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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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The money spent on Ukraine has been essentially pennies relative to any significant domestic program.
If you instead redistributed all the $113 billion spent since the invasion began in 2022, you could give each American a grand total of $340. A nice chunk of change, to be sure, but spread out over the course of the war, this is literally $15 a month.
Personally, I'm okay having $340 less over the course of nearly two years if the alternative is tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians and Russia successfully re-asserting that violent conquest will not be resisted. Moldova would almost certainly be invaded next as well, since they're not in NATO. $15 a month is a pretty damn cheap price to pay to protect a democracy and save countless lives (not to mention, the torture and rape the Russian army has been committing as well)
Not to mention getting to neener neener about being on the side of international law and order if only for once at least.
Do you feel the same way about every other conflict in this world or just the one in Europe? What about spending money to prevent the conflict in Africa (Ethiopia) or in Asia (Myanmar)? Will you be willing to pay higher taxes to fight off the drug cartels in Central and South America?
We got all these issues here in the US. Homelessness, gun violence, drug overdoses, overcrowded prisons, massive personal debt (student loans, car, credit card), etc. I don't care to arm another nation and play proxy war.
Well, we do already fund a ton of foreign aid all over the world, so quite a lot of that is already happening. But to address those particular things: homelessness is not a problem where simply throwing money at it magically solves it; it's incredibly complex. New York City alone spends 3.5 billion dollars a year just on homelessness. The only financial solution to gun violence is to bribe the SCOTUS to repeal DC v. Heller. Drug policy is largely in the hands of the states, but even then, there's no simple solution to it, particularly when you have to deal with local politics for things like treatment facilities. Prisons are largely state operated. Personal debt is largely outside the scope of the federal government, but even then, student loan forgiveness was attempted. But to throw a number at it, redirecting all Ukraine aid towards individual credit card debt would pay for only 10% of it.
Are there particular federal programs of comparable financial impact with sufficient political support that you think would pay significant returns if boosted by foreign aid money (ignoring the general decline in global stability that would ensue).
I mean, the economic dividends there are obvious. If it really was as simple as throwing some money at Central and South America in order to make the cartels vanish forever and turn those countries into stable countries that we could do significant trade with, we'd earn far more than we paid. But that price tag doesn't actually exist, because these problems are more complicated than simply throwing money at them.
I didn't make my point clear in the previous post so I'll state my stance. I don't really care to send money to Ukraine so they can fight their war. I think maybe a good percentage of Americans would feel the same (mostly republicans). I don't have the same reasons as they have however. When I indicated the money is better spent here I was referring to lowering my taxes. I know that the money to Ukraine won't even lower my taxes by 0.01% and the real money sink is military and social security but the optics don't look good in my eyes.
Take the perspective of the other side. "I'm paying all this money in taxes, my roads are bad, crime from the drugs are around my corner, my job ain't covering all my expenses like it used to. And those people in Washington are giving money to the Europeans so they can fight a war!"
They could stop funding Ukraine and have Ukraine somehow pay back everything today and none of those issues would be fixed. Road maintenance and local crime are state/county responsibilities so they're not impacted by the Ukraine war or funding at all. Your job wages, unless tied to the defense industry, aren't going to be tied to this war at all and if they were, you most likely wouldn't be complaining about your expenses. Another side of the expenses argument would be inflation, but that's not impacted by the Ukraine war either.
You didn't get my point in that post. I have issues in my life and around my city that I'm concerned with. I listed some of those issues in the previous post. Nowhere in there is Ukraine. Yet instead of addressing the issues I face or, more importantly, the average American faces the government is sending money to Ukraine. Taxpayer's money, our money. If I could choose where my tax dollars went (federal, state, and local) none of it would go to Ukraine. A good portion of Americans would do the same.
The user who replied to one of my comments said that throwing money at some of these issues won't solve it. Throwing billions at some of those issues and funding well run projects will absolutely make a difference. They said that most of the problems I talk about are local and state as if federal spending cannot be diverted to the local and state. Haven't we been complaining for years about how underpaid our educators are? Aren't they important. The billions given to Ukraine could have been given to them and I would 100% support that.
