American Politics thread: No Nazis Allowed

Lord Gaimon

Why should the military budget be increased?

A lot of outdated equipment, a lot of old faulty equipment, big training and maintenance deficiencies, and other kinds shortfalls all over the place. Multiple ship collision incidents that have happened in the past few years that are in no small part due to bad maintenance, training, and equipment due to constrained budgets that force the military to compromise and triage where it spends its money. It should not be doing this just to achieve basic preparedness.

The idea that the US has more military capacity and money than it could need or desires is just fantasy. Moreover, it's downright detrimental to the actual functioning of the US army, not just because it results in inefficiencies due to lack of funds, but also because it results in reluctance to bring inefficiencies into the light and deal with them because of fears of reactionary budget cuts.

wolfwood

You usually don't hear the words constrained budget and the US military in the same sentance. As a lay person i'd feel inclined to say that there must be serious flaws in its management if it can't provide basic maintenance on the budget it has

Ubiq

@Lord:

side note: the military budget should be increased

Robby

Who are we so determined to blow up that we need to personally spend 1/3 of the worldwide military budget? Who is actually a threat to us that we need THAT much spent annually? When do we pay off Bush's 5 trillion dollar wars?

Slash the military budget by 50 billion and put that same money to literally ANYTHING else. At 600 billion we'll still be spending more than the next 8 top countries combined. It's a step down from outspending the top 10, I know.

Ubiq

No, see, the solution to them not being able to spend money properly is to give them even more money.

Robby

@wolfwood:

You usually don't hear the words constrained budget and the US military in the same sentance. As a lay person i'd feel inclined to say that there must be serious flaws in its management if it can't provide basic maintenance on the budget it has

Hey, we need 700$ ash trays and 400$ socket wrenches.

wolfwood

But assuming it to be correct that the US military cannot function on their budget, is this also true for its rivals? Or are they able to provide better handling at a lesser budget? If so the US should look into applying for counsel on how to cut costs without loss of quality, or if they also run a ramshackle of a force at a lacking budget why would the US be in danger if they even in mutual incompetence outscale their rivals by many factors.

DoctorPhil

US spends more on military than the next 7 nations combined, most of which are its allies.
Part of it goes to a motherfucking 'space force'.

"yeah whe should increase military spending"

Lord Gaimon

Comparing America's military budgets of different countries isn't useful because:

1-Personnel costs, they amount to 40% of the budget, and while the cost of equipment is somewhat uniform in countries with different PPP the cost of personnel isn't, the US pays far more for one soldier than china.

2-Goals: the goal of America is to be the global hegemon a goal only china shares also currently the other potential big spender, Europe is being protected by the US.

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@Ubiq:

No, see, the solution to them not being able to spend money properly is to give them even more money.

This is kind of true in a way, America being so cheap about defense spending actually ends up making defense costs even higher because they don't replace old and obsolete systems with very scarce and expensive parts. The relatively high short term costs are too prohibitively large to support given the current budget even if long term savings are monumental. So they end up sticking with systems which end up being much more expensive and much less effective over time.

wolfwood

@Lord:

Comparing America's military budgets of different countries isn't useful because:

1-Personnel costs, they amount to 40% of the budget, and while the cost of equipment is somewhat uniform in countries with different PPP the cost of personnel isn't, the US pays far more for one soldier than china.

2-Goals: the goal of America is to be the global hegemon a goal only china shares also currently the other potential big spender, Europe is being protected by the US.

If it isn't by comparison with other countries then what metric are you using to define that the US is underspending?

Ubiq

The stock market's drop today exceeded that of Black Monday 1929. It's the highest points drop and second highest percentage drop in history.

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Keep in mind that it's a nasal swab test:

Asked what it was like to take the test, Trump says, "Not, not uh - something I want to do everyday…you know, it's a little bit of a -- it's a little bit of -- good doctors in the White House, but it's a test. It's a test. It's a medical test. Nothing pleasant about it."

