I'm almost inclined to agree but I think that would be optimistic. The U.S got a lot of collateral damage to itself and that region for $2T. That $2T fed and grew a now hopelessly bloated war-hawk adjacent bureaucracy that continues to weigh the country down and waste a significant portion of the very sizable lower to middle-class tax payments, not to mention stoke nativist fears and increased police militarization domestically and an ever-present domestic surveillance apparatus, which can't even keep its own intel safe.
Afghanistan is another step in a long line of post WWII follies that stretches back to Vietnam and earlier. What a tremendous waste of resources.
Something that we did get was better positioning to launch intelligence operations in Iran. Afghanistan and Iran share a considerable border. It would presume that if the United States felt Iran was a threat, building some type of forward intelligence operation Afghanistan might be beneficial.
The problem is we want the Iranian people to stand up to the Mullahs, but if we press too much, they are a very, very nationalist people and will side with the Mulahs when push comes to shove for them.
That's way too much nuance and understanding of the local setiment for Tom Clancy Strategists (or real generals, judging from the WaPo article today) to grasp.
the US government, the people who are nervous about Iran obtaining nuclear arms capability, the people who think Iran purposefully destabilizes the whole region, the people who don't like the fact Iran supports Russian proxy wars and finance more terrorism in the region and abroad then an other Middle Eastern country??
You can make this claim how? Do you have intelligence that supports they are not actively undermining the US and that their capabilities are of no concern? I severely doubt it.
Wait a minute, this does not sound as romantic as the "protecting our freedom" that gets thrown around whenever army justification is brought up! Are you telling me we've been collectively thanking numerous people for their effort to establish "better positioning to launch intelligence operations"?! /S
On a more serious note, the only country with proven history of attacks on U.S. soil is Saudi Arabia and U.S. officials sure seem in bed with its rulers. So honestly, all this Iran crap is nothing but that; an utter load of crap.
To keep the peace the western coalitions have to pick someone. And who's been the better ally for peace, Saudi or Iran? It's fine to say Saudi is corrupt and not a good actor, but stepping away from them would mean widespread war in the ME.
Afghanistan had to be dealt with to avoid having a stateless state where actors like OBL could operate with impunity. US presence there is a thorn in the side of Iran, Russia, China, India and Pakistan.
It sucks to be an Afghan, sandwiched between these sparring great powers.
Realpolitik. Since we enforce the standards of realpolitik, we should accept that Iran and North Korea will develop nukes.
A real threat is the only way America listens. Unfortunate but America could've been the Dark knight. Instead, we chose to destroy lives, perpetuating the cycle of hatred forever.
They got to feed their industrial machine. That money re-entered the American and Global economies in ways that non-warfare economies could never provide.
It was never about making the country peaceful or stopping al qaeda (though I’m sure there were realpolitik reasons, such as staving off Russian influence).
Came here to say exactly this.
Trying to quantify any positive effects on the country itself is completely pointless. It was never about helping Afghans.
I think both Bush and Obama administration had the intention to destroy terrorists. Otherwise why they kill Bean Ladden? The real problem is they along with all Western society make the situation worse by misunderstanding the human nature just like most doctors treat cancer by cutting a tumor without knowing more cancer will grow faster.
Western countries collectively do the same thing again and again in Iraq, Libya, Syria (these are obvious list) and ....
Raytheon, etc.. charge a $90MM for a complex project. They then pay the salaries of 100 people for 3 years for a total cost of $30MM. Where did the other $60M go? Raytheon top executives.
To Recap: that $90MM mostly came from the 99% and 60% of it is now permanently in the hands of the 1%. We definitely don't have a modern day Robin Hood.
You have the salary of the people who do the work. Then the salary of the people who do the oversight, management, accounting, project management, training, compliance etc.
So your $30MM in costs + $60MM in overhead (ie 200% which is sadly typical) and you are not even counting the %7 profit that can be baked in on top of the overhead numbers.
Exactly, top management. With 100 engineers, that's probably going to max out at about 20 managers. The other categories you mentioned doesn't take more than one or two people per category. That still doesn't account for 60% - (7% Profit) for about 25 people.
> And we shouldn't. Stealing from the rich is still stealing.
I was speaking of "modern day Robin Hood" as a concept. It is implemented via taxes, but this whole example shows how flawed it is. Also who are you? the Robin Hood story characterizes Robin Hood as the hero because the rich were taking money in bad and terrorizing ways. If you want to take my robin hood concept literally, then take my example of the rich implementing programs and policies as literally terrorizing too.
"The final total is unknown, but experts project another trillion dollars in costs over the next 40 years as wounded and disabled veterans age and need more services."
Add to this the unquantifiable lost opportunity from dead civilians, dead soldiers...
