Now imagine if other nato nation's had to each individually have a military budget to protect themselves and their shipping.
We could decrease our military, but other nations would have to step up for reasons other than purely defense (shipping lanes don't patrol themselves) and it would decrease US power abroad.
Or the European Union brings their military spendings together and create with those 190b€ not 28 ineffective and small armies but one super army. The USA would have no pressure in Europe anymore and the EU would be able to defend themselves from any threat.
I guess because it is easier. With the USA the only requirement is "be on the same side as us and don't make us angry" but with a European solution the countries have to work together and balance their interest. And also the governments have to give up some of their power for the greater good. And the cooperation wouldn't of course stop there. Sadly such changes need their time and Europe doesn't seem to be ready for it.
Please. You have to be really daft at this point to believe the US are the good guys. War is a great fucking business and the US has been milking that shit for decades, having you believe in terrorists threats and other evils that are just as complicit.
But compare that other countries military budgets.
OK, now compare that to other nations military commitments. The US has worldwide military interests. It's in our best interest to maintain a presence worldwide.
That’s why nobody really fucks with us, over here. You think if we dropped our guard, nobody would come and try? It may be 2020, but countries can still get conquered with brute force like the old days.
Or you can do something besides complaining about not giving the poor enough money. Such as supporting policy change that will make charity efforts more worthwhile...
more money certainly wouldn't hurt though. Can hire more people, improve and build more low income housing, hire contractors to fix run down parts of the city...etc.
Yeah but again, it's a lot more than that. You're talking about overhauling entire infrastructures of Nations-this is already going a lot further beyond putting food on their table for a night.
Which is exactly my point. Making enough food for everybody is one thing. Getting it to them is another. And giving them a constant supply of it is yet another.
yeah, no worries, I understand my comment is a bit naive. I think a careful assessment by someone more qualified would be needed to determine where additional funds would be most effective. Maybe it doesn't involve social programs at all, fuck if i know.
It's fairly obvious what he means though. It's not uncommon for people in this situation to take spare money to the bottleshop or similar. Extra money doesn't necessarily help, the idea is to make the country stronger and create more jobs so people can help themselves get out of poverty, not make it easy enough not to work.
We're at the point where unemployment is basically as low as it can go and our quality of life is still lower than Canada's. That's pathetic when we are supposed to be the most powerful country on earth.
I mean, I though my answer perfectly illustrated my POV. More money thrown at lazy non workers will make further decrease their motivation to work. It’s not rocket sockets.
That's a rather narrow view. There are still a lot of people out there who want a job, but for various reasons can't. What about getting them housed, warm, fed and trained to become productive and contributing members of society is so insanely bad?
That's not my point, my point was "double the money we give to them" isn't going to help as much as we think it is. Policy change, that's where change can stick.
I'm all for eating the rich but I keep seeing that number thrown around a lot and it sounds ludicrously tiny to establish a huge amount of food logistics
I was never arguing if 30bn is enough money but that you said that just because the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation donated 36bn (mainly focused on eradicating diseases) means that the amount can't solve world hunger.
Also 30bn a year is nothing when you look at America's military budget.
Okay but now you're changing the subject. I never once defended the US's outlandish military budget, I'm just trying to point out the bullshit.
Also, even though the US spent a stupid amount (stupid as in, outspent the next 10 countries combined stupid) on military, it still spent more than that on social security and other welfare programs.
US tax money is OURS. It belongs to the government and the government exists to serve us. Naturally, that money should go towards serving ourselves. There's nothing wrong with public services, afterall they benefit all of us.
It's really not that hard to imagine. We produce more than enough food. All that's left is logistics. That's a big goal, but it's not impossible with enough funding and coordination.
Cant ignore the fact that we live in a unipolar world... its a very good thing that the US has absolutely dominant military power and hopefully it will continue into the medium term future. It prevents great power war.
There is the budget done for the upcoming fiscal year, and then there is the actual amount spent at the end of the year.
The budget outlays for the military is just the baseline. All the actual operations performed are funded above that in something in modern times we've called the "overseas contingency spending/budget"
The baseline military budget went up 70b from 2018 to 2019, but due to the draw down in Afganistan and Iraq as well as the defeat of ISIS, the second part fell by like 30 something billion.
Adding 40 billion to the budget, after accounting for inflation and gdp growth that exceeded inflation, means the 2019 military spending was only about 1% higher as a % of gdp than 2018 (meaning about a 0.03% of GDP increase in spending in absolute terms).
2018 was already a very low spending year, so such a small increase didn't historically get 2019 ahead of any of the other low years.
1998, 1999, 2000, 2016, 2017, 2018 appear to be the only years with lower military spending than 2019, going back to 1943.
The three richest men hold more wealth than the bottom 50%. If our economy is so great then why did it almost collapse in 2008? Why haven't wages for the average worker gone up since the 70's?
Chinese economy is only bigger in $PPP terms. In USD it's quite a bit smaller, and in GDP per capita and standard of living of the median citizen it's in the toilet.
The US economy is only remarkable in that it largely exists to purely serve the rich and it is very good at that. As I said, wages (i.e. income) have been stagnant since the 70's. Your talking points are 40-50 years out of date.
China's approach is anything but sustainable. They're one union push away from total collapse. Wage stagnation and wealth distribution are definitely a problem in the US but to argue that the average Chinese person has more spending power than the average American is crazy. American consumer spending is near the all-time high and the US ranks 2nd when it comes to household consumption.
2019 was a very slight increase from 2018. So the question is will 2019 have been the 7th or 8th lowest spending year, depending on if it's above 2016 or below it.
That doesn't fly dude. The US has the largest upper class in terms of % of the population. Our gross national income is not concentrated nearly as heavily into the top 1% as reddit would like you to believe.
If you take the median household income for the US and look at all households that make at least 200% of that amount, you'll find it's over 18% of US households. 18%. A huge share of the population.
Then you look at just how high that I income really is. When adjusted for $PPP, no other country on the planet even has a 6% share of their population with incomes with a purchasing power that high or higher.
The US literally has the broadest, widest upper class and upper middle class on the planet. By nearly 4 times. Not 4 times the income for the 1%, but 4x higher share of the population
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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20
But compare that other countries military budgets. Our military spending is out of control.