One of the best uses of my tax dollars in my entire lifetime.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Who doesn't like their tax dollars being spent on killing people instead of socialist stuff like healthcare, education, social workers and government services that actually serve citizens.
The USA could afford what's being provided to Ukraine and socialized benefits. But chooses not to because of some dumb reason or another.
This is the answer. It isn’t a zero sum game.
It's more the hypocrisy of some people. The ones who cheer for a huge defense/foreign aid budget year after year no matter who it's for, and then leave bitchy comments on FB about student loan forgiveness being "unfair" because it uses their tax dollars.
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So, in your mind, helping to prevent civilians from dying in a war zone and stopping countries being taken over by foreign powers to be exploited is not a worthy humanitarian effort?
European countries are taking somewhat decent care of Ukrainian refugees, which can't be said for refugees that aren't white skinned.
And did you just collate military equipment with a humanitarian effort or am misreading that?
I'm in full support of any real humanitarian aid possible: Support their wounded and sick, support their people with basic needs (generators/energy, food, water, clothing, temporary housing, psych support etc).
Sometimes I'm really surprised at some of these questions you people come up with.
Edit: Typo.
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The US is already spending as much federal tax dollars per capita on healthcare as the UK spends on the NHS. Figures that bailing out hospitals when patients invariably default on their debt is expensive: In the US they have tons of people ending up in ER requiring expensive treatment that would've been way cheaper and easier to treat preventively -- but to do prevention you need to be able to afford a doctor's visit. Sure you can stop spending that money but then you either let hospitals go bankrupt, or you have to allow them to reject patients and have them dying on the streets. Even for Americans that's a bit too much.
I don't really have the numbers for education but one big point there is that in the US, education is largely funded by local taxes, that is, schools in low-income areas are severely underfunded, while those in high-income areas are overfunded. If anything it should be the exact opposite, the worst areas need the best schools to lift them up.
But fixing either would cut into corporate profits and/or severely alleviate income equality (and, in the US, thereby, race inequality) so, yeah, don't hold your breath.
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First time in my lifetime I've seen the US military might truly used for something good.
Me too. I've opposed every US war that occured in my 50 year life except this one.
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Before-the-events, did you think the same about Libya, Afghanistan, or Iraq?
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Meanwhile we are giving Almost 4billion/yr to Israel.
I mean, it's an apartheid state killing and looting brown people, so that's typical US foreign policy.
Link without paywall, first was fubar
But you still have to pay back your student loans and pay a small fortune for healthcare because fuck you.
Two have basically nothing to do with each other.
We are still the richest nation in the world. 2.3 billion sounds like a lot, but its nothing to the us gov, it's nothing to the defense budget alone, and it is actively wrecking the military capabilities of one of our top geopolitical rivals.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of the Russia/Ukraine situation, but I know this is peanuts compared to what it could cost us, and we don't even have boots on the ground. This is the deal of a century.
Be mad at the corrupt piece of shit republicans forcing you to go into crippling debt for healthcare and education, not the innocent Ukrainians fighting for their lives and democracy.
The good thing about a 2-party system is that you can always point to the other party as to why things are the way they are. :)
Why would I only be mad at the Republicans? Joe Biden and most of the Democrats don't support single payer or free tertiary education either.
American pays mores per capita for healthcare than most countries with a single payer system.
You'd actually save money if you changed.
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This war is the best thing to happen to the military industrial complex since the cold war.
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Anyone know the total in lethal aid sent this year? I know last year it exceeded the entire Russian military budget.
Russia sits on a big ass stock of equipment. Of course Ukraine needs more in aid than Russia budgets to keep their stuff working.
What's the Russian output? Can it keep up if NATO is sending ammunition? Or is Russia just dwindling it's reserves?
They lost the upper hand in regards of tanks, they lose artillery at an unsustainable rate and they produced like 20 planes in a year. They still have a huge advantage in the air and that's where there has to be found a solution to get Ukraine on a more equal level. I doubt that Russia will gain any significant amount of land anymore but idk when or if Ukraine can push them back beyond 2014 borders.
Btw I'm dumb as shit and not a qualified source for any of the statements I made.
I wouldn't put yourself down. There's the ordinary fog of war and rather developed systems for spreading misinformation. I had a quick Google search and many of the results are… contradictory to say the least. The only thing that seems to be confirmed is that NATO can't adequately supply Ukraine without stripping it's own militaries of equipment. It seems to have run out of the arms that it's willing to 'give' away (except for the nasty stuff that nobody should be using) and doesn't have the capacity to ramp up production for a year or two at least.
Yo can us citizen pleebs get some funding for our class wa.. living expenses.
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