Actuarially speaking, the 2,372 American deaths in Afghanistan at 7 million per individual roughly cost about $17 billion dollars. A drop in the bucket compared to $3 trillion dollars.
It's hard to see dollar figures and realize we are watching the productive lives of half a million people being spent so easily. Then again, we don't know the economic benefits we gained from the Afghanistan war so it's hard to balance the sheet.
Maybe it netted us some benefit with regards to world trade we aren't seeing? Or maybe it only hurt us in that regard and $3 trillion is just the beginning?
Then again this is just economics without considering the ethics of such "peacekeeping missions".
That there is no obvious gain for the country at large means the gain is either so subtle as to be imperceptible, or that the people who gained don't want it known that they did.
The economic cost in lives for Afghanistan is either incredibly high, or incredibly low, depending on how you look at it. Afghanistan is ridiculously poor. We spent $3 trillion dollars, invading a country that has a GDP of $2 billion. Life is cheap in such countries, both economically and figuratively. Pre war Afghanistan had a pre-war per capita GDP of $112 or about $10,000 lifetime earnings per person. At 250,000 Afghan lives lost this is about $2.5 billion in lost productive effort by a mixture of insurgents and civilians who are hard to separate out.
Post war Afghanistan has a Per Capita GDP of $600. Economically speaking Afghanistan is about 5 times better off. Whether that means they are actually better off is a matter of opinion. Is that worth the lives of a quarter million of your citizens? Is it better to be an independent but poor country? Or to be a country dependent on aid from a richer nation that invaded you?
In my opinion, the US does more to prevent civilian deaths than any other superpower. The evidence is in the fact that an insurgency, using civilians as cover for their operations, and engaging in covert warfare are being routinely defeated by American forces. Of the people killed, only about 3.8% are non-combatants. I don't know how accurate that reporting is, but if true that is amazing. To compare, World War II saw something closer to a ratio of 2:1 civilian to soldier deaths.
I fully agree with your emphasis about the deaths of non-Americans in the Afghanistan civil war with the Taliban. The US should never have attempted nation-building there, as it was guaranteed to fail (short of a 40-50 year occupation at hyper scale, a million soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars per year in cost; even that might not have been enough).
The problem is, there is something dramatically worse than the US presence in Afghanistan and it's waiting in the wings. What do you think will happen to the people of Afghanistan when the Taliban regain control after the US leaves?
The civilian deaths in Afghanistan are almost exclusively the result of the US attempting to keep the Taliban at bay, trying to keep them from de facto enslaving the entire population under an extreme theocracy and revoking all human rights.
There are few groups more draconian, backwards, or more oppressive on this planet than the Taliban. They will rule Afganistan again in the near future, they'll reclaim all of the country rapidly. The only thing holding them back from mass-torturing the entire country again has been the US. There is nobody else willing to risk so much to try to stop the Taliban, nobody else will lift a finger to do anything about it as the US leaves.
Calculating economic costs should be done with respect to each nation. I would estimate Afghanistan suffered about $2.5 billion in losses from deaths of civilians and insurgents. However their GDP increased by 5x covering those losses in a month or two. From an economic standpoint losing the war was the best thing to happen to Afghanistan. From the perspective of its citizens and culture though I think you would have to ask them.
> Then again, we don't know the economic benefits we gained from the Afghanistan war so it's hard to balance the sheet.
Oh, but we do. All the 5000 sq ft McMansion houses in and around the DC area (NoVA & Potomac mostly), built and owned by employees of defense contractors, and the inheritance that their kids will get in a few decades.
And some trickle down of course, in areas where those people choose to spend their money, restaurants and hotels.
bullshit jobs (but necessary jobs)! every $100 toilet lid or $100K grenade launcher purchased by the military trickles down to hundreds of jobs that otherwise would not exist.
American capitalism is perhaps the most "socialist" society in the world.
Imagine the pandemonium and social unrest that would happen if we wiped out half of the economy that produces weaponry. Literally there would be nothing to do for half of the population.
It is the irony of being the world most efficient and productive society that it has to come with a built-in and pre-approved waste that acts as a channel to fund otherwise non-existing jobs. The genius is packaging this waste as "defense"
Edit: I am amused by the number of downvotes on the post. Looks like the HN crowd hates the idea that military spending provides actual jobs.
> Imagine the pandemonium and social unrest that would happen if we wiped out half of the economy that produces weaponry.
Take look no further than what has happened to USSR. Double digit of USSR economy was military economy, with most of it being so irrational, unreasonable and wasteful that it would've made F35 program a model of prudence and cadence in comparison.
In my hometown we have a patrol boat that did cost the exchequer 160 million Union's roubles (almost $220M) just because it had a "super secret laser pointer" (12081 Aquilon) installed to blind enemy sensors. In real life, it can barely pop air baloons a kilometre away.