You also said that some of my examples, road maintenance and local crime, are state/county responsibilities. You don't think that those topics are subject to federal funding? The feds aid in fighting crime at all levels, not just federal level. The feds give money to states and cities all the time to fund infrastructure. One of the policies that Biden ran on was IMPROVING INFRASTRUCTURE. Did you think he meant only federal roads and bridges?
So yeah the money we give away in federal aid (not just Ukraine) can be used here for the benefit of the people who are taxed to generate that revenue.
They get your point. The problem is you're using a false choice fallacy.
We don't have to choose between funding Ukraine's defense or improving infrastructure in the USA. We can do both. If you look a the US federal budget, you'll find that the money we send to Ukraine pales in comparison to our other spending. There are lots of places we could re-allocate funds to increase infrastructure spending without letting our allies (Ukraine) be invaded and murdered by our cold war enemy (Russia). The real question is why you'd rather see these people die than look at the federal budget.
First off we do not have an alliance with Ukraine. We do not have any official defense treaty with them so they are not allies, just quasi-allies since we supply them with weapons. There is a difference because if they were allies then we'd be directly fighting Russia now. And yes we can do both, fund Ukraine and infrastructure, or we can focus on just one. How is that a false choice fallacy? A false choice fallacy is based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. I didn't limit any options, I merely stated that I don't like the option chosen and think another option is the better choice.
Sorry I misunderstood. I now see that you would prefer that the people of Ukraine get invaded and murdered by our cold war enemy and that we should just let it happen. You'd rather save that drop in the bucket rather than look at the entire federal budget and see how insignificant the Ukraine funding really is in the grande scheme of things. Got it.
Well now speaking of fallacies you reply with an Ad Hominem one. I never said anything about wanting the people of Ukraine murdered. My original post was criticizing why the US govt spends so much energy prioritizing Ukraine's defense when we have Americans struggling here in the US.
Nobody cares about local sectarian extremists killing each other over nothing. That's not what's happening in Ukraine, where the stakes actually matter to the international community.
Explain how the war in Ukraine is so important to the international community because the only ones I see care are the western countries. USA, EU, probably Australia and Canada.
International Grain supply?
Africa in particular heavily depends on Ukrainian grain shipments, without which said countries will likely descend into scarcity induced violence, which will create yet another international migrant crisis for the western right to act like helping with is tantamount to surrendering to an invasion while swearing how totally not racist they are.
And if you think those countries would be fine if either Ukraine or Russia held those fields and ports, no they wouldn't because Russia has demonstrated it is well willing to exploit market power for political gain, meaning that unless you sign on with whatever Putin wants, you can forget about feeding your people without paying through the nose for it.
This is literally a war to protect the sovereign rights of all smaller nations, first of all to not be invaded, and second of all to chart their paths without being extorted into an expedient lane by a market share superpower holding their ability to have food hostage for political favors.
That's pretty much the only relevant international community. Those countries pretty much represent most of the world's economic and military power.
Did you forget that China is the second largest economy in the world? The Middle East and OPEC has a stranglehold over the world energy. Asia is the world manufacturing hub. The west is not the only relevant international community.
Oh no, I was talking about the free world, not autocracies and slave labor states.
No matter what their governments are they are still a part of this world. And my original statement still stands.
I know what you're saying. I'm suggesting they aren't world citizens; they aren't needed to conduct most of the world's business going forward and are, for the most part, adequately addressed by a policy of isolation and containment. They grow weaker with time, more dependent on one another, and spread increasingly thin. Talking about the "Group of Friends" countries.
Your point was that such countries aren't supporting Ukraine so it's technically not accurate when I say the international community is supporting Ukraine.
My point is, of course they don't support Ukraine, they are sucking the tits of Daddy Russia, or Daddy Iran, Daddy China: such shitholes of oppression and corruption as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Belarus, Laos, Zimbawe, etc. They are hypocritically united by isolationism, codependency, shared disregard of human and labor rights and legal and international norms. And therefore it is accurate to say they aren't part of the international community; how can they be part of something they want to burn down?