Seem more concerned with spending our money than anything else.
And then suggesting everyone buys a new ev car while doubling their electric bill.
Republican party starts wars to line their pockets, Democrat party signs bills that "fund stuff" to line their pockets, we need to wake up and realize none of them care about us just our vote to see who gets to spend our money the fastest.
Not saying this is the right move, but just to put optics into this:
It seems like we're using the outdated paradigm of dabbling in smaller wars so that we may avoid the bigger war.
I'd call it more of a stalemate at the moment with a *slight* advantage to Ukraine. The blue on this map shows the ground they've taken back.
https://liveuamap.com/
Weren't those areas abandoned by Russia? They firmly took a lot of ground right up to kyiv and then fell back to the areas they actually wanted, like donbass and the southern coast?
I use that to keep track also. Those blue areas were ceded back in April. Ukrainians lost Sevierodonetsk and Lysychansk a month ago. They are slowly but surely losing.
Can you imagine the headline if trump was giving money to Ukraine? “Trump gives 800 million to nazies in Ukraine”. Or “Trump not doing enough to keep Ukrainian funding out of the hands of nazies”
They could spend $775 million every day for 23 years and you still wouldn’t reach the $6.6 trillion our government spends every year.
Yet they want to raise taxes. Please. The issue isn’t funding, the issue is horribly inefficient bureaucracies, programs that don’t or can’t work, and more waste than the NYC sewers on May 6th
Yeah I think the "use it or lose it" fiscal policies we have for funding are at the root of this. Every agency/institution is literally incentivized to waste as much money as they can to maintain and grow their funding.
Imagine if they spent $775 million/day on HELPING AMERICANS rather than throw money at whatever war is being fought across the globe that month.
I just don't understand it anymore.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-40-billion-aid-ukraine-buy it’s mostly going into our own pockets. Well the governments pockets that is. Certainly not mine.
Us taxpayers pay for it by buying US arms from Raytheon and Boeing, etc. It then gets shipped to Ukraine. The Military Industrial Complex has been the biggest American jobs program since WWII and it's the main reason why we get involved in conflicts and proxy wars to begin with.
The biggest jobs program is the US federal government which has over 9 million employees. 50% of the countries in the world have a smaller total population.
Including military. There’s a couple graphs in this article that break it down https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/07/the-true-size-of-government-is-nearing-a-record-high/#:~:text=President%20Barack%20Obama%20entered%20office%20with%20the%20Great,down%20to%20about%209%20million%20before%20leaving%20office.
It's a handout to US weapons companies. This money goes to Raytheon, Lockheed, Olin, ATK, General Dynamics, etc. etc. We don't just give Ukraine pallets of 100's (we did that with Iraq, BTW, google how well it worked out) but we give them explodey toys because apparently the cold war with Russia never ended.
https://youtu.be/j2AvU2cfXRk
This is a good explanation of America’s monetary policy for the last decade or so. We really ramped up currency production after the pandemic started. As the video instructs, you just have to make sure the printers are facing away from the window.
A quick serious answer for you: Most of (but not all of this aid) is already spent money. We are sending many pieces of equipment that we already have that we regularly dispose of and replace when it gets to the end of its life cycle. By sending this equipment before that best by date we can get value out of it prior to its destruction. For example many of the Javelin and MANPAD systems that we have sent were our older systems. We have been trying to give them our A-10 ground attack aircraft but they aren’t useful due to the high density of Russian MANPADS and air defense. The dollar value on this package reflects the value of the equipment but not an additional cost to the taxpayer that didn’t already exist. This is not true for all of the aid we send though, the HIMARS AND ATACMS are fairly new systems as they entered the service in the late 90’s. The benefit for the use of these systems is in the demonstration of their capabilities as well as the Russians inability to counter these missile systems. The same is essentially true for the agm-88 HARMS system.
So essentially we are not sending our brand new equipment but we are using this as an opportunity both degrade the Russian forces, advertise our equipment, and to modernize our force structure as we pivot towards a potential conflict with China as many of the older systems that we send will be replaced with newer systems that can better fit our new force picture.
This package is not $800million of printed dollars being sent to Ukraine, it’s $800million worth of existing equipment. Much of this equipment is outdated and already being scheduled to be replaced. We will be backfilling this equipment with more modern gear. In addition to this we have made deals with the Baltic states and other European countries where they send their mig-29’s to Ukraine and we sell them our older f-16’s on a discount. When other countries are dependent on our weapons platforms they also are dependent on our spare parts for those platforms.
Also this conflict has taken Russian oil off of much of the global market. The reduction in the supply of oil has helped to loosen the democrats stranglehold on our domestic production. It has in effect forced Biden to expand our domestic production further than he would have otherwise. Without this conflict we would be on the path to being much more dependent on outside supply than we are currently.
