Bread and CircusesWant to see a military-industrial capitalist smile? 🇺🇸 Show them this chart.
War is *extremely* profitable.
ZacHow much of the US spending goes to price-gouging military contractors, and how much goes to the people actually serving their country and veterans?
And if I recall correctly, the spending isn’t even audited. Yet educational spending is under the microscope in every district, and “there’s not enough budget” to keep classroom ratios down.
Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷@breadandcircuses Russia isn’t even in that list, and yet the world continues to allow it to devastate Ukraine. What is the point of huge military budgets if they don’t protect friends and allies?
Gabriel Pettier@KimSJ @breadandcircuses It is absolutely helping Ukraine survive that brutal agression, US has been the main support (in absolute terms, not relative to GDP), far in front on the UE, it’s still a relatively small expense compared the total US defense budget, a very "cheap" investment to wreak Russia’s military assets, without needing to send troops.
To do more, would require escalating by sending troops or heavier hardware, taking the risk of open war with Russia, which they are avoiding.
@tshirtman That’s the justification, but the reality is that America is delighted to fund a long war of attrition, which keeps Russia drained of resources and distracted from other ventures, at the cost of continuing Ukrainian lives.
@KimSJ The invasion is what costs ukrainian lives, occupation would also claim them, people would resist one way or another, and repression would be brutal. If they weren’t ready to fight for their freedom, sending hardware would just be gifts to russia’s inventory, which is not what’s happening.
Yes, it makes sense to support for more reason than one, what’s not to love about it?
The "to the last ukrainian" talking point is old russian propaganda, don’t fall for it.
paulInstitutions preserve the problems they are the solution to.
OtownKim
Juan Per¢ent,🇲🇽 🍉,🇻🇪
Rastal@breadandcircuses For the US, it's not "defense spending", it's attack spending.
Jennifer@breadandcircuses I worked for a government contracting company around 2008. Although I was working on a NASA contract, I got pulled into meetings about other contracts. I will never forget in one meeting a VP said he really hoped Obama didn't win the election because he'd end the wars and the company would lose all its contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. 😳 I stayed away from government contracting jobs after that.
@breadandcircuses well, not necessarily on war, but preparation for war, which can lead to peace (si vis pacem…), all this surplus that the US never needed to use (but still produced profit), is quite useful in Ukraine, Russia was just stupid enough not to believe the US would use its war economy to sustain that effort, and that Ukrainians would fight for their freedom, of course.
Which is why Russia is using propaganda to make that effort seem too costly, worthless, foolish.
Idwthama@breadandcircuses countries on the left spent for real military only. US spend these military billions for pseudo retired staff, science and researches, job houses or other stuff. US military budget is for some a social org.
Andreas K@breadandcircuses 🤷 Price levels make these a bit hard to compare.
It's not as if China, Russia and the United States shop with the same sellers at the same prices.
It's about like comparing how expensive it would be to buy say a cab fleet of 100 cabs in L.A versus Moscow.
Okay, 100 Tesla X in California will set you back by $8M
100 Lada Granta in Moscow will cost you 68m RUB, according to Google $~770k
Yeah, not our fault that Western weapons are costly.
@breadandcircuses Side note, the bars in the chart are not scaled at all (the left one should be smaller than the right one, and both than the right one, and both end at $800b at the y scale) → that does not generate trust in the graph being a truthful representation, that looks more like a black hat visualisation that tries to impress a certain conclusion on the viewer no matter what.
@breadandcircuses
But coming back, if the scaling inside the left bar is correct (that is a big if), than at least half of that spending happens at a drastically lower price level (e.g. my comparison for cars suggests that a magnitude is quite a reasonable start), these countries are buying basically their weapons from nationalised manufacturers. No profits there.
But coming back, if the scaling inside the left bar is correct (that is a big if), than at least half of that spending happens at a drastically lower price level (e.g. my comparison for cars suggests that a magnitude is quite a reasonable start), these countries are buying basically their weapons from nationalised manufacturers. No profits there.
Kenny Kravitz@breadandcircuses But Medicare for all would be too expensive.
Green Roc Thoughts@breadandcircuses And how much of that in US is spent on abusing autistics into subservient beings via ABA?
ABA is mental murder to me. And medical coverage almost non-existent. Seems intentional, they really did a number on that Elon fellow, abused him right into their hands, if he even was put into that system of abuse, I dont know, seems like he was. How disturbing. Bullying is profitable, how gross.
ABA is mental murder to me. And medical coverage almost non-existent. Seems intentional, they really did a number on that Elon fellow, abused him right into their hands, if he even was put into that system of abuse, I dont know, seems like he was. How disturbing. Bullying is profitable, how gross.
lord pthenq1@breadandcircuses
That is spending in peace.
That is spending in peace.
Bruce Acton 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦@breadandcircuses It use to be that US wars were good for Canada, there was spillover effect that boosted our GDP. We seem to be decoupled from that now.
marymessall@breadandcircuses This is how we enforce Pax Americana, though...
SFaulken@breadandcircuses It's even more fun, when you look at the "ten" and realize that at least seven of them are ostensibly our "allies" and we shouldn't be needing to go to war with them anytime soon.