Russia-Ukraine War Political Discussion

For those complaining about the monetary aspect of supporting Ukraine:


5.6% of US defense budget to Ukraine, in exchange for gutting more than 50% of the Russian military, and mostly using equipment from older stores.

That what we call a sound investment with good returns.

edit: Oh, and Poland just ordered 220 HIMARS systems, after their showing in Ukraine.

Bacle said:

For those complaining about the monetary aspect of supporting Ukraine:

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"investment". right. that is a word.
meanwhile. our gas, food, and other expenses are through the roof.
but hey, at least they are also fucking russia over, too

mrttao said:

"investment". right. that is a word.
meanwhile. our gas, food, and other expenses are through the roof.
but hey, at least they are also fucking russia over, too

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And how would you change the cost of older, mothballed military equipment into money for the US civie economy?

Because a lot of the dollar value going to Ukraine is the dollar value of equipment we are sending them, a large part of which is old enough it was likely destine for scrap piles before this because it was aging out of inventory, and thus already paid for years ago.

mrttao said:

"investment". right. that is a word.
meanwhile. our gas, food, and other expenses are through the roof.
but hey, at least they are also fucking russia over, too

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Imagine falling for a bait and switch to blame support of Ukraine for the fallout of lockdowns which had orders of magnitude more effect on US economy.
Democrats get their "right wingers supported Russia all along" point reinforced and get away with their big oof all at the same time!

Marduk said:

Imagine falling for a bait and switch to blame support of Ukraine for the fallout of lockdowns which had orders of magnitude more effect on US economy.
Democrats get their "right wingers supported Russia all along" point reinforced and get away with their big oof all at the same time!

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eyerolls.

The lockdowns were huge blow to the economy. But not the sole blow.
There is also the out of control spending. There is out of control EPA. there bulk shipping of jobs abroad. There was the executive order to halt local energy production.

It is not solely the fault of ukraine aid, not by a long shot. but it is part of the overall trend of systematically fucking over the economy. As well as robbing us to redistribute both locally and abroad.

When your economy is in ruins, there comes a time where you must stop with the spending.

The things hurting the US are not due to what we are sending Ukraine.
Hell, it has helped us some the conflict, get newer shit being made, selling a lot to countries, and becoming the leading LNG supplier for Europe

Zachowon said:

The things hurting the US are not due to what we are sending Ukraine.

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Nice strawman.

There are a lot of problems.
One of those multiple problems, is inflation.
Every time they print money to spend frivolously it adds a little bit more inflation.

You are falsely claiming that the only "aid" given to ukraine is that USA sold stuff to it. This is a blatant lie.
You are then falsely trying to attribute to me the claim that USA selling stuff to ukraine is the sole problem we have.

The USA so far gifted Ukraine with 53 billion dollars. which is $160.12 for each man woman and child in the usa.
It is 160.12 for me. for you, for each of our relatives.
money the USA does not have, since it is in record debt. so they printed it.

If they just sold them military equipment I would be all for it. my issue is the gifts coming out of my pocket.
And the fact that it is not just ukraine. there are lots of others on the dole in many different countries.
and then on top of that there is all the other bs they throw at us. like shutting down energy production.

mrttao said:

Nice strawman.

There are a lot of problems.
One of those multiple problems, is inflation.
Every time they print money to spend frivolously it adds a little bit more inflation.

You are falsely claiming that the only "aid" given to ukraine is that USA sold stuff to it. This is a blatant lie.
You are then falsely trying to attribute to me the claim that USA selling stuff to ukraine is the sole problem we have.

The USA so far gifted Ukraine with 53 billion dollars. which is $160.12 for each man woman and child in the usa.
It is 160.12 for me. for you, for each of our relatives.
money the USA does not have, since it is in record debt. so they printed it.

If they just sold them military equipment I would be all for it. my issue is the gifts coming out of my pocket.

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You know that money goes to paying us and other countries as well as to maintain a country worth if economy and infrastructure.

And what is that money going yo do?
It is tiny compared to vast numbers being spent on social bills and laws already on the books.
Hell, we spend way more on the military and a lot of other things.

Amd that money would never be spent on helping inflation anyway

Zachowon said:

You know that money goes to paying us and other countries as well as to maintain a country worth if economy and infrastructure.

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1. you can't spend your way out of debt. every time the democrats tried it they turned a recession into a depression.

2. How am I to know this?
When some people wanted to have a guy there looking at where the money goes, they called them traitors and ganged up on them until they gave up. Ensuring that there is zero accounting on where the money went.

3. I actually do have some familiarity with USA foreign aid.
For example let us look at how USA aid to israel has worked for the past few decades.

For example the USA gifts israel with money... let us say 9 billion dollars... on the condition that israel must use that 9 billion to buy X fighter jets and tanks from company Y at price Z. Israel does so, they get their 3 billion worth of military hardware.

price z is actually 3x the actual price of the hardware in question. The the extra 6 billion gets split up between relatives of politicians who just so happen to work at company Y at the time of the contract.

The complete and absolute dedication to have zero accounting on where theis aid package money is going does not in any way shape or form suggest to me that this time it is any different.

Oh, the Ukrainians are getting their military hardware.
But it is not being sold to them.
A sizeable chunk of it is being stolen by polyticks
And besides all that, you can't spend your way out of debt

mrttao said:

And besides all that, you can't spend your way out of debt

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Individuals cannot; the rules are different for nation states.