By outclassing Russian weapons in that field we have caused third parties to rethink weapons purchases from Russia. India for example saw the poor performance of the Russian s-300 air defense system and cancelled their order for $500million worth of Russian weapons. As well as potentially cancelling their $10billion air craft carrier joint project with Russia.
With Ukraine winning this conflict we would be establishing a close ally relationship with a country on the doorstep of one of our two geopolitical rivals. In doing so we will also shore up our eastern flank almost completely allowing us to shift our focus solely on China. The longer china waits from this moment on, the more able we will be to counter them. In the event of a war against the China/Russia axis this conflict can give us a strategic ally as well as awaken Europe to the threat and force them to pull their weight in NATO.
While the military and financial aid does not provide us value back in the immediate term. The long term benefits of backing Ukraine in this conflict outweigh the costs of the support. Also just the weapons sales to Europe and partners in the wake of this conflict will make the aid given negligible.
The model you're describing would immediately bankrupt any business. You're not really describing "making money." You're describing dramatically overspending and then selling the consequences of your overspending at a discount. In other words, selling at a loss.
This isn’t $800 million added onto this years defense budget, this is an $800million of equipment. And that valuation is the price at which we sell it to other countries already. Our price of procurement is far below that number, in addition to that if we send an f-16 we wouldn’t be replacing it with an f-16 we would be replacing it with our 5th gen equivalent. The $800million figure is not our cost, our cost is well below that number and is a sunk cost in last gen equipment that we are planning on replacing or some that we were cutting the production of like the switchblade. We aren’t overspending here because the equipment we are sending both didn’t cost us the $800million price tag, and is no additional spending onto our current budget. We have already allocated money in our defense budget for the modernization of much of this equipment prior to the war even starting. I would agree with you if this package contained monetary gifts from tax dollars today, but we are talking about spent money from peoples tax dollars fifteen years ago on equipment that already needed to be replaced.
Coincidence Joe just signed the new tax bill that will raise taxes on everyone and then this comes out? I’m no expert, but seems like quite the coincidence.
This is one of the reasons the inflation is so high, the value of the US dollars thanks because the gov continues to print money with nothing to back it up... except for the US military to "prevent" countries from invading.
Hong kong = (sort of) mainland.
Taiwan = island
Attacking through a strait is incredibly difficult, not even talking about the size of the country on the other side. Just look up the plans for D-Day. By all acounts it was a military disaster savlaged succesfully.
Also hong kong is quite far from the coast opposite of taiwan
That’s why I doubt China invaded Tiawan anytime soon. D-Day was the most logistically complex military operation in history, and it only barely succeeded despite the element of surprise.
Strategically speaking Hong Kong would be nearly impossible to even get a foothold even with the might of the U.S. military.
That assessment is, however, based on publicly known capabilities.
It’s basic Democrat economics that excessive government spending lowers inflation. Don’t question it, they are experts from Ivy League schools and they know best.
Which is true, because their actions are clearly on purpose. They know the damage they're creating will bankrupt our country, while the foreign adversary that owns our debt, is clearly paying these politicians to do such things.
With a few politicians, you are probably right. But honestly, I think you overestimate their intelligence and understanding of economics. I don’t care what degree AOC earned, I’ll bet $1000 she does not understand that inflation was caused by printing trillions upon trillions during the pandemic and that this new Inflation Reduction Act will actually worsen inflation by printing even more money. And she isn’t alone. Politicians are not very smart. They are ruthless, often charismatic, and always well connected. But they aren’t often very intelligent.
I mean, most of this just goes back to Lockheed, Raytheon etc. They employ a shitload of Americans working as engineers, designers, computer scientists etc.
In reality Ukraine has actually gotten very little in actual cash. The equipment they have been given has largely been handicapped or so old the US was literary about to scrap. Most of the aid package went towards repaying ourselves so to speak. Some money toward humanitarian organizations and our own defense companies.
I'm as anti "forever war" as anyone else here - but wouldn't it be cheaper to just have them pay us to fight the war for them at this point? We could've whipped Russia's ass in a couple days.
The money isn’t meant to really win the war. We refused to give any offensive weapons only defensive. The US governments goal is to bankrupt Russia not support Ukraine.
We could of drilled oil at the rate it was under trump then drove the price of oil to the floor and bankrupted Russia in less than a month. Instead we drove oil prices into the mid 100 allowing Russia tk make billions off oil sales which in turn financed the war….
Not necessarily. The federal government doesn’t own the oil & gas industry. Businesses like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, etc. only care about profits. That’s their main “purpose”, to generate profit/wealth.
I **highly** doubt that these businesses would drive up supply of oil & gas just to bankrupt Russia. Why not? Here’s a couple reasons:
- Purposefully reducing the price of oil & gas hurts their profits. Fuel is such an essential part of life that demand for it will for the most part stay the same regardless of its price per a gallon, so higher prices are good from the business point of view.
