Dr. Shades wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2024 7:49 am
canpakes wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2024 4:02 am
Of the $68 billion in military and related assistance Congress has approved since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 90 percent is going to Americans, one analysis found.”
That quote ignores the fact that the money being spent
was siphoned out of the pockets of Americans to begin with. If not through taxation, then through borrowing money, a.k.a. deficit spending, which will need to be paid back at some point.
Sure. I understand how taxation works. And money doesn’t grow on trees. We have to turn the money printer on for that.
So, the money wasn't "generated," it was simply reallocated to those involved with supplying or otherwise working for the armaments industry. If you're not one of them, then you're not benefitting from others' tax dollars.
Absolutely. But the implication is that this money is going somewhere
other than being reallocated into US hands, when in fact it’s largely the case that it’s feeding
into the US economy.
Let's break the figures down: Your quote says that $68 billion was sent to Ukraine. The U.S.A. has roughly 335 million people living in it. $68,000,000,000 ÷ 335,000,000 = $202.98 (rounded down to the nearest penny) for every man, woman, and child. So, if you have a family of four (for example) living in your home, that's $811.92 that your family could've NOT paid in taxes if the U.S.A. had adopted a non-interventionist stance.
We
could redirect that money to Americans in other ways. I suppose that we could help pay down student loan debt, as example. But you and Ceeboo may need to distance yourselves from your current political ideologies a bit more if you’re starting to talk about doing that, or giving houses away to homeless people, because those sorts of things are
icky socialism, and homeless losers certainly don’t deserve free houses for making bad financial decisions or being addicts. I didn’t find that proposal within the Project 2025 handbook, anyway.
The problem with ‘MAGA’ and ‘America First’ is that it only applies to the person making the list. It’s better described as, ‘Me First’. There are a lot of folks making their own list, and their priorities won’t be yours. How do you resolve that?
Our incoming Administration’s priorities are all about launching a deportation program that some smart folks are calculating will cost around $88 billion dollars per 1 million people deported. What does America benefit from spending to remove working people who are arguably contributing to the economy, in order to toss them across the border? Even if the program costs a third less than estimated, that’s $202.98 (rounded down to the nearest penny) for every man, woman, and child. If you have a family of four (for example) living in your home, that's $811.92 that your family could've NOT paid in taxes if the U.S.A. had adopted a non-deportation stance.
Then repeat that 10 more times.
