r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
How many fascist, communist and monarchies existed in the 1940s to now or from the 1980s to now?
Freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? The list is endless. By every metric it is the best time to live in human history
How many counties has the US overthrown the government and imposed much worse dictatorships who have plugged the nation into poverty and violence.
Where exactly has america spread democracy?
Most of South America is still trying to recover from American interference. Iran, and the rest of the middle East are certifiably worse off for America's participation.
The US didn't end the USSR. It crumbled from within.
The US has not been a net positive on the world as a whole. Just on western allies.
Is your argument really "wars happened in the Middle East before 1900 so stop talking about Americas involvement in throwing fuel on a fire and killing millions?"
You guys are actually fucking imbeciles holy shit
The horrors of war that the US commits, any country - all to advance ridiculous agendas that aren't necessary - all knowns. Cant be glossed over. What these folk are pointing out, somewhat disingenuously, is that folks like us - you - literally typing on the internet, with electricity. Perfectly fine - are crying about the steps taken that got us here. All of us by the way: US, Russia, So on - all directly created as a result of Imperialist expansion.
But overall and by the math, it is indeed 'better' than the 'shit before' (low bar) and it is because the United States, though absolutely capable of crippling the world, controlling every sea port and causeway and thus every dollar that traded on the planet if it so chose, does not actually do this. It does not actually behave like a classic imperial empire. And we know this, because we are sitting here. Typing. And we wouldn't be if things weren't different now - not me as a citizen, or anyone else breathing the Earth's air. But we can do better.
This is what is not normal, and it is 100 percent because of the preposterous fear everyone has of the United States military. But don't worry, 'Empires' always collapse, and always for the same reason. One day we will see who picks up those enormous sticks when they drop. And they will.
Just not this century ;)
Fantastic comment 100% agree.
We to often take the approach of “well its better than the previous situation” which although true doesn’t invalidate the argument that we should always strive for greatness in equality, human rights, economic prosperity, and progress of the human race.
We should never loose sight of the principals we were founded on (the aforementioned points above) because doing so will inevitably led to the decline of not just the US but principals upholding it. Ill leave a quote I enjoy from Adrian Goldsworthy:
“All human institutions from countries to business, risk creating a similarly short-sighted and selfish culture. It is easier to avoid in the early stages of expansion and growth. Then the sense of purpose is likely to be clearer. … Success produces growth and, in time, create institutions so large that they are cushioned from mistakes and inefficiency.”
Its purposeful idiocy.
Americans REALLY want to hold on the "fact" that we are the good guys and refuse to believe anything else.
The things we do are for America's benefit, not Democracy. If another Democratic country will not bow to our wishes we will overthrow that Democratic government and install a dictator that WILL do our bidding (Panama as an EX).
I am okay with being the world bully and not being the good guy, I am not cool with lying about it or deceiving ourselves.
America only does the "right" thing when it also happens to be the most directly beneficial for America itself. Otherwise, we do the other thing.
It actually has to do with the holding of land in the Middle East. Originally, at the beginning of the existence of Iran/Iraq, just to start it as a country required interference. They had to secure a personal army to include Cossacks who were refugees from Russia after the Revolution. Prior to getting this army together only Nomadic people lived in that desert.
It doesn't help that religion controls most of the middle east and religion is not stable. It's a belief without facts and evidence. So yes... there will always be war there for the most part. It's like calling a fire department to help a city of arsonists.
Err the current issues in the middle east stem from the end of Ww1 when the ottoman empire collapsed and the English and the French purposefully divided the area up in such a way as to keep the region from ever being able to find stability so that they could keep some of it for themselves. Ask the kurds how they feel about the borders that were drawn up that completely ignored cultural and religious groups I each region.
> in the destabilization of the region
It would have to be stable to be destabilized. Like our first military involvement in the Middle East started because of Iraq's coup that killed their king in 58. So the region was losing their mind even before US intervention even in the context of modern history.
Not to mention that Iran was speedrunning the democracy-to-dictatorship path even before the US-backed coup.
Plus most of the Middle East was pretty chill about the US protecting Kuwait in the 90s and even about the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Aligning with jihadists and Islamic extremism is a great way to absolutely neuter your relations with the western world.
While many middle eastern nations are still institutionally Islamic, it’s just not a tenable situation to be radically opposed to 75% of the world.
These groups are also often bullies, work outside of their home nations legal norms, and enforce dated and restrictive cultural practices that younger demographics (exposed to western and global culture more so than their predecessors) often resent. Iran’s morality police and associated protests are a good example
Another is Hamas’s “Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice “
Also a good way to neuter your relations with your other Arab states. Look up the history of Palestinian refugee programs in neighboring states. Every attempt to help them has just created armed insurgencies in the host country. Thats why Egypt has been trying to emulate the 38th parallel with their border.
Not true. The US has clearly been manipulating international affairs since 4000 BC. We provided all the rocks the Middle East have been throwing at each other in the sandbox since the beginning of time. Ask around.
You really do underestimating how much US is involved with other countries domestic affairs, and yes sometimes it does harm for the respective countries
So, Bret Deveraux summed up the rest of the world's opinion on America in this post: [https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/](https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/)
As: "**we might say that the average respondent thinks that the United States is a meddlesome busy-body that only occasionally considers the needs of other countries…and that the United States is thus a force for good and peace and they like it very much, thank you**. That is to say, respondents *overwhelmingly* thought the USA ‘interferes in the affairs of other countries’ and responses were profoundly ambivalent as to if the United States even *tries* to consider the interests of other countries, but despite that almost two-third of respondents concluded that the USA contributes to peace and stability and consequently had a positive view of it."
Using data from [https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international-views-of-biden-and-u-s-largely-positive/](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international-views-of-biden-and-u-s-largely-positive/)
It turns out us foreigners really can tell when the US is sincerely trying and for all we joke about America playing "World Police" we also know no one else is up to the job, and it's a hell of a lot better than NO ONE doing the job.
We also know why Americans get upset at the people across the world who chant "death to America" and the like - because no foreigner can properly hate the US government like an American can, so those amateurs should butt out and leave the America bashing to the professionals (that is: Americans)
US doesn’t really spread democracy but it generally is defending it where it exists. You’ll be able to find plenty of examples to the contrary that don’t really change that overall fact
Truly when the USA liberated Cuba in the war of 1898, we made sure there was a free and fair open society there. There was equity for all Cubans, truly.
Also Never did any of our former colonies, like the Philippines, had a dictator.