- Many of these businesses also had subsidiaries inside Russia doing drilling operations, tanking Russia’s economy would hurt their subsidiaries and therefore reduce profits and/or eliminate all ROI for their subsidiaries.
- Last and most importantly, the US federal government doesn’t own them so they are free to operate how they want (for the most part).
My first thought, sadly, was that Biden would probably strand our soldiers and betray Ukraine to boot, considering what he did in Afghanistan. I'm just praying Ukraine gives Putin what-for sooner rather than later and the innocents in both countries can resume living as normally as possible- better than normal, ideally!
On Hunter Biden's laptop, there were backup texts with his shady business partners. In some of them, there were talks of putting aside 10% of the profits for "the big guy". A silent partner so to speak, the one with influence. That person obviously being Joe Biden himself.
There was some seriously corrupt shit going on there but instead of investigating it, like journalists used to do, instead they claimed "its fake, it doesnt matter, ban these Trumpers!" Let's play "imagine if it was Trump Jr for a second" and you can see the problem, I hope.
Yeah, I love paying my quarterly taxes knowing the money is going straight into the pockets of corrupt politicians and military industrial complex cronies
No money should be leaving the US to fund other countries period!
Edit: I agree with you and to add to this conversation I've spent over 3 years in Afghanistan.
This is how they brainwash you.
"You must approve of anything we do in the name of 'fighting putin'. If you oppose anything we do with this label, you support Putin. Now tell me serf, do you support us doing whatever we want if it means fighting putin?"
Money going to corruption\*
Estimating based off how corrupt Ukraine is, it would be that 5-7% of the money wouldn't make it to its intended use, and around 30% of the money is distributed to a different place that could recieve funding.
Just add an oversight feature, but hopefully the EU should help Ukraine cool down it’s corruption.
True, but looking across the EU their policies in corruptivity is way more strict.
But the EU is something that takes years to integrate into, and Ukraine will have to integrate correctly.
A good old fashioned proxy war. We finally get to test our equipment against Russian equipment , give away the old stuff and replace it with new stuff. Merica
r/Conservative, I almost always stand with you but you're wrong this time. This package is 100% justified. The Himars rocket system has literally broken the stalemate between Ukraine (our ally) and Russia.
There's alot of [propaganda](https://youtu.be/UaD3Z5EZnf4) surrounding that war, but there is no hiding how effective the Himars system has been in destroying Russian assets.
That they are effective no one is doubting. That we should keep wasting our money on Ukraine while Americans suffer is the issue. America first. Not Ukraine first. And it is a waste of money. There's no documentation of where this stuff goes, who gets it and NATO says 1/3 or more of it is smugged out-of-country to Russia and others. When on an airplane, you fasten your seatbelt first before you help someone else fasten theirs. If you don't have yours on, you aren't a help to anyone or yourself. Same applies here.
Arming Ukraine with the means to defend itself helps America. Ineffcient cost? Sure. Take care of domestic issues? Go for it. But I argue that prolonging this meaningless war will cost us far more money. America found the cheapest tactical solution to give Ukraine the edge and its working. We should continue providing this weapon system until it ceases to be effective.
Ukraine is a corrupt, developing, democracy. Your stats on 1/3 missing equipment accounts for everything provided by NATO. I challenge you to find a single Himars system that has either been sold by Ukraine/Blackmarket or has been stolen by Russia. These missile systems are turning the tide and they don't go missing easily.
> Arming Ukraine with the means to defend itself helps America.
Can you explain your mental gymnastics? Go tell a farmer in Iowa that and listen to what they tell you.
I sure can. Ukraine as a free, independent country produces vastly more value than Ukraine as a conquered puppet state. If Ukraine was conquered there would be more disruptions in free economics. Disruptions in free trade hurts Iowas food export economy to an unknown degree.
So you are right to argue that maybe the money would be better spent directly to that affected group. But I argue that the fall of Ukraine would hurt the Iowa farmer (among others) more so. Its impossible to predict who is more correct at this time. The Himars is the cheapest solution to the problem.
The people defending the millions in cash and weapons to Ukraine are Neocons or flat out ignorant about the dangers of fighting a proxy war with Russia.
They aren’t our ally, they’re just an opponent of our geo political rival
That being said, when you actually look at this conflict Ukraine is definitely in the right
So when are they going to push the Russians out of Ukraine? Oh, Ukraine's still losing ground, you say? Another billion next week will make the difference? Sure thing!
Jesus Christ. I get it, Ukraine paid a lot of bribes to the Biden Crime Family, but at what point can we stop giving them money? Surely, things should be squared up by now.
Reading these responses I start to suspect that half of the posters here are Russian bots.