That something a lot of people on the Right just like to ignore for rhetorical purposes.

Bacle said:

Individuals cannot; the rules are different for nation states.

That something a lot of people on the Right just like to ignore for rhetorical purposes.

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Nice try. but no.

mrttao said:

every time the democrats tried it they turned a recession into a depression.

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We might see open revolution in China. But unless the Army rebels as well the CCP will never fall.


Rolling blackouts, polluted city water, only the government district and the Millionaires' District have uninterrupted service. Notice all the government mooks taking facial pictures and videos everywhere. They're going to dissappear all these people.

mrttao said:

eyerolls.

The lockdowns were huge blow to the economy. But not the sole blow.
There is also the out of control spending. There is out of control EPA. there bulk shipping of jobs abroad. There was the executive order to halt local energy production.

It is not solely the fault of ukraine aid, not by a long shot. but it is part of the overall trend of systematically fucking over the economy. As well as robbing us to redistribute both locally and abroad.

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It's not the fault of Ukraine aid because it's so small it shouldn't even be on the radar.
Also half the other stuff is just things that were already going on for decades.

mrttao said:

When your economy is in ruins, there comes a time where you must stop with the spending.

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No, stopping the ruining itself would be a mandatory start, as that costs in negative, stopping the probably best investment of defense money in the last century should not be anywhere near the beginning of the list by logic.
Stopping one of the bigger climate or migrant programs alone would save more money in addition to other benefits of not spending money on generating bullshit.
For half of just the muh climate money in this you could finance the Ukraine aid for several years.

AmosTrask said:

The nobility actively treated serfs as chattel and abused them as badly as the American South did black slaves. There is a reason serfs fled into Siberia risking death in the taiga rather than stay a serf. The further away from the city you were the more abusive and callous the treatment. In the city the nobles had to at least pay lip service to noblesse oblige and the laws. Out in the country the worst nobles saw serfs as mobile furniture or human shaped livestock.

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All true - except,when owner were poles,they treated them decently./like servants,not tools/
One of reasons why Catherina great whore agreed to Partition was 300.000 moscovite serfs who run to be polish serfs.

ATP said:

Catherina great whore

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Never understood why they called her that. Catherine was one of the best administrators the Russians ever had as a Monarch. Her efforts laid the groundwork that allowed future monarchs to expand Russian power.

Marduk said:

It's not the fault of Ukraine aid because it's so small it shouldn't even be on the radar.

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1. $160.12 per every single man, woman, and child is not trivial. sub 1$ is trivial

2. You can try to say that about every individual spending action. They all add up. This is a whataboutism. I am sick of all the frivolous spending actions, you are just latching on to this one and insisting it is good.

3. You keep trying to strawman it into "this is solely caused by ukraine aid" rather than "ukrain aid is one of many examples of borrowing to frivolously spend money we do not have"

AmosTrask said:

Never understood why they called her that. Catherine was one of the best administrators the Russians ever had as a Monarch. Her efforts laid the groundwork that allowed future monarchs to expand Russian power.

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you just ansered your own question.

Life for people who were not russian under the russian empire/ soviet union was not fun.

So for the neo cons here who are 100 percent behind give free stuff to Ukraine. What is your opinion on the bailout law suits? If you take the conservatives position in that then you are a piece of shit who wants to spend money on foreigners but not Americans.

mrttao said:

1. $160.12 per every single man, woman, and child is not trivial. sub 1$ is trivial

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By standards of US federal budget it is pretty trivial. We're talking fractions of a percent here.

mrttao said:

2. You can try to say that about every individual spending action. They all add up. This is a whataboutism. I am sick of all the frivolous spending actions, you are just latching on to this one and insisting it is good.

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It is idiotic to be equally sick of all frivolous spending actions. Some are more frivolous than others, and some are bigger than others. You are focusing on one that is neither particularly big nor particularly frivolous, while not giving as much attention to those that are both far bigger and far less justified.

mrttao said:

3. You keep trying to strawman it into "this is solely caused by ukraine aid" rather than "ukrain aid is one of many examples of borrowing to frivolously spend money we do not have"

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It's not a particularly good example of that though. Out of all things US government is spending money on even though it shouldn't, "ruining hostile powers by proxy" definitely isn't on top of the list, doubly so for a case when it's done successfully as opposed to few historical ones when it didn't work very well.

King Arts said:

So for the neo cons here who are 100 percent behind give free stuff to Ukraine. What is your opinion on the bailout law suits? If you take the conservatives position in that then you are a piece of shit who wants to spend money on foreigners but not Americans.

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Depends on bailout for who and for what. If some industry of strategic significance for national interests is going bankrupt, like, say, if Boeing was to go bankrupt, that's the textbook argument case for a bailout.
If random non-strategic companies go bankrupt due to doing dumb bullshit for no good reason, that's not a case for bailout.
The bailouts raising most controversy are closer to the latter than to the former scenario.
It's not about who is the money spent on, but about spending money in favor of national interests. Is breaking the military power of Russia in US national interest? If you want to argue that no, you are free to make your argument openly, without using fiscal conservatism as a mask.

Cherico said:

you just ansered your own question.

Life for people who were not russian under the russian empire/ soviet union was not fun.

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No, no. I mean Russians themselves were the ones who gave her that epithet and continued using it. Non-Russians using it is understandable.

Well that aide to Ukraine has resulted in the verified loss of 50% of all operable Russian heavy armor.


Seems like great return on investment to me.