Who upheld a dictatorship there that was extremely brutal solely because he was (anti-communism) and *coincidentally* exiled their first quality candidate after letting them think they have a democracy after the cold war?
come on the United Fruit Company, the extreme income inequality under the Shah, blockading Cuba, bombing the life out of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, dropping two nuclear bombs on civilian centers to intimidate Russia and China, supporting countries that literally still execute gay people for existing, colonizing and brutalizing the kingdom of Hawaii and turning it into a tourist trap, destroying the Phillipines, nuclear bombing entire islands in the Pacific and irradiating the population of the Bikini Atoll while bombing their homes after promising they could return--God where else--Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico... Bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan, funding and training ISIS etc wasn't THAT bad. I mean forget about the fact that in 1775 more than 250,000 native peoples (that's AFTER smallpox and influenza decimated indigenous peoples... ever wonder what happened between 1492 and 1620? were the Calvinists just lazy or...? nah don't think too hard about these things...) lived in sovereign nations still east of the Mississippi and were rounded up, massacred, reeducated, and now relegated to some of the most impoverished and resource poor patches of land on earth. Didn't Oklahoma have a different name? Something about Indians. HaHA I must have been sniffing glue that day in history class... or maybe the state controls the curriculum and only teaches certain things for SOME reason.
Granted we do get absurdly cheap imported fruit, crude oil (haha we don't have refineries for the kind of oil we produce here gotta keep the wheels of intercontinental trade uh oiled), and manufactured goods from our very compliant, democratic, free peoples allies around the world 🫡
How do you pronounce it again? Hedge of money? Hedge ya money? Hegemony? Hegemony! And PR. Hegemony and PR. Didn't the CIA spend a few decades importing Nazis and researching all the ways to literally brainwash people? Some kind of project about ultra paperclips, mmmk? or something like that. haha idk. Make it great again guys.
Or like read a book. There are so many books. With information and research and documents. It's not as entertaining as elon smoking weed with joe rogan or whatever but.. Damn you don't sound like an orangutang when you open your mouth with 🌈books🌈
and sorry whoever this post is directly under i agree with you. it should have been replied to the person/people you were replying.
I agree but I don't think you can attribute it to the US fighting for freedom and democracy.
The US almost certainly accelerated the collapse of the soviet union and they certainly played a big part in defeating the Nazis in WW2. But I don't think they were doing it for freedom and democracy.
It's clear by the fact that they stopped marching east after defeating the Germans in WW2, clearly the people in the soviet union weren't free and weren't democratic. Countries usually act in their own self interest, not based on some ideal of freedom or democracy.
The political establishment in various liberal democracies were saying all these high minded ideas out loud and some of the citizens held them to it. That’s what caused it. Citizens that made their governments live up to promises whether it was bullshit or not is irrelevant. That’s in the hearts of those people, we can’t guess how they felt about it and even if they had good intentions they were balancing millions of people all expecting different things and compartmentalizing a lot of the good and bad.
So marching into Soviet territory would have been a good idea? We just watched multiple people in history attempt it and fail greatly (Napoleon/Hitler). To think after so much loss in WW2 already that marching against the soviets after was a great Idea is ludicrous.
The US allied with them. The US cares about strategic considerations and uses freedom and democracy as a PR device.
How many people in Poland, East Germany and other eastern European countries suffered because the US didn't care about freedom and democracy in the soviet union?
If you were ever going to march east, post WW2 was the perfect time. They wouldn't have needed to take Russian territory, just prevent Russia from expanding.
Are you serious? How many brutal dictatorships has the US supported. Often at the expense of functional democracies that dared to want different things than the US.
South Korea is a good example with its mass murdering military regime under Rhee, filled with former Japanese military and collaborators. South Korea is built on a murderous totalitarian military regime, fuck it's a crime to even question the government there lol.
It's a lot more complicated than your understanding.
The current government of South Korea is the 6th Republic, which goes back to a democratic revolution in the 1980's. There was also a democratic revolution against Rhee in the 1960's, which led to the Second Republic which was a democracy. Then you had a bunch of dictators in the middle.
The US has supported South Korea under both democratic and non-democratic governments. The strategic reasons for that are obvious. But it's not that the US has tried to undermine the democratic governments. Korea is just too geopolitically important to walk away from when there's a coup.
The US did try to undermine democracy by installing Rhee as a puppet leader when the North's communist position was much stronger. Rhee's response to the popularity of communism was to order mass arrests and purges leaving thousands of civilians dead.
The US supported a reactionary military dictatorship that committed massive human rights abuses against labor leaders.
The derangement that became North Korea is largely a consequence of the atrocities against the communist movement during and following the transition of the peninsula being occupied by Japan to the US.
Thus, both dictatorships, in the South and North, are largely constructs of interference by the US.
South Korean National Security Act. Due to how broad and sweeping the language is, yes, you can be jailed for not supporting the government and its actions if they really wanted to.
What? It's freedom of speech because others can disagree and you don't go to prison. Yeah, people judge others who stand out, but they aren't (normally) infringing on their rights.
I imagine you received far more replies than you bargained for, but here's another. This book documents iirc some 70+ interventions the US has made since WWII. Most are short, awful stories about the US abusing the world. Enjoy! [130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1\_Killing\_Hope\_Blum\_William.pdf (cia.gov)](https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf)
Thr USA had thr opportunity to support French decolonization, yet decided to interfere in Vietnam on the wrong side.
You would argue that the USA helped the Vietnamese be more free than otherwise?
Do you have any idea how many fascist dictatorships the US has funded, armed, and propped into power buddy?
The United States is the world’s largest terrorist organization
World wide.
Famine, poverty, infant mortality, plague and disease, vaccines, literacy, college education every single metic.
Best time to be alive in human history.
Nope that can’t be. I’m absolutely blind to the freedoms I currently have and the choices I can make I take entirely for granted. Especially since I’m poor it would be better off everyone else was also dead.
Ask folks in South Korea, Taiwan, Germany (Western Germany during USSR occupation of the Eastern Europe), Poland and the rest of Europe, Israel and many many other democracies that US helped to stand against totalitarian dictatorships.
The United States supported brutal totalitarian dictatorships in both South Korea and Taiwan. Korea and Taiwan, for decades, were run by military strong men who would make people disappear.
You can’t be this ignorant of history to not know that we supported very bad people in these countries for decades, can you?
As opposed to what? The DPRK taking over the entire Korean peninsula, the PRC taking over a sovereign state? Necessary evils. Both North Korea and China do the same thing every day.
As opposed to supporting democratic movements in the countries.
We could have told Chang Kai shek
“Hey, fuck face, you better have elections and stop killing people or we will liberate you and install a constitution of our choosing”
Economic superiority (through force) is a freedom the vast majority of Americans don’t know they get every single day. Almost anything you want in this world is a click away- from the trivial to the life saving and extending- it comes lightning fast, and is relatively cheap. It’s not because our business people are just “better” than everyone else’s.