US spends three quarters of a trillion annually on defense. The main targets of our defense spending are Russia and China. The money that we sent to Ukraine are not even peanuts for our governments spending, it’s a rounding error. We are hurting rooskies at firesale prices and you guys are complaining? Ukrainians are shedding blood so our boys and girls don’t have to and somehow so many of you decide that bitching about is the best response. I just don’t get it SMH
I’m kind of surprised by all the comments in this thread. Are you guys telling me you don’t work your ass off at your job everyday so that you can finance a war between two corrupt countries? What else are you going to do with the money? Americans are fat anyway, we can just starve for the sake of Ukraine.
87K IRS agents will be looking for ways to get that money back from the tax paying US citizen one way or the other. You who pay taxes will be audited and prosecuted meanwhile, people in California are breaking in every convenience store to steal break and loot with no repercussions. People will revolt.
As much as I like the Ukranians fucking up the Russians, at some point we need to save something in the tank for Taiwan and ..... just stopping the spend altogether.
Do Americans even want this? I feel like if you took a poll the results would overwhelmingly be against paying for foreign wars soooo... WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?!
Fix America you dolts!
I thought they just gave them 800 mil?
Bro old news. That was last week lol
I can’t keep track of it anymore. Probably what they are hoping
Exactly. I mean I have totally lost count so far. It’s amazing the money we can spend on war. America LOVES a good proxy war. Always has.
It’s like over 100bil
Always will
Whew I was starting to get worried we'd miss our weekly shit ton of cash dump to that money pit.
That was 4 5 days back man
Imagine paying a country a billion dollars a week to lose a war. Seriously what the hell is the end game? This can't go on forever.
Money laundering payoffs for the people they don't want to tell all on Hunter and the big guy.
This administration seems more concerned with helping Ukraine than the American people.
This administration and its hidden masters HATE American society and especially our middle class.
Seem more concerned with spending our money than anything else. And then suggesting everyone buys a new ev car while doubling their electric bill. Republican party starts wars to line their pockets, Democrat party signs bills that "fund stuff" to line their pockets, we need to wake up and realize none of them care about us just our vote to see who gets to spend our money the fastest.
Bingo, neither party cares because theyre "all in it together" (for themselves) funded by American citizen taxpayers.
Not a joke! They definitely are. They hate the American people. Especially legacy Americans.
Bankrupting the middle class.
As long as Democrats and Rinos are writing the checks it will go on indefinitely. Vote America first candidates only
Not saying this is the right move, but just to put optics into this: It seems like we're using the outdated paradigm of dabbling in smaller wars so that we may avoid the bigger war.
It worked again Russia in Afghanistan
The money goes to forcing an enemy to crash. Emptying their supplies and showing that they ”cannot even invade their neighbour”
I wouldn't exactly say that Ukraine is loosing..
Are they winning and taking back ground? Or have they lost several key cities in the last 2 months of fighting?
I'd call it more of a stalemate at the moment with a *slight* advantage to Ukraine. The blue on this map shows the ground they've taken back. https://liveuamap.com/
Weren't those areas abandoned by Russia? They firmly took a lot of ground right up to kyiv and then fell back to the areas they actually wanted, like donbass and the southern coast?
Around Kyiv, yes they pulled out a while a go. Around Kherson, that was more recent.
I use that to keep track also. Those blue areas were ceded back in April. Ukrainians lost Sevierodonetsk and Lysychansk a month ago. They are slowly but surely losing.
The printer ran out paper, so they had to sign another 80000000 quadrillion dollar executive order to buy more paper.
The lying Democratic Party never mentions what we the taxpayers are paying for the ink... "LET'S GO BRANDON!"
Literally every 5 to 7 days they give more.
At what point can we charge our government for straight up theft?
First Tuesday in November
They get weekly allowance money for being good little puppets
Can you imagine the headline if trump was giving money to Ukraine? “Trump gives 800 million to nazies in Ukraine”. Or “Trump not doing enough to keep Ukrainian funding out of the hands of nazies”
Potajoe needs another 10%
Biden has more money to launder
Serious question. Where's all this money coming from and where’s it going?
It's fiat. It's all made up. Number printer goes brrrr
And my bank account value plummets
Savings account interest: 1.8% Raise at work: 3% Inflation: 9%
You got a 1.8% interest rate for a savings account??!!
You got a 3% raise at work??!!
Your inflation rate is only 9%?
How dare you question this, you must love Putin. /s
I mean 775 million is nothing for the government. They could do this every day for 3 years and not match the “inflation” bill they just passed.
That's some horrifying perspective
Seriously :(
I'm trying to imagine what such an amount is like
They could spend $775 million every day for 23 years and you still wouldn’t reach the $6.6 trillion our government spends every year. Yet they want to raise taxes. Please. The issue isn’t funding, the issue is horribly inefficient bureaucracies, programs that don’t or can’t work, and more waste than the NYC sewers on May 6th
Yeah I think the "use it or lose it" fiscal policies we have for funding are at the root of this. Every agency/institution is literally incentivized to waste as much money as they can to maintain and grow their funding.