I don't understand the downvotes, this comment is quite on point. Both the British and the Soviet ended up fighting in Afghanistan and regretting it. It's an historical fact, regardless of what you think of the US invasion.
> $30 billion on other reconstruction programs
> Much of that money was lost to corruption and failed projects.
Back in HS we had a local veteran/father come in to our classroom to talk about things. What stuck with me the most was his experience with distributing aid funds to Afghan citizens. Apparently there was 0 accountability in this process: he would pick up a package of raw cash, take it to a school/hospital/whatever, hand it to some "in charge" person, and walk away. No contract, progress report requirement, or anything. Further, the recipient didn't even need to sign for the money, because of this he felt concerned that US Govt. might some day come after him on suspect of money mishandling, so he took pictures of him handing the money over to each person. He showed us the photos, but says the Govt. has never requested them, or any other confirmation that he didn't just pocket it all.
I have a vivid memory of a BBC report where they reported on the scale of the operation for moving cash into Iraq: hundreds and hundreds of pallets of $100 bills - $12 billion in total.
Money the old government payed us for airplane parts we didn't deliver to the new government, plus interest, divided by around 10 because we had leverage. Also, (2016).
In return, we got hostages on planes. Was it ransom disguised as a legally required transaction? Maybe. Was it effective? Iran did what we were asking in return, so...
If the government is correcting an error for $500 on your taxes, its almost certainly doing that using an automated system with very little human-time-per-case for oversight. This is possible because of developed-world infrastructure -- all relevant numbers are digitized and entered into computers, all people are documented and contactable, etc. -- which is missing in Afghanistan, so it's not super surprising.
Edit: Woah, HN, you have truly gone crazy. My comment is an explanation for why accountability is so much harder in Afghanistan than the developed world. It is not a general defense all US tax-collection procedures, and it is especially not a place for you to vent frustration about how the lack of pre-filled-out returns in the US benefits tax software makers.
They have the software, but they only have some of the numbers.
Your tax return includes all those that might not be reported.
For example of you are doing small non w2 jobs on the side that you haven't received a 1099 for, the IRS had no way of knowing about those without an audit.
I think this was highly dependent on a) where you were in-country and b) when you were there. There were some controls put in place, and a lot of it came from the State Department (?), by the time I left. Asking for “progress reports” would’ve been a completely futile endeavor though. It’s hard to describe ... they just don’t keep records, and the ones they kept were usually fake or highly “influenced”. I remember one “contract” we gave out to some locals for building culverts in roads with drainage problems (Afghanistan is pretty mountainous in places, so only dirt roads exist and the soil isn’t that great). They built a couple and then just disappeared. When we asked some folks about where they went we’d get blank stares, like they didn’t know who we were talking about.
- We went after the Taliban and failed to extinguish its power and reach.
- We attempted to equip and train afghan forces to defend and maintain peace in their own country and failed. I have several family members who have done numerous tours in the Middle East and they've referred to the Afghan "trainees" as "clowns" who don't care at all about what they've been tasked with doing. All they care about is getting a few extra dollars to give to their family.
- We spent a ton of money of economic development but most of it was siphoned off because of corruption.
- We spent a ton of money of additional reconstruction programs but most of that money was wasted because of poor planning and corruption.
- And we spent a few trillions taking care of the vets who fought in the war. Not sure why this on the list, since you would think we should take care of our veterans regardless of what conflict they fought in.
Despite all this money. . .
Still, life has improved, particularly in the country’s cities, where opportunities for education have grown. Many more girls are now in school. And democratic institutions have been built — although they are shaky at best.
To conclude, it would seem the Afghan people are just fine living under an oppressive regime in the Taliban, delight in taking the US money and siphon it off to their tribal leaders or families who are in positions of power and have no desire to be free or to even fight for their own freedom. The middle east has become a bottomless money pit and its time we get out and let these people fight their own wars and secure their own freedom on their own.
In 2004 and 2008, our involvement in and withdrawal from Middle Eastern wars was a divisive political campaign issue that decided the vote for some significant number of voters. Today we are still militarily involved in the same countries (and then some) and neither politicians nor voters seem to even care enough to report on. The time to leave the Middle East was well over a decade ago but no one in the mainstream challenges the state of engaging in perpetual military aggression.
>- And we spent a few trillions taking care of the vets who fought in the war. Not sure why this on the list, since you would think we should take care of our veterans regardless of what conflict they fought in.