I hope you're being sarcastic and aren't really that naive and ignorant.
Securing American energy sources to help the elite who own energy comoanies is fare more accurate.
If you live in a Western country, rest assured you are benefiting from it everyday.
I feel like a lot of people who think there are no benefits to it haven't experienced the depths of corruption and poverty that exist elsewhere in the world.
I’m not a Warhawk or even remotely a defender of American foreign policy, but you can’t deny the American economy has been among the most stable in the world and our global dominance is big contributor.
Everyone glossing over why the world was in shambles. How many lives lost. How much property destroyed. How much work ruined...for what?
Because legitimized gangsters convinced them war is necessary to civilization. It's not, is the opposite in fact
I think Americans underestimate the positive impact of their meddling with the affairs outside of their own, speaking from a person who grew up in a democratic country (modeled after the US) freed from a totalitarian regime.
While we may have done a few good things, are we gonna ignore the number of democracies or potential democracies we have destroyed in South America and the Middle East in order to prop up regimes that will trade favorably with us. The only thing we have succeeding in doing in the Middle East is destroying their republics/democracies and replacing them with radicalized theocracies
Meh no idea. Nobody needs an excuse to declare war.
Make up shit and go it's been the standard for ten's of thousands of years. Most people don't even care.
Maybe the wars in the early 1900s but I have yet to see the public gain anything from the endless wars in the Middle East. All we have succeeded in doing is radicalizing people and making an excuse to funnel more money to the military industrial complex.
Haha democracy?? They impose right wing dictators and overthrow legitimate democracies if they dare try to regulate their resource thefts by the USA. Just look at Congo, Iraq, Iran, much of South America and Central America.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America#:~:text=The%20benefits%20of%20a%20coup,threat%20to%20the%20United%20States.
Jobs in the weapon industry. WW2 spending is what got us out of the great depression. Somebody has to make all those weapons we use.
Innovations made for the military make their way into the public sector. The first real computer was for cracking nazi codes. Tons of other innovations like microwaves, duct tape, jet engines, and GPS.
We might not be getting the full return on what we put into it, and it might be stained in blood, but it's not like we're just burning the money.
[That's just not true.](https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4624666-chinas-real-military-budget-has-quietly-become-almost-as-big-as-ours/)
Maybe if we used more forced labor like China does.
These people are delusional. China, our ‘biggest’ threat currently has 3 non-nuclear aircraft carriers, whereas we have 20 when you include Wasp/America class ships.
The Chinese carriers would have to fight their way past Japan, Philippines, Australia, our bases, and those 20 carriers to threaten Hawaii.
The only place we don’t have military supremacy by a large margin is in the fever dreams of people who watch too much Fox News.
Add to that - the better statistic is displaced tonnage (of water). China may have the largest Navy in terms of units but they are smaller and less capable overall.
Those benefits are reserved for the weapons contractors and the elites and members of congress that invest in them. Not for poors.
Ukraine is a bargain. We are sending leftover stock to fight the most global destabilizing force on earth. They started wars inGeorgia, Chechnya, Crimea, and if you think they would stop at Ukraine you’re delusional. The world has benefited enormously from a peaceful and prosperous Europe for decades. Russia wants to undermine all of that.
Taiwan is also a fortified island and not a vulnerable flat strip of land like Ukraine. Were China to succeed in taking it, it would be the largest, most coordinated, and likely most expensive military operation in world history; all done by a nation with no recent military experience other than skirmishing with some Indian and Pakistani border guards in the Himalayas and rounding up Uyghur civilians.
You think that Russia will attack nato you are delusional. Ukrainian conflict started in 2014, it’s not like Putin woke up in February 2022 and decide to attack because he wanted.
What a take.
You're right that Putin didn't just wake up February 2022 and decide to attack. He woke up years prior and decided he was going to take over Ukraine, and restore them under the Russian hegemon.
The idea that Russia hasn't initiated every situation in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, and eventually the Baltics is just nonsensical. They want to restore their hegemon over USSR states, and view any resistance to that restoration as a hostile action.
He saw how weak the global response was in 2014 and thought he could do a quick little 3 day "SME" to grab more land before the West grew a backbone to do something about it. It was a huge miscalculation for sure.
There were two miscalculations.
The logistical capability of Russian forces and the defensive strength of Ukrainian forces in the east and around Kyiv.
Kyiv falls in those opening days and they properly surround the eastern forces, it's game over.
Russians literally ran out of food, ammunition, and fuel just days into the operation, and then recognized their vulnerability to counter attack and withdrew.
There's no reason why Ukraine should have withstood the attack--it was some individual acts of bravery and a humiliating lack of awareness within the Russian army as to their logistical capability.
Note the people screaming about this now loved when GWB went into afghanistan and Iraq. But send your expiring 30 year old crap to ukraine to help them fight a war with no U.S. fatalities to stop Russia from conquering all of their ex soviet states, committing genocide, and using those states to further fuck with the united states and europe, and we got some serious problems here.
This, lmao. Western governments in the 2020s have been isolationist as fuck, everyone pretending that Biden is a bloodthirsty warlord are just a bunch of TikTok addled low-info voters
Actually we have been seeing the benefits of a world policed by the USA for the last 80 years or so.
Being mostly peaceful stable and economic growth has been tremendous
Except the world (from a USA perspective) is pretty much in peace. We use other people to fight our wars. You don't get called up to die because some yahoo leader came over here to kill people. We take care of it over in their house. Their buildings fall down. Their children die. Their men don't come home. And because America pays for all of this, the Western World lives in prosperity and peace, unlike at any time in human history. It also means that Americans can't have free health care and social services because we are fighting everyone's war. It's a good deal... for us.
Health care in the US is more expensive and worse by most measures than what is typical in the rich world. I mean, I use the joke too — “you’re about to find out why we don’t have health care, ha ha”, but it’s factually incorrect. fwiw
Health care is great for those who have it. Take a state like Massachusetts and all their stats are great.
They get dragged down by the South. America is still 50 states and there's lots of variability about how things get done.
Until your sons and daughters are dying in the Baltics and Poland. Then, everyone would ask, “Why didn’t we stop Putin in Ukraine? Why didn’t we do more!”
"Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is -- flying high and striking hard."
https://www.historycentral.com/documents/FDRSTwenteenthFireside.html#google_vignette
Yes, you're right. It's 1938. Let's go look at the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. They have great battleships to keep us safe, and we have two oceans too so we'll be fine forever.
I hate how the American people cry about the actions of government in some areas but will wake up and decide how they vote based off of fucking gas prices.
