Please, not fixing potholes have been around longer than the current Palestinian/Israeli and also a completely stupid reduction of the complexity of this whole fucked up situation.
The idea that there’s anything coherent about Zionist justifications for a modern-day Israel based on thousands-year old scripture is pure and absolute white supremacist and antisemitic hogwash.
We send $5,000,000,000 in outright charity to Israel, not including what our legislators are about to fork over as soon as they get their stock portfolios situated in the best ways to profit from it.
That’s $100,000,000 per state that could be used to fix potholes or help Americans in other ways, but we’re silly geese who 100% support neglecting our own people in favor of war, so we’re getting what we voted for.
I don’t know what in that sentence gives you the confidence to call me a warmonger.
And also, no, it wont really. Unless you redefine “huge difference”. We spend $522B on social/economic assistance programs at the federal level. So a 0.005% 0.5% increase? Hardly a huge difference.
that’s how percentages work lol. if you have 100 usd, 100.5 usd would be a 0.5% increase not a 0.005 percent increase (which you would get by dividing 0.5/100, right?)
Ok, but is this the first time? For as long as I’ve been alive there has been pot holes and there has been discontent in the middle east. So if anyone was wondering, yes, I know america has a failing infrastructure and is waging war across the world. In fact, I believe this is common knowledge.
Perhaps the frustration is exacerbated by the lack of progress relative to the amount of money spent and time since these issues have manifested. It’s also particularly visible in our increasingly globalized and interconnected world.
Well if you really want to get technical about it… No programs or spending are really funded by taxes anyway, the government just says “OK” and the numbers in the bank accounts of the companies implementing said program go up. Taxes funding things is just a myth. Taxes just delete money. So technically, nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void.
Edit: People seem to be down voting because they think this is tinfoil hat BS or something. It’s not. Look up modern monetary theory. Governments with fiat currency don’t need to collect money to pay for things. They just invent and issue more currency. See this video: https://youtu.be/75udjh6hkOs?si=dVpp9V5f96kLDV4-&t=1628
MMT is controversial, and is actively debated with dialogues about its theoretical integrity, the implications of the policy recommendations of its proponents, and the extent to which it is actually divergent from orthodox macroeconomics. MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory and has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists.
i don’t think your comment properly highlights how controversial MMT is. i’m not an economist, but i don’t think it’s fair to use language like “taxes funding things is a myth” and “technically nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void”, when those claims rely on such a controversial theory.
Yes this is all true, MMT is a theory. It’s in the name. Yes, it’s controversial.
But those points have nothing to do with the validity of the statements I made, including the ones you quote. It’s a very broad economic theory covering how things should be done etc etc.
My point is not founded on MMT, I referred to it as a “look this stuff up by starting here”. That’s why it’s only mentioned in the edit. The mere fact that this is an even remotely acceptable implies the statements I made is valid - otherwise MMT would fall apart at its seams.
Taxes funding things is indeed a myth, and they’re essentially a money void. Go read up on those specifics if you want to get into it. The video I linked has a literal explanation of this like 30 seconds later. When congress approves programs, they just allocate new funds to it, and move on. There’s no digging up taxes to point towards it.
You could begin making an argument it has implications for the validity and reliability of the sovereign currency, but it has no real relationship to taxes. That’s just not how modern economics work anymore.
Not at all. Look up MMT. Modern monetary theory and economics are well beyond “spend taxes to fund programs”. Governments that issue debts in their own made up currency don’t need to “spend” money, they just give money to the programs they support.
MMT is techbros just trying to say, “don’t look behind the microvaluation curtain, it doesn’t matter.” But in the amounts that they’re trading on, it absolutely does matter.
I mean this is a cute clever thing that sounds smart that isn’t.
The government pays for things. The government funds that through monetary policy that includes printing money, as well as raising money via taxes. Whether the government deletes a dollar you give them and prints another dollar vs transferring the dollar you gave them into their spending budget is super irrelevant.
It’s functionally the same and either way, your tax dollar, whether “deleted” and replaced or transferred is still your proportional allocation of funding.
Same could be said about your post. It’s very “haha I have a gotcha” vibes.
Yes the government deletes money. And they also create money. That doesn’t mean they do or have to do the same amount of each. They can and do create more than they delete. They’re not funding programs and then making sure they delete the same amount in your taxes. That’s not how modern economics work.