No, not exactly: in an alternate timeline where we never invaded Afghanistan, the actual costs of taking care of vets would be much, much lower. We wouldn't have had nearly as many vets in the first place (recruiting goes way up when there's a conflict), plus the actual costs to take care of them go way up with a conflict because of all the damage they suffer (injuries, PTSD, etc.). Sure, we should take care of our vets, but the cost to do this is a small fraction when there was active conflict. The costs of taking care of our vets who served in the 1980s, for instance, is probably relatively puny, and the costs for taking care of our vets who served in the late 1990s is probably next to nothing.
>> taking care of our vets who served in the late 1990s is probably next to nothing.
No, not really. Have you forgotten about the Gulf War Illness?
In the 25 years since Desert Storm, about 250,000 of the almost 700,000 involved in the Gulf War 1 theater have suffered from some version of the complex of symptoms now called Gulf War Illness. This illness was discussed in a recent symposium co-hosted by the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University Medical Center.
While Desert Storm battle casualties were light, military personnel were exposed to various chemical and biological agents. These included Pyridostigmine Bromide, to prevent the effects of nerve gases which had been used previously by Iraq; organophosphate pesticides (such as DEET) which were embedded in clothing; particulate airborne matter from oil fires; and, possibly sarin exposure from a plume arising from an Iraqi munitions depot at Khamasiyah.
There's also new studies claiming Gulf War vets are aging faster as well:
“Gulf War veterans are showing accelerated aging patterns resulting in more and earlier chronic medical conditions than the general population of civilians,” says study senior author Kimberly Sullivan, research assistant professor of environmental health. “There is precedent for this type of toxicant-induced disorder in veterans from other wars. For instance, many Vietnam veterans developed chronic conditions of high blood pressure, diabetes, and many types of cancers that were related to exposure to Agent Orange.”
>No, not really. Have you forgotten about the Gulf War Illness?
No, I didn't forget, but I disagree that it cost much to deal with. As I remember, the VA just completely ignored it, so it probably didn't cost the taxpayer much at all. Sure, it was terrible for the vets who suffered with it, but that's a different matter.
Am I not mistaken in saying that the USA has gotten the new afghan government to pay all the war costs in the form of issuing sovereign bonds?
Those bonds may stay outstanding for decades or even centuries, but if afghanistan is ever successful in the future, they will end up paying for the whole war plus interest.
It sounds very unlikely to me that the Afghan government would be able and willing to borrow that much money to pay the US. But perhaps you have a source for your claim?
Do you have a source for that claim? Because that's so absurd I think it must've come from one of Trump's 3 AM tweets. Afghanistan is never going to have $2T to give to the United States, and even if they did, they would rather just default on the bonds instead.
I'm not sure. The strategy to contain Iran on both sides (Iraq and Afghanistan) has clearly failed.
So no one really won in the end. Americans sacrificed trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, and the main beneficiary did not actually benefit that much.
They have a $400b economy, trillions in wealth, and are set to become one of the 10 or 15 most affluent nations in world history. Their GDP per capita has gone from $20k in 2005 to $43k today (roughly passing Britain) and will soon surpass Canada, Germany, France etc. on its way to $60k in the next dozen years. The development approach they've been running is working extremely well (combined with a small population). If we were speaking only in economic terms, you'd need $10+ trillion to do it.
Now add on to that that the Israelis specifically want to be there for serious religious reasons and there is no way they're ever leaving willingly.
Baja Mexico would be a more logical relocation btw, assuming Mexico would sell the territory for some very large price.
Hey, I don’t think anyone was invading Afghanistan on behalf of Israel, nor would anyone consider Afghanistan a significant security risk to Israel. This is a poor read of the situation
I hear your point. I agree we have been completely unsuccessful in Afghanistan. My point is that the commenter is naive in making this about Israel. American support for invading after 9/11 was foolish, but it was also extremely high. We did not invade or occupy to support Israeli security interests, we did it in support of our own and we were wrong.
The destruction of the middle east is an Israeli agenda. Thinking that the US government and its media apparatus gave us all the facts of 9/11 is a poor read of the situation. The official story is a farce. The entire explanation is absurd.
I think there is strong contrary evidence for this claim. Please don’t think I’m shilling for Likud when I share it, I’m also very opposed to US foreign adventurism.
Invading Iraq was broadly popular among Americans with strong interests in Israeli security, but it was broadly unpopular in Israel’s military establishment. The closest thing to the Israeli military establishment’s consensus view was that invading and occupying Iraq was a poor choice for their own security. Given that, I cannot see why they would agitate for it. I also cannot see how, since the US decision processes that lead to Iraq 2, which were farcical, are well documented and do not suggest that Israel agitated for the invasion and occupation.
There are plenty of things to be mad at the Israeli government for. This is not one of them.
Knowing a modern war costs $2T means there are probably a lot more effective ways to take out bad leaders (bribes anyone?). What if the future of war was simply monetary leverage - no more boots on the ground.