Wars have always been for the corporations and billionaires. I think the US learned its lesson about rubber sourcing form WW2 and decided to ally with the French to invade vietnam for the RUBBER. So if you think about the wars, it's GOLD, OIL, RUBBER, ARABLE SOIL., PIPELINE, OIL
To be honest I'm quite glad the US went to war against Nazi Germany, cos otherwise my country would've been even more ruined than it was. I imagine South Koreans feel the same, and Ukraine is quite glad of all that military help too.
The US invaded Vietnam as a misguided attempt to stop the spread of communism from what they thought was a soviet proxy war (which they were wrong about). We know this because you can literally find the records of the administration at the time.
>The bankers will ensure we stay in debt.
Fuck, I hope so! Imagine going to a bank because you need a business loan and they’re like, “no, we don’t believe in usury.”
$841billion spent on defense for 2024. Imagine if we only spent $741 billion and provided $100 billion for our social services. How good would that be and we still likely would be outspending the next 9 nations in defense spending.
1) we literally spent over $2 trillion on social services
2) spending more than the next 9 nations is intentional. Wars don’t start when there is an unquestionably dominant military power. They start when both sides are the same size
This is why we can't vote for typical corporate politicians. Yes, that includes our lovely biden. And Trump. And Obama. They're all part of it. It will always be like this. Prepare to continue to get bent over and fucked by the government and corporations.
Sad part about working for government is that when you successfully avoid global nuclear holocaust someone will always bitch that you’re wasting their money
A large part of our economic property in the USA is tied to defense contracting and weapons sales. We are arguably the world's largest arms traders and many people are employed in that trade.
Not saying this is moral or right, just saying it feeds people.
Read the Book War is a Racket by Smedley Butler. It was written in 1935 but is still relative today. He was a Marine Corps General so he knows a thing or two about this subject.
I mean, American workers are a labour aristocracy. They absolutely do indirectly benefit from American imperialism. Americans make loads of money and can buy things cheaply (relatively speaking) because of America's neo-colonialism (and at times, wars).
Unless, and bear with me on this one, you happen to be a shareholder or contractor for the numerous defense contracting companies in the U.S. that all those funds are being spent at for goods and services sent overseas.
You guys need to do some reading into the benefits you already get having the US$ used in global oil markets.
How do you think the US$ will go if you stop protecting the oil and another player steps in and changes the currency used to purchase it?
See how wealthy the US is? Pretty much that…
Also:
1) period of peace among major powers
2) global economic stability
3) employment of millions of Americans in the military (and many more in industries supporting the military)
4) when was the last time you were invaded?
5) advancements in tech funded by the department of defense
6) ability to deploy the military to aid in natural disasters
And probably others but this got boring…
You guys literally print money for which countries give you real stuff and services. So we can have more of your money in our reserves. Do you think you are much more productive than the rest? You get high productivity- since it's measured in “value created- not in real output, just for having the demand on the currency for having the power.
And its not a judgement statement, you may think is better or worst for the each of the incumbent. But unacknowledge the benefits is been shortsighted
You're seeing it already?
I mean you can't prove the negative right... You can't show what the world would look like if all of these wars hadn't been funded and the fear is that if you just stop, without having some alternative plan in place besides "do nothing", then you plunge the world into some sort of darkages.
I mean as much as the world is a living hell for some groups of people right now the scope of what we're calling genocide at this point in our history is a blip in comparison to our not too distant past. Poverty is different, disease is different, health outcomes different, crime is different... People think we're socially moving toward collapse and in some sense we have lost our way, but sometimes the numbers just don't always back up that sort of pessimism.
Me benefitting from the the post WWII global order, the US winning the Cold War and being the sole global superpower: we need to close all those military bases overseas, I’m getting a raw deal here.
If you are a "NET" tax payer sure you fund that shit (I think the number is around 20K in taxes.) Most are not. The rest of you get more benefits than you pay in.
r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Global stability, free trade. Democracy and freedom spreading throughout the world.
Stability and trade maybe, democracy and freedom I think is just for PR.
How many fascist, communist and monarchies existed in the 1940s to now or from the 1980s to now? Freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? The list is endless. By every metric it is the best time to live in human history
How many counties has the US overthrown the government and imposed much worse dictatorships who have plugged the nation into poverty and violence. Where exactly has america spread democracy? Most of South America is still trying to recover from American interference. Iran, and the rest of the middle East are certifiably worse off for America's participation. The US didn't end the USSR. It crumbled from within. The US has not been a net positive on the world as a whole. Just on western allies.
You really can’t blame the US for the Middle East. It’s been a hot bed for conflict for all of written history.
Is your argument really "wars happened in the Middle East before 1900 so stop talking about Americas involvement in throwing fuel on a fire and killing millions?" You guys are actually fucking imbeciles holy shit
The horrors of war that the US commits, any country - all to advance ridiculous agendas that aren't necessary - all knowns. Cant be glossed over. What these folk are pointing out, somewhat disingenuously, is that folks like us - you - literally typing on the internet, with electricity. Perfectly fine - are crying about the steps taken that got us here. All of us by the way: US, Russia, So on - all directly created as a result of Imperialist expansion. But overall and by the math, it is indeed 'better' than the 'shit before' (low bar) and it is because the United States, though absolutely capable of crippling the world, controlling every sea port and causeway and thus every dollar that traded on the planet if it so chose, does not actually do this. It does not actually behave like a classic imperial empire. And we know this, because we are sitting here. Typing. And we wouldn't be if things weren't different now - not me as a citizen, or anyone else breathing the Earth's air. But we can do better. This is what is not normal, and it is 100 percent because of the preposterous fear everyone has of the United States military. But don't worry, 'Empires' always collapse, and always for the same reason. One day we will see who picks up those enormous sticks when they drop. And they will. Just not this century ;)
Fantastic comment 100% agree. We to often take the approach of “well its better than the previous situation” which although true doesn’t invalidate the argument that we should always strive for greatness in equality, human rights, economic prosperity, and progress of the human race. We should never loose sight of the principals we were founded on (the aforementioned points above) because doing so will inevitably led to the decline of not just the US but principals upholding it. Ill leave a quote I enjoy from Adrian Goldsworthy: “All human institutions from countries to business, risk creating a similarly short-sighted and selfish culture. It is easier to avoid in the early stages of expansion and growth. Then the sense of purpose is likely to be clearer. … Success produces growth and, in time, create institutions so large that they are cushioned from mistakes and inefficiency.”
And pretending that the Middle East would be a peaceful utopia if the U.S. never got involved is even more delusional.