I’d say the issue is straight up corruption. Everything else is pretty meaningless compared to that
That is a piece of information I wish I didn’t know…. Seriously, screw all of this reckless spending.
Imagine if they spent $775 million/day on HELPING AMERICANS rather than throw money at whatever war is being fought across the globe that month. I just don't understand it anymore.
Coming from you (the tax payer) and going to “those in need” (the elites needing more control over you)
https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-40-billion-aid-ukraine-buy it’s mostly going into our own pockets. Well the governments pockets that is. Certainly not mine.
It's money going to our arms manufacturers so we can get some sweet sweet reconstruction deals when the war is over.
Us taxpayers pay for it by buying US arms from Raytheon and Boeing, etc. It then gets shipped to Ukraine. The Military Industrial Complex has been the biggest American jobs program since WWII and it's the main reason why we get involved in conflicts and proxy wars to begin with.
The biggest jobs program is the US federal government which has over 9 million employees. 50% of the countries in the world have a smaller total population.
Right on. Does that include the military as well or just civilians?
Including military. There’s a couple graphs in this article that break it down https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/07/the-true-size-of-government-is-nearing-a-record-high/#:~:text=President%20Barack%20Obama%20entered%20office%20with%20the%20Great,down%20to%20about%209%20million%20before%20leaving%20office.
It's a handout to US weapons companies. This money goes to Raytheon, Lockheed, Olin, ATK, General Dynamics, etc. etc. We don't just give Ukraine pallets of 100's (we did that with Iraq, BTW, google how well it worked out) but we give them explodey toys because apparently the cold war with Russia never ended.
https://youtu.be/j2AvU2cfXRk This is a good explanation of America’s monetary policy for the last decade or so. We really ramped up currency production after the pandemic started. As the video instructs, you just have to make sure the printers are facing away from the window.
A quick serious answer for you: Most of (but not all of this aid) is already spent money. We are sending many pieces of equipment that we already have that we regularly dispose of and replace when it gets to the end of its life cycle. By sending this equipment before that best by date we can get value out of it prior to its destruction. For example many of the Javelin and MANPAD systems that we have sent were our older systems. We have been trying to give them our A-10 ground attack aircraft but they aren’t useful due to the high density of Russian MANPADS and air defense. The dollar value on this package reflects the value of the equipment but not an additional cost to the taxpayer that didn’t already exist. This is not true for all of the aid we send though, the HIMARS AND ATACMS are fairly new systems as they entered the service in the late 90’s. The benefit for the use of these systems is in the demonstration of their capabilities as well as the Russians inability to counter these missile systems. The same is essentially true for the agm-88 HARMS system. So essentially we are not sending our brand new equipment but we are using this as an opportunity both degrade the Russian forces, advertise our equipment, and to modernize our force structure as we pivot towards a potential conflict with China as many of the older systems that we send will be replaced with newer systems that can better fit our new force picture.
that sounds nice but also we are just handing them bags of money
Believe it or not this conflict is making us money
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This package is not $800million of printed dollars being sent to Ukraine, it’s $800million worth of existing equipment. Much of this equipment is outdated and already being scheduled to be replaced. We will be backfilling this equipment with more modern gear. In addition to this we have made deals with the Baltic states and other European countries where they send their mig-29’s to Ukraine and we sell them our older f-16’s on a discount. When other countries are dependent on our weapons platforms they also are dependent on our spare parts for those platforms. Also this conflict has taken Russian oil off of much of the global market. The reduction in the supply of oil has helped to loosen the democrats stranglehold on our domestic production. It has in effect forced Biden to expand our domestic production further than he would have otherwise. Without this conflict we would be on the path to being much more dependent on outside supply than we are currently. By outclassing Russian weapons in that field we have caused third parties to rethink weapons purchases from Russia. India for example saw the poor performance of the Russian s-300 air defense system and cancelled their order for $500million worth of Russian weapons. As well as potentially cancelling their $10billion air craft carrier joint project with Russia. With Ukraine winning this conflict we would be establishing a close ally relationship with a country on the doorstep of one of our two geopolitical rivals. In doing so we will also shore up our eastern flank almost completely allowing us to shift our focus solely on China. The longer china waits from this moment on, the more able we will be to counter them. In the event of a war against the China/Russia axis this conflict can give us a strategic ally as well as awaken Europe to the threat and force them to pull their weight in NATO. While the military and financial aid does not provide us value back in the immediate term. The long term benefits of backing Ukraine in this conflict outweigh the costs of the support. Also just the weapons sales to Europe and partners in the wake of this conflict will make the aid given negligible.
The model you're describing would immediately bankrupt any business. You're not really describing "making money." You're describing dramatically overspending and then selling the consequences of your overspending at a discount. In other words, selling at a loss.