For example: Want to take out Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada? Offer $40MM for the head. Has to be literally turned in.
Great, now you've handed $40 million to a bloodthirsty follower and new head of the organization. There's a reason we sent in our own troops to get Osama bin Laden.
OR That no one will trust and now the new leader is going to be double watching his own back. The corruption will dismantle the organization and lead to infighting and dissolution.
Osama Bin Laden survived for years with a $20M bounty on information leading to his death or arrest, which presumably was also payable to his freelance assassin.
He was ultimately killed by US soldiers themselves.
No idea if any informants claimed the bounty. Does anyone know this?
It's not like the fedgov spent that entire $2 trillion over there. Most of that got spent into the military-industrial complex, right here at home.
The US got a jobs program for veterans, and a graft trough for the politically well-connected, operating "Beltway Baron" companies in the DC Metro, and the cities just outside of all military bases in the continental US.
If it wasn't justified by suppressing support for terrorism in Afghanistan, it would have been justified by quashing drug smuggling by rebel factions in South America, or by protecting naval shipping routes near the Philippines, or some other pretext to keep pumping the tax money to the same old people.
Not accomplishing the mission as publicly stated is a feature, not a bug, because it obviates the necessity to create some new problem that needs to be fixed with military force.
I see astronomical figures like $2T and I wonder how anyone can seriously entertain the argument that the US cannot afford free health care for all of its citizens.
I think you're missing my point. The money still comes from taxes, which come from taxpayers, no matter what. Saying that the government can afford it is saying that we can afford it. The government doesn't have any money except ours.
I'm not saying it doesn't. The grandparent's point was that the gov could spend the some of the $T it spends on the military on healthcare. My point is the gov is much more likely to fund healthcare through new taxes than to spend less on the military.
We have a tremendous appetite for risk when it comes to intervention. And we're extremely caution and austere when it comes to "investing" in our own citizenry.
It's also amusing how we become extremely obsessed with who "deserves" government money, establishing kafkaesque means-testing protocols, but have little issue handing out billions of taxpayer money to non-citizens in foreign countries.
You can literally only make additive changes to social programs if you don't want to make people mad. Any change perceived as subtraction will make people scream and you will be made out as a tyrant grinding the faces of the poor even if you are trying to simplify, consolidate, make more efficient, close loopholes, etc.; it doesn't matter. Just look at France.
We've successfully made numerous cuts to social programs with no negative consequence. Like, what was the political cost of 1990s welfare reform? Well, President Clinton was re-elected by a landslide and the Republicans who helped champion the bill won control of the House.
Military spending is less than a quarter of the budget. Medicare/caid is 55% more than the defense budget, to say nothing of social security or other domestic spending. These may not be the right allocations, but domestic spending is hardly "austere".
Not quite. The military budget itself is really just a base operating budget. Developments towards research, weapon systems, and even wars themselves can and are funded separately.
To be fair, the Republicans elected the one candidate that seemed the most opposed to handouts to foreign governments. There are a lot of Rs that don't like those either.
One-off pallets of cash stories aside, most of these "re-building programs" are contracts that go out to US corporations (e.g., Bechtel, Halliburton, etc.) -- and are essentially corporate giveaways or corporate welfare.
Of course we can afford free health care for our citizens in the US -- but our leadership favors corporate welfare over citizen welfare and that is unfortunate. Corporate welfare is also welfare, it just doesnt get evenly distributed across US citizenry. You need to drive around McLean Virginia and see the houses to see the types of places where the money ends up.
On a side note -- many of the giant figures are not cash that we literally give from US coffers, but loans to these countries that come right back to companies in the US. The loans have a side "benefit" in that the loans allow us to dictate affairs overseas via loan covenants we can relax for this or that. If the loan cannot be repaid, only then it comes from US coffers (but the money never really went overseas, it just got re-distributed in the US.)
> Of course we can afford free health care for our citizens in the US -- but our leadership favors corporate welfare over citizen welfare and that is unfortunate.
I think that's dramatically underselling the American voter's role in all of this. Many, many Americans balk at the prospect of raising taxes to pay for universal healthcare. But those same people shrug indifferently to the enormous costs to sustain the US military and the tremendous costs of campaigns such as Afghanistan.
So yes there is a whole segment of American politicians who are working hard to carve out tax cuts for billionaires while having not a care for the millions without healthcare. But I find that a lot of people are actively opposed to the government 'taking over healthcare' or they're scared of the price tag for universal healthcare. They're part of the reason we don't have it.
>I think that's dramatically underselling the American voter's role in all of this. Many, many Americans balk at the prospect of raising taxes to pay for universal healthcare. But those same people shrug indifferently to the enormous costs to sustain the US military and the tremendous costs of campaigns such as Afghanistan.