Of course not. But none of that changes the fact that your taxes, in part, pay for what the government spends money on.
For state taxes, where the states don’t control monetary policy, it’s even less true. But it’s not really true for the federal government either.
Everyone who is paid in USD or pays in USD, in addition to people who pay taxes, pay for whatever we spend money on in one way or another.
It’s not a gotcha. Nothing was got. It’s just an absurd thing on the face of it. That while technically correct (in the sense that dollars are fungible) your dollars given in taxes will make up a percentage of total dollars spent this year by the federal government, and thus, you are paying for whatever they are doing. Along with other people.
Financially the US is gaining from it all, like she is from the Ukraine war. The point is good, but Israel buying weapons systems from the US means less potholes.
The u.s destroyed half my country, killed tons of my people, bought up the wreckage and now owns us. But none of you gave a shit, cause the news didn’t tell you to care
Nah, they didn’t care because it didn’t give them a chance to be Anti Semitic. All of these from the river to the sea chants are explicitly calling for a fucking genocide and people are proudly lining up to scream it.
Wild times we live in. There are significant human loses happening in Yemen, China, and a host of places right now but this group of terrorists in Gaza with their supporters in Iran have figured out the tik tok algorithm a whole lot better the poor people of Yemen or the Uyghurs ever did so those people are simply forgotten.
This is 100% how it works for most of the people here in America.
It’s why they’re rooting for another hundred billion of our tax dollars to be sent to other country’s wars even though they’re living with a 30-50% cost of living increase under Biden, who has no intention of sending us our own money in the form of aid.
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Isn’t this a photoshop? Boring Dystopia is a lot more poignant when the content it shows has some reality to it.
While the point the image is trying to make does have quite a bit of reality behind it, the shopping is to its detriment.
The dystopia will get a whole lot less boring if the civilized world allows Islamic jihadism to achieve its goals.
This is an investment in your future.
Oh yeah, I forgot that ethnically cleansing the Palestinians will cause all Islamic terrorist to stop. Neat!
If only the issues involved here were as simple as you apparently need them to be.
I can simplify it a little. Do you support ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza?
Edit: this should be an easy question to answer
Ethically or EthNically?
Ethnic. Thank you. I wrote the comment on mobile.
Please, not fixing potholes have been around longer than the current Palestinian/Israeli and also a completely stupid reduction of the complexity of this whole fucked up situation.
There’s nothing complex about it. Israel imprisons an entire people and every time the UN tries to do something about it the US vetoes it.
The “it’s complex” excuse is used to have people look the other way by turning it into a hopeless situation.
They haven’t been fixing potholes since 1949? Those potholes must be huge.
Try thousands of years bc. This didn’t “start” in 1949.
No, it started in 1949.
The idea that there’s anything coherent about Zionist justifications for a modern-day Israel based on thousands-year old scripture is pure and absolute white supremacist and antisemitic hogwash.
We send $5,000,000,000 in outright charity to Israel, not including what our legislators are about to fork over as soon as they get their stock portfolios situated in the best ways to profit from it.
That’s $100,000,000 per state that could be used to fix potholes or help Americans in other ways, but we’re silly geese who 100% support neglecting our own people in favor of war, so we’re getting what we voted for.
It’s been a closer to 3B for a while. Against a budget of $1.7T. It’s not even a rounding error.
It’s always cute how warmongers pretend that those billions wouldn’t make a huge difference for struggling Americans.
I don’t know what in that sentence gives you the confidence to call me a warmonger.
And also, no, it wont really. Unless you redefine “huge difference”. We spend $522B on social/economic assistance programs at the federal level. So a
0.005%0.5% increase? Hardly a huge difference.how did you get 0.005%? 3 x 100 / 522 is a 0.575 percent increase
3/522, no reason to multiply by 100. Not sure why you are.You’re right my bad.
that’s how percentages work lol. if you have 100 usd, 100.5 usd would be a 0.5% increase not a 0.005 percent increase (which you would get by dividing 0.5/100, right?)
You’re quite right, I’m a dummy.
Yeah, just that 3 billion comes out to $60,000,000 if divided equally between all 50 states. Instead it’s being pissed away on other countries’ wars.
By any stretch that is huge.
You’re absolutely using the warmonger’s logic to support your position here, so no need to clutch your pearls.
Except that it’s half a percent. It’s another half a penny on every dollar.
It’s not huge by any stretch.
