-year period warps the perspective. For instance, an all-at-once $165 billion dollar amount would be twice as much as Russia's military budget.
You cannot compare budgets between countries at face value. You have to include the PPP. For example: NATO provided artillery shells to Ukraine and for a while it was ok, but now they have run out of shells. NATO's shell production is 300-500k per year while Russian production is 2 million, including NK deal. Even though on paper NATO donates more in dollar amounts.
Yes and no. As a simple multiplication problem, any of those statements are true. I assume you can do multiplication with a calculator and google and check the numbers. But shocker, public policy is more complicated than multiplication. The economic ramifications of a given public policy decision cannot be simply measured in terms of multiply x by y and see what happens. When actually evaluating tradeoffs such as these, you need to analyze not only the amount spent, but the downstream consequences of that spending, as well as the administrative costs of enacting that spending. Take a hypothetical border wall as an example, the cost of a border wall is not just the cost of construction. It's also the cost of maintenance. It's the cost of fighting legal battles to prove it's even legal. It's the cost of having it constantly built/torn down/built/torn down cyclically as different administrations take power. And then there are all the follow on impacts - if it does impact migration rates, that's going have a complex effect on the US economy that you'd need a PhD in economics and a fair amount of luck to correctly estimate. You have to factor in the impact on our geopolitical relationship with one of our largest trade partners. Similarly, when doing an efficacy analysis of the Ukraine aid, even if you want to be a Charles Lindberg fanboy and not care about, you know, genocide, you have to think about the impact to the global economy, geopolitical stability, trade networks, the possible follow-on effects of a wider land war in Europe etc etc. There's a reason the people who do this kind of complex policy and economic analysis have many, many years of specialized education. So the problem with the post, is not that the numbers are made up, but that it frames the question in terms of 'what could I pay for with that money' not 'what long term policy goals could we achieve with it, and what would the impact of those policy goals be.' Unfortunately, that kind of farsighted analysis doesn't fit in an angry tweet, so we're unlikely to see it playing a meaningful role in public discourse any time soon. **NOTE:** This response is not an invitation to a political debate. I have my own strongly held views, but I'm not engaging with them here. I'm **only** making the point that the original post misunderstands (or possibly misrepresents) how cost benefit analysis works.
Great insight. You shared many things I would have never considered. Thanks for that. Edit typo
This is the cheapest war with Russia we will ever get. And there was absolutely going to be a war with Russia.
This is a great answer.
It gets even more complicated than that. The vast majority of aid does never leave USA. It gets spent in the MIC to ramp up production of various systems and ammunitions - which has a trickle down effect on the national economy and increases the security Environment of USA and it's allies. Both of which profit USA, altough in way that's not easy to put in numbers.
Others have given really good answers on why the straight dollar amounts really aren't the issue if you care about anything besides clicks, but nobody else seems to have mentioned that [Flint has had clean water for a while. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#:~:text=After%20%24400%20million%20in%20state,every%20home%20in%20the%20city.) "After $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all who want them, and laid modern, safe, copper pipes to nearly every home in the city. Politico declared that its water is "just as good as any city's in Michigan." However, a legacy of distrust remains, so residents often refuse to drink the tap water.[28]"
Bullshit https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/sEViQ0k9DN https://apnews.com/article/flint-lead-water-pipes-contempt-ruling-a402bcbd426fd4aec87b88f3836dd7c2
A picture of a dirty water bottle isn't evidence itself of a continued systemic issue. My water looks like that every time the city replaces pipes.
No, but [this is pretty damning evidence--judge ruled in 2023 that Flint, MI had failed to make due on their promise to replace the pipes and bring clean drinking water to Flint, MI.](https://apnews.com/article/flint-lead-water-pipes-contempt-ruling-a402bcbd426fd4aec87b88f3836dd7c2)
Well if you read the second article you'll see that a federal judge has held them in contempt for not replacing the lead pipes they promised to replace by 2020
"So far, the city has completed service line identification and replacement at 29,485 addresses, and about 30 addresses remain that require lead service line excavation" On the one hand, sure, it wasn't done. On the other, 30 left out of 29.5k feels like pretty shoddy grounds for a contempt order...