I think that's dramatically understating these American voters' role in this and their reaction to anything that can be dubbed "socialism". They happily vote for candidates who push for enormous "corporate welfare" to defense contractors, and scream bloody murder if anyone suggests using any public money at all to pay for someone else's healthcare.
American voters are getting exactly what they're voting for.
>They're part of the reason we don't have it.
They are the reason we don't have it.
As I frequently like to remind people, every nation gets the government it deserves.
You and the GP can both be right because, arguably, the voters have been given the "choice" of 2 platforms from the 2 dominant parties that share a common pro war-industrial-complex agenda.
I'm not sure that's really case. I find that few people think much more deeply about policy issues than the headlines and zingers from pundits like Shawn Hannity or Rachel Maddow.
We have a serious information problem, or lack thereof.
If people were truly informed on some of the issues, I can't imagine soany issues would be so divisive.
I think setting up some kind of reporting requirents to divorce opinion and pundits from actual journalistic news would be a start.
A perfect example is the turmoil inside the fox news network right now. If you watch the actual newscasters/journalists you will believe the obvious truth that Trump was ordering funds withheld to get negative press for the Democrats and Bidens from Ukraine. (Whether that rises to impeachment level is up for debate and tangential to my point).
If you watch only the fox news pundits (which are most of the primetime lineup) you will believe that it's all totally made up and even that the impeachment process itself is somehow unconstitutional and some sort of coop. Which is just completely divorced from reality.
This same thing plays out everyday on countless issues on both sides and is being controlled by a small handful of powerful people that are manipulating viewers for their own gain.
How often do voters get a real choice rather than two slightly different sides of the same coin?
I seem to remember multiple presidential primaries in the US where progressive candidates get side-lined within the party as either un-electable (long before actually competing at polling stations) or get kicked out due to technicalities meant to steer watered-down right-centrists into the general election.
I'm not talking about some right-wing conspiracy, I'm talking about basic mechanics of the electoral process that are unfair at the party level, in media, etc.
As one example, I might cite how current candidate Andrew Yang barely gets time to speak at debates while others polling at the same level get 2x or 3x as many minutes to speak.
Another example might be the way Bernie Sanders was all but eliminated by backstage machinations in the Democratic party in 2015/2016. How are voters supposed to vote for true progressive candidates who want to change the system in a major way if they cant even compete on an even playing field
>How often do voters get a real choice rather than two slightly different sides of the same coin?
The fact that voters don't have much choice is their own fault. It's their job to reform the system if they don't like it.
>I seem to remember multiple presidential primaries in the US where progressive candidates get side-lined within the party as either un-electable
Again, this is the voters' fault. If they don't like it, they should do more to change it.
>How are voters supposed to vote for true progressive candidates who want to change the system in a major way if they cant even compete on an even playing field
If the citizens of a country don't like the way the elections are run, it's their job to change it, by whatever means are necessary. That is what it means when I say that every nation has the government it deserves. This applies to every nation (except maybe occupied ones), no matter what kind of government it has. The citizens are the ones who ultimately have the power, so if their government sucks, it's their own fault.
I think for a lot of conservatives, more than the cost, is the philosophical question of whether the Fed Govt should be involved in social welfare programs like healthcare. The original role of the Fed Govt was foreign policy and the economy in a republic of strong states. The country is pretty well split between conservatives and progressives and a one size solution for all 50 states is always going to piss off 50% of the country. Why not look to your state for Healthcare? When a Democrat was in the Whitehouse, Texas talked about secession and now that a Republican is in the whitehouse California was talking the same thing. The thing is why does CA evern care about the whitehouse. It's the 5th largest economy in the world. If it wants healthcare for it's people then go right ahead and leave the rest of us out of it. Massachusetts offered healthcare to it's citizens under Romney before Obamacare and people who were opposed to that in MA were free to cross the border into NH, a libertarian state.
I think for some conservatives it's about the philosophical question of the Fed Gov't should actually be doing. But IIRC most are supportive of Medicare/Medicaid so they're not totally against government run healthcare.
I find that Libertarian leaning people definitely look at the universal healthcare as something that shouldn't be a public good.
Each state could make its own laws and to that point I think some will make some movement on that front if universal healthcare efforts falter.
Ha! States have been eroding local ability to make local efforts (our state minimum wage forbids counties/municipalities from choosing any other); feds have been eroding States rights to choose. All this under a party that pretends to support local small government. Of course they panic when that local small government tries something that they don't like, so they squash it.
Trump is the second US president in a roll that won promissing he would reduce the military actions, with an opposition saying they would do the opposite.
I don't know much important it was, I also don't don't if he or Obama fulfiled the promise to any degree. But it was there.
