Is this for real!?

[Snipawolf]

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php ... Itemid=182

It's going up by like 1.5 thousand dollars a second

I think it is a load of bull.. Looks like it..

Then its like "You could have hired this many teachers, or built that many houses..."

Grrr, I dislike sites like this.. If you go "Well then, lets nuke the shit out of them, that's a lot cheaper!" They say "That's in-humane though!"

Sites like this are full of it..

[Guessmyname]

Or just leave them be, to commit genocide and breach human rights and stuff, which is what we seem to be doing now, unless there's oil to be had.

And we can /could have hardly impose sanctions on the likes of Iran and Iraq because only the poor would suffer...

[Neddie]

I've seen a lot of those counters, and the sad thing is, after comparison and independent analysis, they aren't that far off.

[FizWizz]

You're just so charming, Snipa.
It reminds me of a quote:
"It will be a great day when our school get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

[Felix the Cat]

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php ... Itemid=182

It's going up by like 1.5 thousand dollars a second

I think it is a load of bull.. Looks like it..

Then its like "You could have hired this many teachers, or built that many houses..."

Grrr, I dislike sites like this.. If you go "Well then, lets nuke the shit out of them, that's a lot cheaper!" They say "That's in-humane though!"

Sites like this are full of it..

Wait a second, Congressional appropriations are a load of bull? Seems like a rather reliable source to me...

Obviously you haven't come to terms with the scale at which the government spends money. Take a look at the Debt Clock to acquaint yourself with the government's total expenditures on the war.

[Snipawolf]

Well, then, the other half of what I said remains valid..

Even if that is how much we are spending, I still don't like sites like that..

[SwiftSpear]

It's not "bull" but it is dishonest.

The war has cost alot of money, but it's created alot of jobs as well, in the end it really has a much higher gross cost then it has a net cost because alot of the monetary expenses that go into the war pay them selfs back into the economy at some point. I'd difficult to estimate the net cost of the war, suffice to say that it is most likely negative still, but not as clearly damaging as the massive figure that is immediately presented there is.

[SpikedHelmet]

Your post is just as dishonest, SS. The war is syphoning money from the public sector, ie, funds appropriated by the US Government to be spent publically, and pooling it into the private sector, ie, into the pockets of individuals and corporations who are making billions on the war. It is not "recycled" back into the public sector.

[Felix the Cat]

Well, the number may be dishonest, depending on what your definition of "war expenditures" is versus that of the site's authors. For example, is the pay of soldiers in Iraq considered war expenditures? How about their bonuses for being in a war zone? How about medical expenditures due to war injuries? How about medical expenditures due to non-combat injuries? Remember, there would be injuries in the course of training even if we were at peace. How about replacing equipment? And so on and so forth.

Spiked, SS's argument isn't as dishonest as you make it out to be, due to market economics, i.e. those dirty capitalists spend their money on products, which enriches their producers, who pay their workers, etc. They're not just rolling hundred-dollar bills into cigars and smoking them whilst congratulating each other on how thoroughly they've oppressed the proletariat this year.

[Risasi]

The single most economically viable thing a government can do is start a war. It is a GREAT idea. Worked for Hitler, Germany was completely bankrupt.
And once the US got involved in the war it pulled the US out of it's depression slump. FDR knew what he was doing when he let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

As for "wasted" dollars websites like this one. Yeah, pretty much BS. Where the heck are they going to get 5 MILLION properly trained teachers. I've worked the educational sector. The ones we have here aren't exactly a shining example of academia. The primary teachers are idiots. Then you hit College and they are just professors cruising for chicks...

[AF]

I think WW2 made America economically powerful nto because war is good for an economy, but because war destroyed the economy of Americas rivals leaving it with the only economic infrastructure left intact.

Other countries had enemy bombers flying over their economic infrastructure dropping bombs.

The only country to really benefit from war economically in the last century was japan.

[Felix the Cat]

The single most economically viable thing a government can do is start a war. It is a GREAT idea. Worked for Hitler, Germany was completely bankrupt.
And once the US got involved in the war it pulled the US out of it's depression slump. FDR knew what he was doing when he let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

As for "wasted" dollars websites like this one. Yeah, pretty much BS. Where the heck are they going to get 5 MILLION properly trained teachers. I've worked the educational sector. The ones we have here aren't exactly a shining example of academia. The primary teachers are idiots. Then you hit College and they are just professors cruising for chicks...

The problem is, the Iraq War is not at all like World War 2. We are not employing millions of extra workers turning out thousands of tanks and aircraft to support the war effort; the Iraq War hasn't resulted in a widespread realignment of the economy toward war production. Basically, we're getting the negative effects of the war (increased government expenditures, increased government borrowing, decreased investor confidence) without the positive effects.

[Lindir The Green]

Don't forget cheaper oil!

Now we have our army deployed near the oil, which means that it is harder for them to sell it so someone other than us.

Damn isn't this a great country or what!?

[Forboding Angel]

Don't forget cheaper oil!

Now we have our army deployed near the oil, which means that it is harder for them to sell it so someone other than us.

Damn isn't this a great country or what!?

THe US does not control it, OPEC does. Your statement is comepletely off base (it was sarcastic to begin with anyway ;p).

OPEC controls the entire oil market. Opec controls the price. THe president of the US does not have a knob on his desk marked oil prices and turn it up or down. If you wanna yell at someone, yell at OPEC.

[Das Bruce]

Down with OPEC. Drop your bombs between the minarettes now in that casbah way...

[espylaub]

It's not "bull" but it is dishonest.

The war has cost alot of money, but it's created alot of jobs as well.