Kaiolino

Dow only 350 points higher now than it was on Trump’s inauguration.

pariston_hill

@Robby:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Military_Expenditures_2018_SIPRI.png

Are we preparing to another two world wars in a spam off 50 years or are we preparing for a Terraformars invasion? This shit is ludicrous.

Monkey King

@Lord:

Europe is being protected by the US.

The only part of Europe that needs that are areas immediately bordering Russia. So as regards NATO that includes the Baltic countries and Poland (and Finland/Norway, but Russia didn't fuck around with them during the Cold War so lol at now).

Even the Balkans are no longer at risk of conflict in any real sense. America isn't protecting anything in Western Europe from anything, and some of those countries have their own military bases around the world that they do stuff they want with anyway (France/UK).

Lord Gaimon

@wolfwood:

If it isn't by comparison with other countries then what metric are you using to define that the US is underspending?

The US should spend at least until it doesn't have personnel deficiencies and upgrade it's 40 year old equipement.

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@Monkey:

The only part of Europe that needs that are areas immediately bordering Russia. So as regards NATO that includes the Baltic countries and Poland (and Finland/Norway, but Russia didn't fuck around with them during the Cold War so lol at now).

Even the Balkans are no longer at risk of conflict in any real sense. America isn't protecting anything in Western Europe from anything, and some of those countries have their own military bases around the world that they do stuff they want with anyway (France/UK).

I agree that Europe doesn't need protection right now, but that doesn't change the fact that the existence of NATO incentives the Europeans to spend less on their militaries witch is why it isn't fair to compare America to them.

Green_vs_Red

@Robby:

No, it's not. Most of the money in the world is completely imaginary, since we went off the Gold standard decades ago.

Most of the money deposited in banks is not actually kept by the bank. It's loaned out. When this happens, more money is now available to be spent, which has the effect of increasing the money supply of the country. For example, let’s say Person A deposits $100 in a bank, which means he has $100 he can spend. In accordance with Federal Reserve regulations, the bank is allowed to loan up to 90% of this money to someone else, say, Person B.

Once Person B has $90 in his bank account, this makes a total of $190 available to be spent. But his bank can loan up to $81 (90% of $90) to someone else. Now a total of $271 is available to be spent. And so on. In this way, the dollars that are deposited in a bank will, eventually, end up creating many more dollars in circulating money.

But that means a LOT of the money that exists, exists entirely on good faith. This generally isn't a problem, unless lots of people want to take out all their money all at once suddenly, as seen in the banking crisis documentary, Mary Poppins.

Or A Wonderful Life :Ninja:

And LoL at increasing our Military Budget.

DoctorPhil

If America doesn't support pedophile warlords and Yemeni genocide while taking resources and making executives rich with tax money even more then who will??

Monkey King

@DoctorPhil:

If America doesn't support pedophile warlords

This is an extremely offensive way to refer to the UK.

Green_vs_Red

I don't know why I thought that was funny.

The D.

Jesus, which british person shit in your oatmeal, mk? Lol.

Kaiolino

Expect Trump to be a popular “wartime” president come November.

wolfwood

@Lord:

The US should spend at least until it doesn't have personnel deficiencies and upgrade it's 40 year old equipement.

Ah so it is based on more of an idealized image of what the US military should be rather than in response to any imminent threat. But surely both those objectives should be do able over time with a gradual phasing out of old equipment and implementation of better staff policies. Dumping more money to bail out an incompetent management sounds like a hard sold idea when people already perceive the US military as a monetary sinkhole

Monkey King

@Kaiolino:

Expect Trump to be a popular “wartime” president come November.

Hmm, taking single polls or other data points to make big catastrophizing pronouncements to get people all upset and excited. Have you considered a career at CNN?

Monquito

So since no one is talking about it, I suppose the Bernie/Biden debate went boring as hell and didn't change things for Bernie at all.

Biden's the one. always been.