> One-off pallets of cash stories aside, most of these "re-building programs" are contracts that go out to US corporations (e.g., Bechtel, Halliburton, etc.) -- and are essentially corporate giveaways or corporate welfare.
Not just McLean. Google "wealthiest counties in the US". It's no surprise they're in VA and MD, all suburbs of Washington DC.
Free healthcare does not exist (unless you enslave doctors and nurses). What you want is taxpayer subsidized healthcare, which is certainly on the table.
Yes, most people are in some form. Of course they don't realize it, they just want free and cannot think through the consequences of what they are asking for. Free health care is easy to explain. How do you pay for it isn't, and it gets harder when you have to figure out how much to pay the bureaucrats needed to make it work.
Solving the problem of health care costs getting higher is a hard problem. I haven't seen any solution that accounts for all the external factors. I doubt we even know them.
> Yes, most people are in some form. Of course they don't realize it, they just want free and cannot think through the consequences of what they are asking for.
I see people say this about other people all the time, but I honestly have yet to meet someone who legitimately expects health care to be 'free'. They all realize that it just means paid by taxpayers. Which tax payers? That varies...
I don't believe anyone is suggesting enslaving doctors and nurses, any time, anywhere. (I'll adjust this if you now come back and say you believe medical professionals should be enslaved as a form of national health care.)
The discussion always assumes they will be compensated, and as is pointed out often, the question is how.
That’s over twenty years. So $100B/year. There are 0.3B of us. So that’s $3000 per person per year. That’s about what my employer pays for a BCBS elite HD-HSA PPO for my group of relatively young, affluent, healthy tech workers in Boston.
It doesn’t come close to covering all of it.
There are 3M nurses and 1M doctors in the US. That $100B/yr could pay each $25k in salary, and cover no equipment.
Let’s say we want to pay nurses $150k and doctors $250k, good middle class salaries comparable to tech incomes. You need $700B per year.
You have to think beyond the accounting. Think of the opportunity cost.
Many people stay at their jobs because of healthcare. Period. Either they don't want to lose it, or don't want to lose some aspect of it. How many startups aren't started? How many dreams aren't filled? How much value isn't created?
The 100B/year would be as well as current health spending, not instead of it.
What would the additional costs of universal health care be, and would 100B/year cover it? Currently about 27m Americans do not have health insurance. 100B would yield about $3,700 per person which is probably about enough to do it.
> Let’s say we want to pay nurses $150k and doctors $250k, good middle class salaries comparable to tech incomes.
Regardless of the rest of the logic, those are not middle class salaries. They aren't even middle class household (i.e. 2x earners) incomes in almost all of the country.
Tech salaries are a terrible benchmark for a lot or reasons, but those are well above average tech salaries also.
The US pays more per citizen for healthcare than any
civilized country in the world, and gets poorer outcomes.
There is a LOT of room for lowering your costs and improving your outcomes when you’re ready to redesign it. But yeah, if you just try to duct tape over a crack here, and bolt a new feature on there, nothing seems to work.
The poorer outcomes aren't due to the quality of US healthcare but differences in the people of the US. The US is bigger than most countries so people need to drive more and thus are more likely to get into car accidents. The opioid crisis has caused the US life expectancy to decrease but that has nothing to do with the quality of hospitals. Better hospitals and medicine don't prevent people exercising less, eating more fast food, etc.
$2T over 18 years is $111B/year or about 3% of US yearly healthcare budget. If the US could somehow magically switch to a Swiss style healthcare system, that amount would pay for about 4% of the US yearly healthcare budget.
2T is indeed a big number but its dwarfed by the cost of healthcare. Keep in mind that's over 18 years. We spend more than that every year in the US. Apparently Warren's plan calls for 20.5 trillion in spending over the next decade and that's with some optimistic assumptions on cost reduction.
None of this necessarily means we shouldn't do it. Healthcare is expensive, but certainly many countries do have more of the cost covered by the government, but you can't see a big number and assume that was paid and assume it would pay for healthcare
As a point of reference 2T over 18 years is ~111B/year.
The plan Warren is suggesting which I think would closest fit the definition of "free health care for all" - though not perfectly [1] would be 59T over 10 years or 5.9T/year.
Note also that the way these programs are funded is very different [2]. Things in the "Mandatory" funding category like Social Security and Medicare aren't funded year to year, but are ongoing expenses that you have to change entitlement laws to make changes to, so they are incredibly hard to change.
The Department of Defense is funded out of the "Discretionary" category which can change from year to year and is based on a different process which is not subject to the same laws.
