They constantly give money away, bailing out banks, industries that can’t adapt to the times, billionaires, etc. Why wouldn’t we give it to other countries since we practice so much socialism at home?
The power of being the world reserve currency is that if most debts are settled in your dollars then the demand for that currency becomes so high that you cant print currency almost infinetly, as long as you dont do it too quickly. America can afford whatever it really wants to afford ;)
The problem is that this isn’t a good faith argument. It’s like whenever the perennial outrage about homeless veterans comes up and you start seeing “why should we be paying all this money to x thing when we have all these homeless veterans on the street?!” But, it’s not a good faith argument because if you ever actually call them out on it and say “okay, let’s get these veterans housed”, they go silent or start shrieking about socialism. They don’t actually mean that we should help homeless vets, what they really mean to say is “we would never pay for this thing, and your thing is way less important than that”, but they dress it up in the vague threat of actually doing a patriotism to make it sound better.
Of course, these same folks are all crickets when we cut a trillion dollar bailout to save some mega corps from the natural consequences of fucking around and finding out on the free market.
I’m not talking about bailing out business or any specific humanitarian problem (like homelessness or malnutrition). We have crumbling roadways, and bridges in need of repair. That alone would create many jobs, eliminating poverty, homelessness, and malnourishment. Take care of our citizenry before even thinking about giving money to businesses or another country.
Alright, so, I’m going to assume that you’re coming from a good faith position. There’s two things that I need you to understand:
First, political borders are the tools of tyrants. So many outrageous humanitarian abuses can be justified because of invisible lines plotted on a map, and the lottery of being born on one side or another supposedly dividing men and women that might have just as easily been neighbors if but for a few miles in another direction. Balk at me if you like, but research has found that there’s something like seven or nine distinct cultures in the US that could easily be their own nations, but we allow unrestricted travel and trade between them and we’ve somehow miraculously not been brought to ruin by just allowing midwesterners to move around and trade with us pel mel.
Second, car based infrastructure is a trap. Now, I know this is missing your point, but I really want to take this chance to point out that we will always and forever have crumbling bridges in spite of exponentially increasing infrastructure bills every five to eight years or so. It’s because car infrastructure destroys itself very quickly; in fact, it’s the fastest-deprecating transit infrastructure there is. What’s more is that it’s wildly expensive; for every dollar a driver spends, there’s a $10 cost to society in terms of government subsidies, infrastructure, clean up, regulation, enforcement, and externalities. Just one good example of automative externalities microplastics. Did you know that just driving one kilometer on a highway releases trillions of microplastics, and tires are responsible for 1/3rd of all oceanic microplastics and possibly the extinction of the coho salmon from San Francisco bay? Anyway, the cost to society is enormous, and our cities and towns are so sprawled due to car dependency that we’ve hoisted ourselves by our own petard, and we’ll never be able to be finished fixing this mess. The only real fix is to do what every other sane country has done and implement good mass transit both in and between cities and towns.
I think I agree with your sentiment, but for the record, TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit. The banks paid the 2008 bailout back with interest.
The more recent one leaves me a little salty. If you invest more than 250k in a bank heavily invested in crypto, I don’t know if we should help you.
I know I wasn’t very coherent in my argument it just pisses me off that anytime some rich asshole is about to lose it all our government jumps in with our tax dollars to help them out but we can’t get clean water to Flint, Michigan. We subsidize big business and give massive tax breaks and when they decide to close a plant down we don’t make them fix the land it sat upon instead creating the superfund, shit like that. As the other person said, we have a whole nation of failing infrastructure yet our politicians keep squandering our tax dollars on shit that just further adds to the gap between us and the 1%. I don’t even know if that’s correct or coherent but it’s what I feel and if Trump can just blurt out bullshit, so can I. In conclusion I’d rather give a trillion dollars to Ukraine before giving Wells Fargo 1 cent.
If the Western world does not do it, then China will do it. That country will then be closer to China, which is also bad for you. Strategically and economically…
Giving money does not necesseraly mean: “Here is $3 bln. Have fun. We don’t need anything in return.”
Same as on a small scale. It’s been proven time and again that helping people is way more cost effective than policing them. It’s common in modern cities with a high quality of living to see things like free public transportation because cities realized they were paying more for police to try to catch or prevent fare dodgers than they were losing lost fares.
No one wants to live in a poor neighborhood. On a small scale you can move to a “better” place and forget those poor people exist. That cannot happen on a global scale (yet).
Solving the economic problems of central America would be way more cost effective than any dumb wall.
You misunderstood me. I said don’t give money away to businesses (as in bailouts). If you thought I meant don’t help people as in no social programs you are wrong. Never said that, never would.
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