RoboBlue

@Monquito:

So since no one is talking about it, I suppose the Bernie/Biden debate went boring as hell and didn't change things for Bernie at all.

Biden's the one. always been.

I haven't seen the whole debate but Biden did pretty badly.

Kaiolino

@Monkey:

Hmm, taking single polls or other data points to make big catastrophizing pronouncements to get people all upset and excited. Have you considered a career at CNN?

His approval on 538 is going up as well.

Monkey King

@Kaiolino:

His approval on 538 is going up as well.

Well gosh it really sucks then that Trump can rely on extremely predictable plateauing circumstances like a quickly escalating pandemic, and extremely volatile stock market isn't it.

(btw, even Carter got an approval bump at the start of the Iron hostage crisis, famously cruising him to mega victory against Reagan)

No seriously, look at this.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xf54Wr0VsKYqdpkB_sXJbejyJ1M=/0x0:563x295/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:563x295):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3974460/Screen%20Shot%202015-08-16%20at%2011.10.57%20PM.png

RoboBlue

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-kung-flu-white-house-weijia-jiang-cbs-20200317-etnt6uhoojharhykdsblkn7dta-story.html

More racist shenanigans, this time more transparent.

Ubiq

@Kaiolino:

His approval on 538 is going up as well.

Largely thanks to Rasmussen and RMG, the latter of which is apparently the pollster of choice for One America News Network, which is the news channel for those people tired of those Commie Pinkos at Fox News.

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Primaries are pretty much going as expected with Biden winning by massive margins in Florida and Illinois.

joekido the Second

@Monkey:

Well gosh it really sucks then that Trump can rely on extremely predictable plateauing circumstances like a quickly escalating pandemic, and extremely volatile stock market isn't it.

(btw, even Carter got an approval bump at the start of the Iron hostage crisis, famously cruising him to mega victory against Reagan)

No seriously, look at this.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xf54Wr0VsKYqdpkB_sXJbejyJ1M=/0x0:563x295/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:563x295):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3974460/Screen%20Shot%202015-08-16%20at%2011.10.57%20PM.png

Carter would have won if he had not done anything to piss Iran off.

Green_vs_Red

I'm not all that familiar with the Iran Hostage Crisis but I don't think it was Carter's fault Iranians got tired of Pahlavi's shit.

Ubiq

The Dow is back to where it was before Trump even took office.

joekido the Second

@Green_vs_Red:

I'm not all that familiar with the Iran Hostage Crisis but I don't think it was Carter's fault Iranians got tired of Pahlavi's shit.

They wanted Pahlavi to stand trial but Carter decided to bring him in for cancer treatment. Carter should've just give them Pahlavi to prevent this crisis.

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@Ubiq:

The Dow is back to where it was before Trump even took office.

There you go, with the crisis going around, Trump finally took this seriously to get the stock market back up, however calling the Coronavirus "China Virus" is a bad bad move.

andre

Holy shit, we're about to hit 1000 pages.

Kaba Kaba Fruit

Holy shit! We just did hit 1000 pages! :blink:

onemoment

Woah, he's pretty sweet being on the 1000th page.

Weird coincidence that it's on the same day that the stock market goes back to pre-Trump lows. Are we really going forward?

Kaba Kaba Fruit

We made it to 1000 pages.

….......do we win anything?

DoctorPhil

We already won it four years ago; depression.

Nobodyman

1,000 pages and it only took three years plus change. That's…something.

The D.

I'm just here for the thousandth page, nobody talk to me.

genocyber

Mostly a lurker, not active. Putting in my mark here.

MDL

Thousand pages, woo!

pariston_hill

Still in the 1000's club?

Ubiq

Time for a new thread really.

American Politics III: Always Look On The Bright Side of Life Edition

The D.

American politics III: Cognitive Declinebowl 2020

andre

American Politics III: Send me Thousand Dollar Check Please

Hudell

This thread was not as fun as the previous one, hope the next one goes better

RoboBlue

American Politics XX Zombie Apocalypse Edition

Robby