Wow, US gdp is “only” 20T, so at 6T almost a third of the economy would be healthcare. Checking your link it seems the warren campaign is aiming for 5T, which is still a quarter. Already a fifth of the US economy is healthcare and that is absurdly higher than every other country, which typically don’t go over 10% of gdp.
In the UK, the NHS — which some people admittedly consider to be chronically underfunded — was about 7% of GDP [1] in 2018. Norway's is about 10.5% [2] (2016), and increasing by about 2% a year.
A quick Google search seems to indicate it would cost over $3.2T a _year_ to give free medical to everyone. This is from someone (Sanders) that wants to make this happen.
at least i would assume that would stay in the country and circle around our economy. its kinda like we took this 2T and lit it on fire. doesn't seem to have helped anyone
That is a valid point one way, huge multinational corps got paid.. but so did all the soldiers and employees of those corps (that are American). And the medicare budget would also give a huge slice of cash to different massive corps...
So, the difference may not be much... But consider it's the cost of the entire war every single year, that's just insane at any level.
I think the only solution is to lower the actual costs. No where else in the world does it cost so much. Something is fishy...
I bet a significant chunk of the money went into the pockets of well-connected Washington insiders and their friends. People like Paul Manafort who lobby for any dictator who is willing to pay have a lot of influence. Defense companies probably made a lot of money too.
The purpose of he US being in the Middle East was, and still is, to challenge opposing interests in the region. Without the US there they would be looking at more russian/Chinese/Iranian influence which is evident by their expansion into Syria after the US’s departure.
It’s hard to put a price on what that has meant in terms of was it worth the price they paid, but more stability in the region generally would mean more prosperity for Western developed nations simply from having a more stable dollar.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
-Dwight Eisenhower farewell address
I assume we got $2 trillion transferred to Halliburton and associated war companies.
Quite likely, the US got a few billionaires that are now a bit richer at the taxpayers' expense.
US General Smedley Butler explained it in simple terms in "War is a Racket" [1]:
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their income tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? "
Totally agree. And he's talking about WWII, a war the US was actually attacked in and defended itself, not a war purely for profit like Afghanistan. So knowing this, and you don't need to be a genius to understand his argument, why are we still honoring and thanking people for their "service," when their service is just to get a few people rich? Maybe we ought to consider that without the millions who are willing to fight and die to make a few people rich are part of the problem themselves, useful idiots. And maybe we need to respond to their actions in a more genuine way: with contempt and disdain. After all, all of our armed forces are volunteer based so no one is conscripted to kill for profit. The simply choose to. For their own little profit (free tuition, salary, pension, etc.) and for the profit of their billionaire masters. It's about time we stop glorifying war and the people that participate in it voluntarily.
Michael Flynn's 'LESSONS LEARNED RECORD OF INTERVIEW'[1] is some astonishing reading. Yes, that Mike Flynn [2]. You really should read it yourself, but I'll summarize my impressions of it [3].
Flynn essentially makes the point that the total war effort was, start to finish, a chuckle-fuck. He goes into a few specific points and events for him. One event (the New Ansari Bank heist) reads more like a Clive Cussler paperback. Though he is picking out events that support his thesis, the summation he has is that The Beltway and White House have all but forgotten him and his efforts. And those sacrifices that others made, not just for the US, but for Canada, the UK, and Afghanistan proper.
He specifically calls out the culture of 'blowing smoke up your ass' that was the reporting situation on the ground. Time and again, commanders only choose the rosy bit and leave out the mountain of shit. Time and again, new commanders come in, are flabbergasted at reality, and then do the same to their next in line.
Honestly, the tone that I get is one of exhaustion. But, clearly in the RECORD, there is a simmer of hatred for the whole debacle. Personally, I get a whiff of vengeance.
That RECORD was taken at 9am EST on Nov 10 2015.
Exactly one month and two hours later, Dec 10 2015 7pm MSK, Mike Flynn is at dinner sitting directly next to, shoulder to shoulder with, Putin and Gorbachev[4].
Mike is very likely a traitor. But his testimony in the RECORD shows a very long, clear, logical, and sympathetic path towards his decisions.
We should take note here, the Military is becoming frayed, badly so. NFL games and Applebee's discounts aren't making up the difference
This war is intolerable to them. And we are seen as complicit.
[0] Honestly, they are very approachable. Whomever is on their 'data viz' team is doing a great job. Somehow, very boring text documents become exciting.
[3] Reminder, these records are what WP could publish at all and they state that these records are very 'sanitized'. Also, just reading the red highlights is good too. Really, read it.
I don't know what the United States got there but I can tell you I got post-traumatic stress disorder in Afghanistan. Throwing money at the problem was one of the worst things we can do I remember this one time a local Town had just been bought new fire trucks courtesy of the United States government local Taliban stole the trucks filled them with liquid propane and then blew up half our base.
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