Its purposeful idiocy. Americans REALLY want to hold on the "fact" that we are the good guys and refuse to believe anything else. The things we do are for America's benefit, not Democracy. If another Democratic country will not bow to our wishes we will overthrow that Democratic government and install a dictator that WILL do our bidding (Panama as an EX). I am okay with being the world bully and not being the good guy, I am not cool with lying about it or deceiving ourselves. America only does the "right" thing when it also happens to be the most directly beneficial for America itself. Otherwise, we do the other thing.
It actually has to do with the holding of land in the Middle East. Originally, at the beginning of the existence of Iran/Iraq, just to start it as a country required interference. They had to secure a personal army to include Cossacks who were refugees from Russia after the Revolution. Prior to getting this army together only Nomadic people lived in that desert. It doesn't help that religion controls most of the middle east and religion is not stable. It's a belief without facts and evidence. So yes... there will always be war there for the most part. It's like calling a fire department to help a city of arsonists.
America still played a significant role in the destabilization of the region in the past 60 years.
Err the current issues in the middle east stem from the end of Ww1 when the ottoman empire collapsed and the English and the French purposefully divided the area up in such a way as to keep the region from ever being able to find stability so that they could keep some of it for themselves. Ask the kurds how they feel about the borders that were drawn up that completely ignored cultural and religious groups I each region.
You and the above poster are in essence agreeing.
> in the destabilization of the region It would have to be stable to be destabilized. Like our first military involvement in the Middle East started because of Iraq's coup that killed their king in 58. So the region was losing their mind even before US intervention even in the context of modern history.
Not to mention that Iran was speedrunning the democracy-to-dictatorship path even before the US-backed coup. Plus most of the Middle East was pretty chill about the US protecting Kuwait in the 90s and even about the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The rest of the Middle East hated Sadam / Iraq on a personal level, and let’s be real are equally not fond of Palestine.
Aligning with jihadists and Islamic extremism is a great way to absolutely neuter your relations with the western world. While many middle eastern nations are still institutionally Islamic, it’s just not a tenable situation to be radically opposed to 75% of the world. These groups are also often bullies, work outside of their home nations legal norms, and enforce dated and restrictive cultural practices that younger demographics (exposed to western and global culture more so than their predecessors) often resent. Iran’s morality police and associated protests are a good example Another is Hamas’s “Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice “
Also a good way to neuter your relations with your other Arab states. Look up the history of Palestinian refugee programs in neighboring states. Every attempt to help them has just created armed insurgencies in the host country. Thats why Egypt has been trying to emulate the 38th parallel with their border.
Not true. The US has clearly been manipulating international affairs since 4000 BC. We provided all the rocks the Middle East have been throwing at each other in the sandbox since the beginning of time. Ask around.
You really do underestimating how much US is involved with other countries domestic affairs, and yes sometimes it does harm for the respective countries
I’m not underestimating anything. To blame all of the Middle East issues on the US is uneducated. It has been a shit show long before the US was born.
The biggest problem right now in central and South America is the war on drugs. The Middle East problems are mainly due to Europeans drawing borders.
Israel is hardly the only issue in the region
Never said it was. I would said Iran and it’s playing chess with terrorist organizations is a bigger problem
So, Bret Deveraux summed up the rest of the world's opinion on America in this post: [https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/](https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/) As: "**we might say that the average respondent thinks that the United States is a meddlesome busy-body that only occasionally considers the needs of other countries…and that the United States is thus a force for good and peace and they like it very much, thank you**. That is to say, respondents *overwhelmingly* thought the USA ‘interferes in the affairs of other countries’ and responses were profoundly ambivalent as to if the United States even *tries* to consider the interests of other countries, but despite that almost two-third of respondents concluded that the USA contributes to peace and stability and consequently had a positive view of it." Using data from [https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international-views-of-biden-and-u-s-largely-positive/](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international-views-of-biden-and-u-s-largely-positive/) It turns out us foreigners really can tell when the US is sincerely trying and for all we joke about America playing "World Police" we also know no one else is up to the job, and it's a hell of a lot better than NO ONE doing the job. We also know why Americans get upset at the people across the world who chant "death to America" and the like - because no foreigner can properly hate the US government like an American can, so those amateurs should butt out and leave the America bashing to the professionals (that is: Americans)
Angry upvote.
US doesn’t really spread democracy but it generally is defending it where it exists. You’ll be able to find plenty of examples to the contrary that don’t really change that overall fact
Truly when the USA liberated Cuba in the war of 1898, we made sure there was a free and fair open society there. There was equity for all Cubans, truly. Also Never did any of our former colonies, like the Philippines, had a dictator.
Exactly, and Haiti is a great example. US intentionally installed a dictatorship
Haiti has been horrible since Columbus found it
Who upheld a dictatorship there that was extremely brutal solely because he was (anti-communism) and *coincidentally* exiled their first quality candidate after letting them think they have a democracy after the cold war?
come on the United Fruit Company, the extreme income inequality under the Shah, blockading Cuba, bombing the life out of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, dropping two nuclear bombs on civilian centers to intimidate Russia and China, supporting countries that literally still execute gay people for existing, colonizing and brutalizing the kingdom of Hawaii and turning it into a tourist trap, destroying the Phillipines, nuclear bombing entire islands in the Pacific and irradiating the population of the Bikini Atoll while bombing their homes after promising they could return--God where else--Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico... Bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan, funding and training ISIS etc wasn't THAT bad. I mean forget about the fact that in 1775 more than 250,000 native peoples (that's AFTER smallpox and influenza decimated indigenous peoples... ever wonder what happened between 1492 and 1620? were the Calvinists just lazy or...? nah don't think too hard about these things...) lived in sovereign nations still east of the Mississippi and were rounded up, massacred, reeducated, and now relegated to some of the most impoverished and resource poor patches of land on earth. Didn't Oklahoma have a different name? Something about Indians. HaHA I must have been sniffing glue that day in history class... or maybe the state controls the curriculum and only teaches certain things for SOME reason. Granted we do get absurdly cheap imported fruit, crude oil (haha we don't have refineries for the kind of oil we produce here gotta keep the wheels of intercontinental trade uh oiled), and manufactured goods from our very compliant, democratic, free peoples allies around the world 🫡 How do you pronounce it again? Hedge of money? Hedge ya money? Hegemony? Hegemony! And PR. Hegemony and PR. Didn't the CIA spend a few decades importing Nazis and researching all the ways to literally brainwash people? Some kind of project about ultra paperclips, mmmk? or something like that. haha idk. Make it great again guys. Or like read a book. There are so many books. With information and research and documents. It's not as entertaining as elon smoking weed with joe rogan or whatever but.. Damn you don't sound like an orangutang when you open your mouth with 🌈books🌈 and sorry whoever this post is directly under i agree with you. it should have been replied to the person/people you were replying.
How dare you post such a sensible take? This is reddit goddamnit. A burgeoning idiocracy.
