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Biden may seek $100 billion aid package for Ukraine
(kyivindependent.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Friendly reminder that the us already spends more per capita on healthcare than any other nation.
There is no amount of money that you can throw into this god forsaken system of insurance companies and for profit hospitals that will make it to the people themselves. A company will charge what people will pay, if you subsidize what they can pay, the company will raise prices until it returns to where it was and pocket the rest.
It is not that the US healthcare system is underfunded, it is that for profit healthcare is incompatible with financial reality at it’s very core.
Besides, the EU is the one loaning Ukrainian money, the US donations are in end of life military equipment, and as much as i think we should pay our doctors in anti tank missiles i don’t think congress is going to ok that solution anytime soon. After all, that might actually fix things in a decade or two.
I don't know where people keep getting this story that the US is just sending over the old shit we had in a shed somewhere.
According to the DoD we've been sending over equipment that is part of our units' standard arsenal, and it has to be replaced to maintain readiness. We're getting defense contractors to increase production because of this: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3154210/department-moves-quick-to-replenish-weapons-sent-to-ukraine/
And here's an independent think tank that lays out explicitly in which areas we are considered under-equipped (and this article is from 2022): https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-running-out-weapons-send-ukraine
It also includes this interesting line:
So idk why everyone keeps repeating that we're sending Ukraine old stuff we had no intention of using.
Generally it’s a combination of a lot of the headline equipment being 90s era, and the systems themselves being sent in order of oldest first. While yes, these were very much a part of our arsenal, and yes we often them stockpiled for a reason, sometimes that reason is just that the US military rarely throws anything away until it absolutely has to. When it’s actually being replaced however, it’s generally because those parts of the stockpile are meant to be used as a stopgap. Production lines tend to take a long time to spin up and so we keep a reserve supply of things on hand to cover the gap between when a major war might start by surprise and when the new assembly lines to supply it are finished.
It is however worth noting that most weapons built in the last fifty years use would fuel propellants with a limited shelf life before they become to dangerous to handle. As such, if you want to keep a constant stockpile you must constantly be building new rounds and decommissioning the old ones at the end of thier life. Moreover tech has actually advanced between now and then, and many of these new versions are more effective, if expensive, than the old and so need to be replaced a way.
In some categories we are indeed sending more than we normally decommission, and so need to increase the rate of production to even things out again, but that’s not how congress has been primarily budgeting things. Instead the headline figure, when not double or triple counted, is cost to replace old system with an brand new equivalent worth of old system irrespective of wether or not it was due to be replaced anyway.
All of this is a bit harder to separate from general defense spending however because we were already beginning to pivot from counter terror operations towards the asia pacific in order to provide a credible deterance around Taiwan since China has been rapidly expanding the PLA and PLN while many politicians have been using increasing imperialist rhetoric to distract from domestic trouble.
So anyway, that’s my guess as to why people thing were sending old stuff we found in a stockpile somewhere.
Healthcare is broken, agreed. But All the aid being sent to Ukraine will absolutely be reflected in the 2023-24 military budget, where it will be multiplied 2-3 fold. It's not free, it's not a "good value" it is absoltuely a waste of resources and it is only being spent to make the war-pigs at lockhead martin, and the other MIC richer.
Make no mistake, if you support the US spending more money on Ukraine, you 100% support Imperialism.
Aw yes, the imperialism is when US do stuff abroad. That’s why when an hyper capitalist dictator invades and annexes its democratic neighbor for resources and land under the justification that said nation used to be part of its empire, it’s the US that’s being imperialisitc by not letting the dictator add to his imperial empire.
This makes sense. This line of reasoning makes sense.
As to the other thing, you realize that the US defense budget had gone down the last two years right? That these aid packages are explicitly labeled in the cost to replace with modern weapons, even if they were going to be replaced anyway, so i don’t see how it will suddenly be multiplied two to three fold.