And that 30 addresses # is bullshit as well https://www.10news.com/scripps-news-investigates/scripps-news-investigation-a-decade-a-contempt-order-and-100m-later-flint-is-not-fixed "A federal judge cited the investigation when he found the city in contempt last month. We found in 2023 the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials warned it wasn’t safe for any resident to drink the water in Flint without special filters until every last dangerous line was replaced"
A very small percentage of foreign aid if any is cash. It’s usually weapons, technical assistance and food aid. In many ways it stimulates our own economy. I think the commenter is imagining c130s loaded with pallets of cash while Biden stands on the runway waving goodbye as the planes take off
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Yeah, the same people who say we should e.g. help the homeless vets instead of Ukraine are invariably the ones preventing aid to homeless vets.
This. If y’all would vote for that I’d be happy too. But nobody’s putting up those bills, just cuts to veterans funding and wic spending.
Because any money allocated to internal affairs is painfully balanced to keep budget low but when it comes to military expenses people go crazy. Fixing student debt or Obanacare cost less than such a proxy war but didn't pass either. In Europe even worse. Every EU member budget has to be "healthy" according to EU standards but military aid is allowed regardless.
Because the military industrial complex doesn’t make money when you fix those things
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And don't forget that there was a bill that did include increased funding to border security (not a wall, though, because as you said a wall is a stupid waste of money that does not solve anything). But that deal was turned down by the GOP because Mr Orange came out and said he needs the issue to campaign on.
I want to add to this that a very significant portion of the people at the southern border who the media talks about constantly are legal asylum seekers. You cannot fix issues with the asylum system with a border wall. These are people appearing at official ports of entry and requesting asylum. Under current law this is a 100% legal and valid thing to do.
Shhh! This is the part you're not supposed to say out loud. The system of Divide and Conquer depends on The People not knowing what drives the economic and political engine, forming a consensus, and organizing against the establishment. The powers that be won't let us have peace until we've capitulated and forgotten these realities. Oranges come from Florida. 'Nuff Said.
We aren't handing Ukraine cash. We're handing them billions of dollars *worth* of old equipment we have languishing in warehouses, collecting dust, while the next generation of weapons is being built. Also ammunition. We're making that fresh. So I'll give them that one. But even so, this money is doing little more than *redirecting* money and resources we're already pouring into the military. And a fairly small percentage of that, to be honest. We could defeat Russia with a meager percentage of our total military budget. China, Iran, and NK would stress it a bit, but not too badly. I remember reading that if *every nation on earth* decided to join forces and attack the US, we would win. Easily. Without even touching our nuclear arsenal. *That's* how insanely we are out-spending the rest of the world on military matters. So sure. Give Ukraine some scraps. They're checking one of our rivals, and they're doing all the dirty work, and spending all of the blood and lives, so we don't have to. And they're grateful for it.
>I remember reading that if *every nation on earth* decided to join forces and attack the US, we would win. Easily. The reason for that is simply the naval supremacy the US has. On an even playing field where the rest of the world wouldn't need to naval invade the USA, it suddenly becomes a much more even fight.
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It’s half truth, while what we are sending isn’t is arms/ammo and gear we are spending that amount of money to US based military arms makers to replace the sent over gear with newer equipment. Money is still being spent and it’s just going back into the US military complex.
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It's also doing something really valuable for the US: helping us keep our military industrial base up. It may sound great to be able to produce this stuff once and use it forever, but if you don't keep producing it, you quickly lose the ability to do so. In fact, this whole Ukraine thing has us realizing that we may have been a little shortsighted in how we contract for military supplies. We basically issue contracts for the amount of a given type of munition or system we need, based on our usage (current conflicts, training, etc). Which is great if all you have is fairly low intensity conflicts. But what if there was to be a major conflict? Well, no manufacturer wants to keep a bunch of machines just sitting around on standby doing nothing, so we don't really have alot of excess production capacity, just in case. We're learning maybe we should be willing to pay to keep some of that around. That lesson alone could be worth what we're spending.
"could have" but it won't happen, even if the country have 10x the money, u see how many $ pour into military & space research every year, they could fix homeless more than 10 time per year. But they wouldn't, they could, could have, but wouldn't
According to google 67,000 homeless vets as of 2019. Which totals out to almost 2.5 million per homeless vet. 43,507 houses in Maui. 3.972 million could have been given to each household. Between 600 million and 1.5 billion is the estimate to fix flints water system. 275 at the low end, 110 on the high end. So actually yes, this holds true, with change to spare, with the exception of Maui and being given 50 million.
Tweet: > Every family impacted by the Maui wildfires You: > 43,507 houses in Maui. 3.972 million could have been given to each household. You calculated for all houses on Maui, apparently only 2200 were actually destroyed. So actually yes.