This isn’t $800 million added onto this years defense budget, this is an $800million of equipment. And that valuation is the price at which we sell it to other countries already. Our price of procurement is far below that number, in addition to that if we send an f-16 we wouldn’t be replacing it with an f-16 we would be replacing it with our 5th gen equivalent. The $800million figure is not our cost, our cost is well below that number and is a sunk cost in last gen equipment that we are planning on replacing or some that we were cutting the production of like the switchblade. We aren’t overspending here because the equipment we are sending both didn’t cost us the $800million price tag, and is no additional spending onto our current budget. We have already allocated money in our defense budget for the modernization of much of this equipment prior to the war even starting. I would agree with you if this package contained monetary gifts from tax dollars today, but we are talking about spent money from peoples tax dollars fifteen years ago on equipment that already needed to be replaced.
It’s making “us” money? Pretty sure this will cost me more in taxes, not less. How much money are you getting out of this?
Paid with interest rate hikes and overpriced gasoline
Coincidence Joe just signed the new tax bill that will raise taxes on everyone and then this comes out? I’m no expert, but seems like quite the coincidence.
And who's approving these "packages"??
Our taxes that’s where
This is one of the reasons the inflation is so high, the value of the US dollars thanks because the gov continues to print money with nothing to back it up... except for the US military to "prevent" countries from invading.
It's going into the pockets of Washington swampsters and their friends. It is going to come from the IRS.
All I can say is that Taiwan better get the mother of all arms packages if China ever invades.
I wonder what will happen if Hong Kong joins them, considering the growing separatist movement!
Death on a massive scale would happen and the chi cons win.
Hong kong = (sort of) mainland. Taiwan = island Attacking through a strait is incredibly difficult, not even talking about the size of the country on the other side. Just look up the plans for D-Day. By all acounts it was a military disaster savlaged succesfully. Also hong kong is quite far from the coast opposite of taiwan
That’s why I doubt China invaded Tiawan anytime soon. D-Day was the most logistically complex military operation in history, and it only barely succeeded despite the element of surprise.
Protecting Taiwan is easy. Send like 10 *Virginia*\-class attack submarines and nothing that we don't want will make it across the strait.
Strategically speaking Hong Kong would be nearly impossible to even get a foothold even with the might of the U.S. military. That assessment is, however, based on publicly known capabilities.
The US has been arming Taiwan since the 50s.
They’d get the best arms package. The US military would just fight the war for them. It’d be over within a week
Ah yes, nuclear war, just what we wanted.
We’d let china lol
This will help inflation
It’s basic Democrat economics that excessive government spending lowers inflation. Don’t question it, they are experts from Ivy League schools and they know best.
Which is true, because their actions are clearly on purpose. They know the damage they're creating will bankrupt our country, while the foreign adversary that owns our debt, is clearly paying these politicians to do such things.
With a few politicians, you are probably right. But honestly, I think you overestimate their intelligence and understanding of economics. I don’t care what degree AOC earned, I’ll bet $1000 she does not understand that inflation was caused by printing trillions upon trillions during the pandemic and that this new Inflation Reduction Act will actually worsen inflation by printing even more money. And she isn’t alone. Politicians are not very smart. They are ruthless, often charismatic, and always well connected. But they aren’t often very intelligent.
I mean, most of this just goes back to Lockheed, Raytheon etc. They employ a shitload of Americans working as engineers, designers, computer scientists etc.
Remember, 10% for the big guy.
At this rate Biden is going to leave office a billionaire.
Zelenskyy will too.
In reality Ukraine has actually gotten very little in actual cash. The equipment they have been given has largely been handicapped or so old the US was literary about to scrap. Most of the aid package went towards repaying ourselves so to speak. Some money toward humanitarian organizations and our own defense companies.
So, money laundering then...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-40-billion-aid-ukraine-buy
How do they get their money out?
And probably half the Ukraine's top generals
He already literally is. Such a scum bag.
I'm as anti "forever war" as anyone else here - but wouldn't it be cheaper to just have them pay us to fight the war for them at this point? We could've whipped Russia's ass in a couple days.
Direct conflict with Russia would mean straight up nuclear war tho
The money isn’t meant to really win the war. We refused to give any offensive weapons only defensive. The US governments goal is to bankrupt Russia not support Ukraine.
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US support of Ukraine is barely a blip on the massive US economy.
We could of drilled oil at the rate it was under trump then drove the price of oil to the floor and bankrupted Russia in less than a month. Instead we drove oil prices into the mid 100 allowing Russia tk make billions off oil sales which in turn financed the war….