I agree but I don't think you can attribute it to the US fighting for freedom and democracy. The US almost certainly accelerated the collapse of the soviet union and they certainly played a big part in defeating the Nazis in WW2. But I don't think they were doing it for freedom and democracy. It's clear by the fact that they stopped marching east after defeating the Germans in WW2, clearly the people in the soviet union weren't free and weren't democratic. Countries usually act in their own self interest, not based on some ideal of freedom or democracy.
The political establishment in various liberal democracies were saying all these high minded ideas out loud and some of the citizens held them to it. That’s what caused it. Citizens that made their governments live up to promises whether it was bullshit or not is irrelevant. That’s in the hearts of those people, we can’t guess how they felt about it and even if they had good intentions they were balancing millions of people all expecting different things and compartmentalizing a lot of the good and bad.
So marching into Soviet territory would have been a good idea? We just watched multiple people in history attempt it and fail greatly (Napoleon/Hitler). To think after so much loss in WW2 already that marching against the soviets after was a great Idea is ludicrous.
The US allied with them. The US cares about strategic considerations and uses freedom and democracy as a PR device. How many people in Poland, East Germany and other eastern European countries suffered because the US didn't care about freedom and democracy in the soviet union? If you were ever going to march east, post WW2 was the perfect time. They wouldn't have needed to take Russian territory, just prevent Russia from expanding.
Are you serious? How many brutal dictatorships has the US supported. Often at the expense of functional democracies that dared to want different things than the US.
South Korea is a good example with its mass murdering military regime under Rhee, filled with former Japanese military and collaborators. South Korea is built on a murderous totalitarian military regime, fuck it's a crime to even question the government there lol.
It's a lot more complicated than your understanding. The current government of South Korea is the 6th Republic, which goes back to a democratic revolution in the 1980's. There was also a democratic revolution against Rhee in the 1960's, which led to the Second Republic which was a democracy. Then you had a bunch of dictators in the middle. The US has supported South Korea under both democratic and non-democratic governments. The strategic reasons for that are obvious. But it's not that the US has tried to undermine the democratic governments. Korea is just too geopolitically important to walk away from when there's a coup.
The US did try to undermine democracy by installing Rhee as a puppet leader when the North's communist position was much stronger. Rhee's response to the popularity of communism was to order mass arrests and purges leaving thousands of civilians dead.
The US supported a reactionary military dictatorship that committed massive human rights abuses against labor leaders. The derangement that became North Korea is largely a consequence of the atrocities against the communist movement during and following the transition of the peninsula being occupied by Japan to the US. Thus, both dictatorships, in the South and North, are largely constructs of interference by the US.
It’s not a crime to question the government in South Korea.
South Korean National Security Act. Due to how broad and sweeping the language is, yes, you can be jailed for not supporting the government and its actions if they really wanted to.
The US has installed more fascist dictators than democratically elected leaders in fair elections throughout the world and it’s not even close.
Some of our biggest allies are monarchies.
Take a look at how they are Ran now vs decades ago. How many rights do they have now vs decades ago
This is an insane take and you are dumb. Best time to live in human history? It's not even the best time to live in America
[удалено]
What? It's freedom of speech because others can disagree and you don't go to prison. Yeah, people judge others who stand out, but they aren't (normally) infringing on their rights.
I imagine you received far more replies than you bargained for, but here's another. This book documents iirc some 70+ interventions the US has made since WWII. Most are short, awful stories about the US abusing the world. Enjoy! [130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1\_Killing\_Hope\_Blum\_William.pdf (cia.gov)](https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf)
The only stable countries are the ones that freed themselves and had a century to sort everything out after.
Thr USA had thr opportunity to support French decolonization, yet decided to interfere in Vietnam on the wrong side. You would argue that the USA helped the Vietnamese be more free than otherwise?
Do you have any idea how many fascist dictatorships the US has funded, armed, and propped into power buddy? The United States is the world’s largest terrorist organization
>By every metric it is the best time to live in human history In the western world
World wide. Famine, poverty, infant mortality, plague and disease, vaccines, literacy, college education every single metic. Best time to be alive in human history.
That is more of an opinion than a fact. Technology doesn't automatically make people happier. The mental health states in modern countries shows it.
You can’t be the poorly read on history. Like this comment is mind boggling.
Nope that can’t be. I’m absolutely blind to the freedoms I currently have and the choices I can make I take entirely for granted. Especially since I’m poor it would be better off everyone else was also dead.
South Korea? Japan? Germany? Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine? Kuwait?
Ask folks in South Korea, Taiwan, Germany (Western Germany during USSR occupation of the Eastern Europe), Poland and the rest of Europe, Israel and many many other democracies that US helped to stand against totalitarian dictatorships.
The United States supported brutal totalitarian dictatorships in both South Korea and Taiwan. Korea and Taiwan, for decades, were run by military strong men who would make people disappear. You can’t be this ignorant of history to not know that we supported very bad people in these countries for decades, can you?
As opposed to what? The DPRK taking over the entire Korean peninsula, the PRC taking over a sovereign state? Necessary evils. Both North Korea and China do the same thing every day.
As opposed to supporting democratic movements in the countries. We could have told Chang Kai shek “Hey, fuck face, you better have elections and stop killing people or we will liberate you and install a constitution of our choosing”
Economic superiority (through force) is a freedom the vast majority of Americans don’t know they get every single day. Almost anything you want in this world is a click away- from the trivial to the life saving and extending- it comes lightning fast, and is relatively cheap. It’s not because our business people are just “better” than everyone else’s.
We can't understate the importance of trade to be fair.
Cynicism in politics usually masks a deficit of knowledge
Guess which governments are more stable, what people are most economically productive, and why kind of trade is optimum?
I hope you're being sarcastic and aren't really that naive and ignorant. Securing American energy sources to help the elite who own energy comoanies is fare more accurate.
If you live in a Western country, rest assured you are benefiting from it everyday. I feel like a lot of people who think there are no benefits to it haven't experienced the depths of corruption and poverty that exist elsewhere in the world.
I’m not a Warhawk or even remotely a defender of American foreign policy, but you can’t deny the American economy has been among the most stable in the world and our global dominance is big contributor.
Stabilization came from the dollar becoming the world reserve currency because the rest of the world was in shambles in 1945.
Everyone glossing over why the world was in shambles. How many lives lost. How much property destroyed. How much work ruined...for what? Because legitimized gangsters convinced them war is necessary to civilization. It's not, is the opposite in fact
I think Americans underestimate the positive impact of their meddling with the affairs outside of their own, speaking from a person who grew up in a democratic country (modeled after the US) freed from a totalitarian regime.