You've got it backwards. There is a war because it creates jobs and certain people make insane amounts of money with it. There is a war because every congressman in the US is lobbied and supported by the arms industry in his constituency, and he cannot afford to lose that support. If the workers in those industries lose their jobs because of peace, the congressman loses his.

There is a war because it is profitable. Half a million dead brown people? Whatever, they don't really count, right? Plus a couple of thousand dead high school dropouts, rednecks and immigrants who want citizenship, who cares, they're not going to complain either. The recruiters consistently target the poor, the desperate and the dumb, because they're expendable and cheap.

And Snipa, such sites are neccessary because the people need to know. It is their tax money, they expect it to be used for certain things like schools, health care, infrastructure etc. They do not expect it to go directly or indirectly to highly profitable multi-billion dollar corporations whose CEOs make tens of millions a year and just happen to be ardent supporters of the party in power. That money doesn't create jobs, it goes to a rich elite that buys its priviliges (like lower taxes for rich people and tax cuts for profitable corporations) from the administration. Then it is spent on goods and services from those individuals and companies.

While these people make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just in interest rates, some lower class guy at a US high school signs up with the recruiters that hang around his school parking lot because he can't afford college without a huge student loan and decades of debt, and the army is his only option of financing his education.

You see where this is going?

[SwiftSpear]

If anything I'd say that site, as much as most others, are just oversimplifications designed to confuse people. Like I say, that site isn't bull, but it doesn't address the whole picture, there is a net cost of war, and the net cost is FAR below the gross cost. There are lots of economic pros to the war, not that I believe they offset the economic cons. Go try to find an expansive list of the costs and benefits though, I bet it's virtually impossible, which is quite funny because it seems like the kind of thing that would have massive amounts of researchers all over since it has massive economic impact. As a whole no one wants us to see the whole picture, as long as we are treated virtually retarded we make a voting decision based on no ends justified information and the government can keep pretending people actually have input. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I were American I would vote third party, not because I believe the third party has something magic that the others don't just that the two party system has been broken for forever and now they aren't even really trying any more. The two sided competition is making your country a fascist state.

Democrats will widely tell you that the economy is falling and republicans well widely tell you the economy is strong, and they will both quote meaningless numbers, it's not an issue of truth anymore, its an issue of information saturation, where everyone is willing to quote useless figures at you and tell you what they want them to mean, but there is no way the average person can actually derive any objective information of the ends. Which means almost EVERYONE is guessing, and they are still dumb enough to vote when they have no clue what they are voting for. There are maby a few hundred people in the USA that really should be voting in the US election if you actually wanted your country to improve.

[Risasi]

I said to myself "what's the point", and almost just skipped posting this. But I'll do it anyway.

Swiftspear, you are not too far off base. The only thing you said that I don't agree with is the third party being magic somehow.

While I understand their ideals, they just do not work in this country in it's current state. Well they could, but it would be complete anarchy for many years, which might lead to an eventual dictator anyway.

The problem with third party independents is they cannot control either side, that being the democrats or republicans (demons and repugs for short ). And they don't want to clean up the mess left by the those before them.

I myself don't vote, I won't even register now. It's pointless. I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse what with the leaders that get trotted out on stage. Some of the worst enemies of the United States are it's citizens. And most citizens would rather be vassels of the state. So be it.

Frankly to regain any kind of self control my country would have to rely less upon our federal system. The States would have to take back their authority and become a loosley knit coalition of states again. Many of the founders of this country knew what they were doing when they tried to keep the Federalists from getting their hands on too much power. But alas, nowdays we are a bunch of sniveling babies, who need healthcare, who need social security and medicare. Yet we take no thought as to how we will pay for this. This is why we are the way we are today.

One hundred years ago every able bodied man between the ages of 17-45 was our army. And we didn't get involved in wars on the other side of the world. Seventy years ago we were still self reliant and didn't need any country, but FDR took the devil's deal. So what am I saying? I'm just saying there is no solution any more, except a painful failure of our government and a fall into despotism.

My country reminds me more and more of the decaying Roman empire during it's waning years. We have a big standing army sent elsewhere to build stuff, I believe so they can't overthrow our government. After all at least 20% of our deployed forces in Iraq are not even US citizens.
We have decadence in our offices of authority. We have people who don't want to work, yet who expect all sorts of benefits without carrying their own weight.
Conclusion? Failure...

[Deathblane]

*Deathblane gets hit by Rhetoric for 100000 damage
*Deathblane gets hit by Ignorance for 1000000000 damage
*Deathblane looses the will to live

[Lindir The Green]

Don't forget cheaper oil!

Now we have our army deployed near the oil, which means that it is harder for them to sell it so someone other than us.

Damn isn't this a great country or what!?

THe US does not control it, OPEC does. Your statement is comepletely off base (it was sarcastic to begin with anyway ;p).

OPEC controls the entire oil market. Opec controls the price. THe president of the US does not have a knob on his desk marked oil prices and turn it up or down. If you wanna yell at someone, yell at OPEC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/n ... 354269.stm

^ If not true, probably at least based on the truth.

And I've heard stuff (admittedly from somewhat biased sources... Like that video that quoted a guy who said that in 10 years when the oil extraction peaks, and starts to go down, we will have to all like revert to the medieval age... like in all those post nuclear war / alien attack books/movies) about how the invasion of Iraq was at least partly from a desire to have a strong, US friendly government close to oil in this era of demand surpassing supply by more and more.

But it makes sense that the government would want to do that, because when oil prices are too high, our economy suffers and we become dissatisfied with the current government, and start to vote it out.

Which is something that most people in the current government would not want.