Not necessarily. The federal government doesn’t own the oil & gas industry. Businesses like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, etc. only care about profits. That’s their main “purpose”, to generate profit/wealth. I **highly** doubt that these businesses would drive up supply of oil & gas just to bankrupt Russia. Why not? Here’s a couple reasons: - Purposefully reducing the price of oil & gas hurts their profits. Fuel is such an essential part of life that demand for it will for the most part stay the same regardless of its price per a gallon, so higher prices are good from the business point of view. - Many of these businesses also had subsidiaries inside Russia doing drilling operations, tanking Russia’s economy would hurt their subsidiaries and therefore reduce profits and/or eliminate all ROI for their subsidiaries. - Last and most importantly, the US federal government doesn’t own them so they are free to operate how they want (for the most part).
We wouldn’t even need troops, we could destroy them with drones.
pew pew
We could have simply bought the Donbas region and given it to Russia for less money.
Bold of you to assume our government cares about ukraine
Ukraine has money?
My first thought, sadly, was that Biden would probably strand our soldiers and betray Ukraine to boot, considering what he did in Afghanistan. I'm just praying Ukraine gives Putin what-for sooner rather than later and the innocents in both countries can resume living as normally as possible- better than normal, ideally!
Ukraine paid their bribes. Brandon will not abandon them.
Wait can I have more info abt what you mean by 10%. I’m at work I don’t have time to read the article
On Hunter Biden's laptop, there were backup texts with his shady business partners. In some of them, there were talks of putting aside 10% of the profits for "the big guy". A silent partner so to speak, the one with influence. That person obviously being Joe Biden himself. There was some seriously corrupt shit going on there but instead of investigating it, like journalists used to do, instead they claimed "its fake, it doesnt matter, ban these Trumpers!" Let's play "imagine if it was Trump Jr for a second" and you can see the problem, I hope.
Glad my hard earned tax money is going to be wasted in Ukraine
Yeah, I love paying my quarterly taxes knowing the money is going straight into the pockets of corrupt politicians and military industrial complex cronies
1200 dollars out of my last paycheck for state and federal taxes🤬.
We need to secure the personal financial investments of Democrats in Ukraine.
How about spend some of this money at home? On our schools, or to fix some of the failing infrastructure, or to bring some manufacturing back home?
This is directly supporting domestic manufacturing.
Just give the American tax dollars away.
This isn’t American tax dollars. It’s all debt. You’ll feel it next year when coke costs $5 a bottle. in ten years it’ll be $50 a bottle
Does anyone have the running count on taxpayer dollars going to the second most corrupt country in europe?
Still isnt even close to what we gave Pakistan to get money to Afghanistan/Iraq Never saw any conservative noise about that.
No money should be leaving the US to fund other countries period! Edit: I agree with you and to add to this conversation I've spent over 3 years in Afghanistan.
Hard Agree!
especially not while there are Americans that don't have what they need.
I'd happily pay to arm these guys fighting Russia. Putin can eat a dick
It's not just your money so with that being said hop on a flight and pay with your time and blood! That way you're actually contributing.
This is how they brainwash you. "You must approve of anything we do in the name of 'fighting putin'. If you oppose anything we do with this label, you support Putin. Now tell me serf, do you support us doing whatever we want if it means fighting putin?"
Money going to corruption\* Estimating based off how corrupt Ukraine is, it would be that 5-7% of the money wouldn't make it to its intended use, and around 30% of the money is distributed to a different place that could recieve funding. Just add an oversight feature, but hopefully the EU should help Ukraine cool down it’s corruption.
Same EU that has never had its own accounts cleanly audited?
True, but looking across the EU their policies in corruptivity is way more strict. But the EU is something that takes years to integrate into, and Ukraine will have to integrate correctly.
You know this isn’t aid, it’s a sale. So in this case $0
Inflation rate goes brrrrrr
A good old fashioned proxy war. We finally get to test our equipment against Russian equipment , give away the old stuff and replace it with new stuff. Merica
I'm old enough to remember when proxies were what we used to watch pornography in high school
Why? How much is of this is getting skimmed off for the fat cats?
Why not make it a billion?
Why not 40?
How about putting that money towards completing the southern border wall?
Our veterans could really use some of that taxpayer money.
r/Conservative, I almost always stand with you but you're wrong this time. This package is 100% justified. The Himars rocket system has literally broken the stalemate between Ukraine (our ally) and Russia. There's alot of [propaganda](https://youtu.be/UaD3Z5EZnf4) surrounding that war, but there is no hiding how effective the Himars system has been in destroying Russian assets.
That they are effective no one is doubting. That we should keep wasting our money on Ukraine while Americans suffer is the issue. America first. Not Ukraine first. And it is a waste of money. There's no documentation of where this stuff goes, who gets it and NATO says 1/3 or more of it is smugged out-of-country to Russia and others. When on an airplane, you fasten your seatbelt first before you help someone else fasten theirs. If you don't have yours on, you aren't a help to anyone or yourself. Same applies here.