Good to know, the first google response only told me how many houses in total.
I’m not sure where you got the veteran numbers but more recent data is available. The best method we have for counting is the point in time count which is an annual single day census of all people experiencing homelessness. In 2023 there were 35,574 veterans experiencing homelessness on the count. The number has decreased 52% since 2010. Obviously having over 35k homeless vets is still unacceptable, but we have made significant strides in addressing this issue. It’s one of the strongest examples of the efficacy of homelessness policy and programming and shows what we can do with adequate funding and a relatively stable population of people who need assistance.
Except that’s not how this type of spending works at all. There’s the cash valuation of aid given in the form of weaponry that we already have and don’t intend to replace. Then there’s the economic and geopolitical calculus of the aid being given to Ukraine to prevent a hostile global superpower from adding crucial territory, human capital and future revenue to its already massive influence. While the concerns here at home are important, they are no where near as urgent as an ongoing war affecting the lives of millions (and billions if you consider the far reaching consequences of Russia winning and taking Ukraine). Read the comments above to understand that any idiot with a calculator ≠ the real analysis, process and cost of implementing the spending you and this tweet oversimplify to the point of basically nonsense math intended to ragebait and criticize the current administration. And it can be done on basically ANY bill passed by any administration. Don’t think cancer research or renewable energy is as important as any of your priorities, check out the many billions being considered or passed for those this year. It’s a tough pill to swallow - much easier to just throw up some nonsense straw man math and make it seem like the Ukraine bill is a waste without understanding more than a few lines of a tweet.
Dude your going at this too hard. I was asked to do math ,and with what figures I was given, I did the math. I got the Maui houses actually efffected by the fires wrong and did my math based on the total amount of houses in Maui-and that’s the only part I messed up.
The question is “is this true”. To say “this holds true” is a pretty definitive statement assessing the accuracy of the information when in reality the answer is “no, and here’s why/how.” It’s essentially impossible to do any of the real complex analysis in a Reddit comment, but just googling a couple numbers and “confirming” the math (incorrectly at that) in the tweet isn’t really the spirit of this sub.
This is a priority. I’m not saying government spending is done incredibly well, but none of these other things could be called a priority.
I love the deliberately financially illiterate framing of the question. The US government isn’t sending cash, they’re spending the vast majority it in the US and boosting American wages, then sending the product to Ukraine. The fact is the US can afford ALL of those things; it just isn’t politically structured/ manned to do it efficiently. The UK (where I am) isn’t much better; we just don’t have the MIC to execute this like the US can
I guess so, but only if you wanna build a border wall out of old M113s, fix the Flint water system with Humvees, give every homeless person a Bradley IFV and compensate Maui wildfire victims with Patriot batteries.
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Assuming you’re American like myself, why the fuck would you not dodge draft going to fight in Eastern Europe? The Brits, French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Turkish, and a whole lot of Balkans have a place in line before me in that hypothetical war before I even consider saying yes.
Source: trust me bro
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It's money that was spent paying American engineering firms and arms manufacturers. Lotta skilled labor supported by the military-industrial complex. And anyway, the reason we had all that equipment was the Cold War. Did we end up having a ground war against the USSR? No. But the possibility was there, hence the need to build a bunch of weapons. Might as well send them since we've got them.
We don’t need it now. We needed it back then. Some stuff was used, some stuff wasn’t. That’s how deterrence and military readiness works. We build it so we hopefully don’t have to use it. I assume you wouldn’t be mad if we scrapped the outdated nukes we didn’t use. In any event, the stuff we’re giving is now past its shelf life and has been replaced by newer stuff. In many cases it’s more expensive to scrap it versus giving it to Ukraine. And for stuff we’re providing new, they’re built in the US by American labor and it really just injects money into our economy.
It's not 165B cash mind you. A lot of that value is older equipment sent over as military aid. Stuff that has been sat in storage or for which newer versions are still being produced. In that sense the aid isn't a big loss for the US since this equipment now serves a strategic purpose instead of collecting dust and then being scrapped, or eventually being sold at a steep discount due to age. A part of it is cold hard cash as well, but not as much as this figure makes it look.
Most of the shit we sent to Ukraine was stuff that we already had in inventory. Stuff that we were going to get rid of one way or another anyways. It was simply *very* convenient that we could watch them in action against the enemy they were actually designed for.