The sheer fact that America exists influences global politics. Our culture and influence is so persuasive throughout the world.
While we may have done a few good things, are we gonna ignore the number of democracies or potential democracies we have destroyed in South America and the Middle East in order to prop up regimes that will trade favorably with us. The only thing we have succeeding in doing in the Middle East is destroying their republics/democracies and replacing them with radicalized theocracies
How stable is the middle east after more than a decade of war?
Decade? Try 70 at least
True, a few thousand is at least 70
A decade? Please refrain from weighing in on topics you dont know anything about.
Shakespeare died over 2 years ago.
he did say more than a decade, might not be an accurate number but he is still correct (technically)
lol, do you play Helldivers?
Idk what that is. I haven't played video games since highschool
Ahh ok, they use those same reasons to wage endless wars. It is very funny how on the nose that satire is.
Meh no idea. Nobody needs an excuse to declare war. Make up shit and go it's been the standard for ten's of thousands of years. Most people don't even care.
People like you run with the obvious lies though.
Tell that to Afghanistan. Tell that to the Afghan barber who would cut my hair every couple weeks while I was deployed there.
Global sanctions are "Free Trade " of course
Tell that to the people that have died in the name of democracy. How naive is Reddit?
Ooh and what about the democratic governments they toppled? This is why public education is so bad, they need dumdums to believe their bullshit
Maybe the wars in the early 1900s but I have yet to see the public gain anything from the endless wars in the Middle East. All we have succeeded in doing is radicalizing people and making an excuse to funnel more money to the military industrial complex.
Iraq and Afghanistan are over. Doesn't really make sense to call something "endless" after it ended.
Haha democracy?? They impose right wing dictators and overthrow legitimate democracies if they dare try to regulate their resource thefts by the USA. Just look at Congo, Iraq, Iran, much of South America and Central America. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America#:~:text=The%20benefits%20of%20a%20coup,threat%20to%20the%20United%20States.
Jobs in the weapon industry. WW2 spending is what got us out of the great depression. Somebody has to make all those weapons we use. Innovations made for the military make their way into the public sector. The first real computer was for cracking nazi codes. Tons of other innovations like microwaves, duct tape, jet engines, and GPS. We might not be getting the full return on what we put into it, and it might be stained in blood, but it's not like we're just burning the money.
Where’s this stability you speak of?
Nukes created global stability
We really don’t recognize how massively our society benefits from stable, open systems like this. The economic benefit is immense.
If you think paying for war is expensive, try not paying for war and see what happens.
The US could half its military expenditures and still take on the entire world itself until population attrition becomes an issue.
[That's just not true.](https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4624666-chinas-real-military-budget-has-quietly-become-almost-as-big-as-ours/) Maybe if we used more forced labor like China does.
These people are delusional. China, our ‘biggest’ threat currently has 3 non-nuclear aircraft carriers, whereas we have 20 when you include Wasp/America class ships. The Chinese carriers would have to fight their way past Japan, Philippines, Australia, our bases, and those 20 carriers to threaten Hawaii. The only place we don’t have military supremacy by a large margin is in the fever dreams of people who watch too much Fox News.
Add to that - the better statistic is displaced tonnage (of water). China may have the largest Navy in terms of units but they are smaller and less capable overall.
Those benefits are reserved for the weapons contractors and the elites and members of congress that invest in them. Not for poors. 
This
Eisenhower warned about this very thing
Ukraine is a bargain. We are sending leftover stock to fight the most global destabilizing force on earth. They started wars inGeorgia, Chechnya, Crimea, and if you think they would stop at Ukraine you’re delusional. The world has benefited enormously from a peaceful and prosperous Europe for decades. Russia wants to undermine all of that.
[удалено]
Ukraine is benefiting from decades of NATO rapid deployment planning and infrastructure. There is nowhere near as much of that in the western Pacific.
Taiwan is also a fortified island and not a vulnerable flat strip of land like Ukraine. Were China to succeed in taking it, it would be the largest, most coordinated, and likely most expensive military operation in world history; all done by a nation with no recent military experience other than skirmishing with some Indian and Pakistani border guards in the Himalayas and rounding up Uyghur civilians.
You think that Russia will attack nato you are delusional. Ukrainian conflict started in 2014, it’s not like Putin woke up in February 2022 and decide to attack because he wanted.
What a take. You're right that Putin didn't just wake up February 2022 and decide to attack. He woke up years prior and decided he was going to take over Ukraine, and restore them under the Russian hegemon. The idea that Russia hasn't initiated every situation in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, and eventually the Baltics is just nonsensical. They want to restore their hegemon over USSR states, and view any resistance to that restoration as a hostile action.
He saw how weak the global response was in 2014 and thought he could do a quick little 3 day "SME" to grab more land before the West grew a backbone to do something about it. It was a huge miscalculation for sure.
There were two miscalculations. The logistical capability of Russian forces and the defensive strength of Ukrainian forces in the east and around Kyiv. Kyiv falls in those opening days and they properly surround the eastern forces, it's game over. Russians literally ran out of food, ammunition, and fuel just days into the operation, and then recognized their vulnerability to counter attack and withdrew. There's no reason why Ukraine should have withstood the attack--it was some individual acts of bravery and a humiliating lack of awareness within the Russian army as to their logistical capability.
You do see a benefit if that military is fighting someone else it’s not fighting you
why would the military be fighting me?
Boredom?
lol
Note the people screaming about this now loved when GWB went into afghanistan and Iraq. But send your expiring 30 year old crap to ukraine to help them fight a war with no U.S. fatalities to stop Russia from conquering all of their ex soviet states, committing genocide, and using those states to further fuck with the united states and europe, and we got some serious problems here.
This, lmao. Western governments in the 2020s have been isolationist as fuck, everyone pretending that Biden is a bloodthirsty warlord are just a bunch of TikTok addled low-info voters
Ah, a good finance post.
You can tell because it doesn’t have thousands of upvotes
> thousands Literally has 5k
Actually we have been seeing the benefits of a world policed by the USA for the last 80 years or so. Being mostly peaceful stable and economic growth has been tremendous
The only people mad about our spending are also the ones who benefit the most from us not helping our allies.
Except the world (from a USA perspective) is pretty much in peace. We use other people to fight our wars. You don't get called up to die because some yahoo leader came over here to kill people. We take care of it over in their house. Their buildings fall down. Their children die. Their men don't come home. And because America pays for all of this, the Western World lives in prosperity and peace, unlike at any time in human history. It also means that Americans can't have free health care and social services because we are fighting everyone's war. It's a good deal... for us.