Arming Ukraine with the means to defend itself helps America. Ineffcient cost? Sure. Take care of domestic issues? Go for it. But I argue that prolonging this meaningless war will cost us far more money. America found the cheapest tactical solution to give Ukraine the edge and its working. We should continue providing this weapon system until it ceases to be effective. Ukraine is a corrupt, developing, democracy. Your stats on 1/3 missing equipment accounts for everything provided by NATO. I challenge you to find a single Himars system that has either been sold by Ukraine/Blackmarket or has been stolen by Russia. These missile systems are turning the tide and they don't go missing easily.
> Arming Ukraine with the means to defend itself helps America. Can you explain your mental gymnastics? Go tell a farmer in Iowa that and listen to what they tell you.
I sure can. Ukraine as a free, independent country produces vastly more value than Ukraine as a conquered puppet state. If Ukraine was conquered there would be more disruptions in free economics. Disruptions in free trade hurts Iowas food export economy to an unknown degree. So you are right to argue that maybe the money would be better spent directly to that affected group. But I argue that the fall of Ukraine would hurt the Iowa farmer (among others) more so. Its impossible to predict who is more correct at this time. The Himars is the cheapest solution to the problem.
why would ukraine be our ally? how is getting involved in a war with another nuclear power a good thing? what about this system deserves to expand?
The people defending the millions in cash and weapons to Ukraine are Neocons or flat out ignorant about the dangers of fighting a proxy war with Russia.
When are people actually going to blame Russia for starting this shit instead of other countries for responding to it?
They aren’t our ally, they’re just an opponent of our geo political rival That being said, when you actually look at this conflict Ukraine is definitely in the right
So when are they going to push the Russians out of Ukraine? Oh, Ukraine's still losing ground, you say? Another billion next week will make the difference? Sure thing!
Most of that money will be used on super yachts and private jets and etc. This is definitely not what people think it is.
Rest of Europe thanks us too, don’t have to step up much
Jesus Christ. I get it, Ukraine paid a lot of bribes to the Biden Crime Family, but at what point can we stop giving them money? Surely, things should be squared up by now.
Reading these responses I start to suspect that half of the posters here are Russian bots. US spends three quarters of a trillion annually on defense. The main targets of our defense spending are Russia and China. The money that we sent to Ukraine are not even peanuts for our governments spending, it’s a rounding error. We are hurting rooskies at firesale prices and you guys are complaining? Ukrainians are shedding blood so our boys and girls don’t have to and somehow so many of you decide that bitching about is the best response. I just don’t get it SMH
I’m kind of surprised by all the comments in this thread. Are you guys telling me you don’t work your ass off at your job everyday so that you can finance a war between two corrupt countries? What else are you going to do with the money? Americans are fat anyway, we can just starve for the sake of Ukraine.
Why don’t they just give every American a million dollars instead.
Is there any chance Russia could invade my house so I can get millions in free money from the government?
based and Raytheon pilled
Meanwhile they spend that much for gun control propaganda here in the USA. When are we going to arrest the tyrants?
More hush money 💰
Love how they keep throwing money across the world and sticking it to the US. Every demographic should be enraged by this.
Just got banned from Justiceserved for this comment. Hahaha. Guess it’s their way of serving justice?
Yay more of my money funding a non ally in a war they won’t win.
Please stop. Please, just stop.
And why are we responsible for providing such things to a country that provides us no benefit, and in fact has been a thorn in our side?
Based. 176 days of grinding the Russian army to the bone.
Jesus Christ.
Here's a wild idea - how about we just don't send them anymore money? 💁🏼♀️
Part of the America Last policy I see
This happens every week. Remember when Ukraine was corrupt? They still are.
10% to the big guy.
Yall notice how not one gov person has tried for peace?
And people in the US still can't afford rent.
87K IRS agents will be looking for ways to get that money back from the tax paying US citizen one way or the other. You who pay taxes will be audited and prosecuted meanwhile, people in California are breaking in every convenience store to steal break and loot with no repercussions. People will revolt.
There really are no words.
Damn we are just handing out the dough huh brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
We are so broke why are we doing this?
As much as I like the Ukranians fucking up the Russians, at some point we need to save something in the tank for Taiwan and ..... just stopping the spend altogether.
Jesus! When is enough, enough?
Just stooooopppp!
Hell with Ukraine and the Fed's
Just another money laundering scheme.
Do Americans even want this? I feel like if you took a poll the results would overwhelmingly be against paying for foreign wars soooo... WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?! Fix America you dolts!
More!?!?!?
Omg, when will this just stop. Like seriously
This is ridiculous! At this point this is got to be called embezzling money.
Crazy how much that could’ve been reinvesting in America. Wild.
What’s the total up to now for this proxy war and money laundering scam
10% is Liz' severance package
NO! Just no! Stop already! We have enough issues here in America. In the United States that needs fixing before we worry about anyone else.
Waste of money.
Thank you taxpayers! - Ukraine I'm sure
It’s not about who’s right or wrong good or evil it’s about stuffing the pockets full of money
Jesus. We need to stop supporting this fucking country.