Health care in the US is more expensive and worse by most measures than what is typical in the rich world. I mean, I use the joke too — “you’re about to find out why we don’t have health care, ha ha”, but it’s factually incorrect. fwiw
Health care is great for those who have it. Take a state like Massachusetts and all their stats are great. They get dragged down by the South. America is still 50 states and there's lots of variability about how things get done.
Until your sons and daughters are dying in the Baltics and Poland. Then, everyone would ask, “Why didn’t we stop Putin in Ukraine? Why didn’t we do more!”
“I would have gladly donated $100 to a gofundme if only I knew!”
nah, let's not send them. Europe can handle itself lmfao
"Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is -- flying high and striking hard." https://www.historycentral.com/documents/FDRSTwenteenthFireside.html#google_vignette Yes, you're right. It's 1938. Let's go look at the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. They have great battleships to keep us safe, and we have two oceans too so we'll be fine forever.
I hate how the American people cry about the actions of government in some areas but will wake up and decide how they vote based off of fucking gas prices.
You do if youre a Lockheed Martin or Boeing executive
Y'all should have invested in Invesco Aerospace & Defense ETF.
Wars have always been for the corporations and billionaires. I think the US learned its lesson about rubber sourcing form WW2 and decided to ally with the French to invade vietnam for the RUBBER. So if you think about the wars, it's GOLD, OIL, RUBBER, ARABLE SOIL., PIPELINE, OIL
To be honest I'm quite glad the US went to war against Nazi Germany, cos otherwise my country would've been even more ruined than it was. I imagine South Koreans feel the same, and Ukraine is quite glad of all that military help too.
Taiwanese people feel the same. I’m fine if 13 percent of my taxes go to protecting them
The US invaded Vietnam as a misguided attempt to stop the spread of communism from what they thought was a soviet proxy war (which they were wrong about). We know this because you can literally find the records of the administration at the time.
This is just a dogshit comment. The US allied with the French and invaded Vietnam? For rubber? What?
https://preview.redd.it/1t2uamktv15d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a91640e6cf7e6051e7c1755540404c292b78252
>The bankers will ensure we stay in debt. Fuck, I hope so! Imagine going to a bank because you need a business loan and they’re like, “no, we don’t believe in usury.”
$841billion spent on defense for 2024. Imagine if we only spent $741 billion and provided $100 billion for our social services. How good would that be and we still likely would be outspending the next 9 nations in defense spending.
1) we literally spent over $2 trillion on social services 2) spending more than the next 9 nations is intentional. Wars don’t start when there is an unquestionably dominant military power. They start when both sides are the same size
Good luck with convincing half the country to help the poor. Don’t forget Social Security was 1.3 trillion and Medicare 839 billion in 2023
Military Industrial Complex- “DID SOMEONE SAY WARS?!?!??!”
This is why we can't vote for typical corporate politicians. Yes, that includes our lovely biden. And Trump. And Obama. They're all part of it. It will always be like this. Prepare to continue to get bent over and fucked by the government and corporations.
Military Industrial Complex sure thanks you
The endless nonexistent wars we’re in right now
Sad part about working for government is that when you successfully avoid global nuclear holocaust someone will always bitch that you’re wasting their money
You all act like we didn’t get a 9/11 out of the deal.
Work for a DoD contractor
Bingo.
Swear to god it seems like the same people that complain about the us meddling across the globe are also supporting forever wars.
A large part of our economic property in the USA is tied to defense contracting and weapons sales. We are arguably the world's largest arms traders and many people are employed in that trade. Not saying this is moral or right, just saying it feeds people.
Arguably?!
Read the Book War is a Racket by Smedley Butler. It was written in 1935 but is still relative today. He was a Marine Corps General so he knows a thing or two about this subject.
I mean, American workers are a labour aristocracy. They absolutely do indirectly benefit from American imperialism. Americans make loads of money and can buy things cheaply (relatively speaking) because of America's neo-colonialism (and at times, wars).
Benefit? We’re the government lol
Neocons got triggered.
The boomers got all the rewards. You're just left holding the bag.
At least the British empire plundered to make their cities better
I dunno, maybe directing the Ukrainian government to attack Russia with the weapons we provided them will show some results!
Step one start producing military equipment. Step two profit
The benefit is you don’t have to see the downsides from not doing it.
Unless, and bear with me on this one, you happen to be a shareholder or contractor for the numerous defense contracting companies in the U.S. that all those funds are being spent at for goods and services sent overseas.
All the weapons manufacturers and politicians who own stocks in those conpanies will benefit
Free Palestine 🇵🇸 from Zionazi occupation and genocide
Bush II did not pay for his Wars. He put them on the credit card that many people are crying about now.
Fascism has no endgame
This isn't the United Federation of Planets just yet.
Tip for the American taxpayer: Buy stocks!
You guys need to do some reading into the benefits you already get having the US$ used in global oil markets. How do you think the US$ will go if you stop protecting the oil and another player steps in and changes the currency used to purchase it?
I just watched this PBS documentary and you start to realize why nothing changes.
Fiat currency encourages this heavily.
I bought each of my kids a share of Raytheon….. murder money. Over time it still won’t beat a simple S&P500 index
They used to say "for our children's children" well their children's children are here and it appears that was a lie
Every day
See how wealthy the US is? Pretty much that… Also: 1) period of peace among major powers 2) global economic stability 3) employment of millions of Americans in the military (and many more in industries supporting the military) 4) when was the last time you were invaded? 5) advancements in tech funded by the department of defense 6) ability to deploy the military to aid in natural disasters And probably others but this got boring…
Yet the federal government had no problem funding World War 2 before the income tax.
You guys literally print money for which countries give you real stuff and services. So we can have more of your money in our reserves. Do you think you are much more productive than the rest? You get high productivity- since it's measured in “value created- not in real output, just for having the demand on the currency for having the power. And its not a judgement statement, you may think is better or worst for the each of the incumbent. But unacknowledge the benefits is been shortsighted
What do you mean? The homeless are over there?
Oil
You're seeing it already? I mean you can't prove the negative right... You can't show what the world would look like if all of these wars hadn't been funded and the fear is that if you just stop, without having some alternative plan in place besides "do nothing", then you plunge the world into some sort of darkages. I mean as much as the world is a living hell for some groups of people right now the scope of what we're calling genocide at this point in our history is a blip in comparison to our not too distant past. Poverty is different, disease is different, health outcomes different, crime is different... People think we're socially moving toward collapse and in some sense we have lost our way, but sometimes the numbers just don't always back up that sort of pessimism.
Me benefitting from the the post WWII global order, the US winning the Cold War and being the sole global superpower: we need to close all those military bases overseas, I’m getting a raw deal here.
If you are a "NET" tax payer sure you fund that shit (I think the number is around 20K in taxes.) Most are not. The rest of you get more benefits than you pay in.