What does this abstraction contribute to the discourse? Does it rile up support for fixing potholes? Does it rile up support for Palestine?
My feeling is it obfuscates the issues and makes progress seem impossible.
Weird take.
What’s so weird? Watch last week tonight every week. The problems are known. It’s the solution that we have to tell people about.
It draws attention to the fact that we are paying money to shoot missiles at innocent Palestinian children.
Ok, but is this the first time? For as long as I’ve been alive there has been pot holes and there has been discontent in the middle east. So if anyone was wondering, yes, I know america has a failing infrastructure and is waging war across the world. In fact, I believe this is common knowledge.
Not everything is about you.
Thus, the common knowledge part.
People are always mad about pot holes and military spending where have you been?
This is my point! At least I know one person gets it.
Perhaps the frustration is exacerbated by the lack of progress relative to the amount of money spent and time since these issues have manifested. It’s also particularly visible in our increasingly globalized and interconnected world.
Accurate except for the “instead” part. Road maintenance comes from local taxes, whereas military aid comes from federal taxes.
Well if you really want to get technical about it… No programs or spending are really funded by taxes anyway, the government just says “OK” and the numbers in the bank accounts of the companies implementing said program go up. Taxes funding things is just a myth. Taxes just delete money. So technically, nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void.
Edit: People seem to be down voting because they think this is tinfoil hat BS or something. It’s not. Look up modern monetary theory. Governments with fiat currency don’t need to collect money to pay for things. They just invent and issue more currency. See this video: https://youtu.be/75udjh6hkOs?si=dVpp9V5f96kLDV4-&t=1628
the wikipedia page says:
i don’t think your comment properly highlights how controversial MMT is. i’m not an economist, but i don’t think it’s fair to use language like “taxes funding things is a myth” and “technically nothing is funded by taxes and taxes are just a money void”, when those claims rely on such a controversial theory.
Yes this is all true, MMT is a theory. It’s in the name. Yes, it’s controversial.
But those points have nothing to do with the validity of the statements I made, including the ones you quote. It’s a very broad economic theory covering how things should be done etc etc.
My point is not founded on MMT, I referred to it as a “look this stuff up by starting here”. That’s why it’s only mentioned in the edit. The mere fact that this is an even remotely acceptable implies the statements I made is valid - otherwise MMT would fall apart at its seams.
Taxes funding things is indeed a myth, and they’re essentially a money void. Go read up on those specifics if you want to get into it. The video I linked has a literal explanation of this like 30 seconds later. When congress approves programs, they just allocate new funds to it, and move on. There’s no digging up taxes to point towards it.
You could begin making an argument it has implications for the validity and reliability of the sovereign currency, but it has no real relationship to taxes. That’s just not how modern economics work anymore.
In other words… it upsets the rich people that got us into this mess.
It’s not worth your time to refute one giving youtube link as a backing reference.
That has real sovcit vibes.
Not at all. Look up MMT. Modern monetary theory and economics are well beyond “spend taxes to fund programs”. Governments that issue debts in their own made up currency don’t need to “spend” money, they just give money to the programs they support.
MMT is techbros just trying to say, “don’t look behind the microvaluation curtain, it doesn’t matter.” But in the amounts that they’re trading on, it absolutely does matter.
It’s actually anarchocommunists mostly.
I mean this is a cute clever thing that sounds smart that isn’t.
The government pays for things. The government funds that through monetary policy that includes printing money, as well as raising money via taxes. Whether the government deletes a dollar you give them and prints another dollar vs transferring the dollar you gave them into their spending budget is super irrelevant.
It’s functionally the same and either way, your tax dollar, whether “deleted” and replaced or transferred is still your proportional allocation of funding.
This is real “I am very smart” vibes.
Same could be said about your post. It’s very “haha I have a gotcha” vibes.
Yes the government deletes money. And they also create money. That doesn’t mean they do or have to do the same amount of each. They can and do create more than they delete. They’re not funding programs and then making sure they delete the same amount in your taxes. That’s not how modern economics work.
Of course not. But none of that changes the fact that your taxes, in part, pay for what the government spends money on.
For state taxes, where the states don’t control monetary policy, it’s even less true. But it’s not really true for the federal government either.
Everyone who is paid in USD or pays in USD, in addition to people who pay taxes, pay for whatever we spend money on in one way or another.
It’s not a gotcha. Nothing was got. It’s just an absurd thing on the face of it. That while technically correct (in the sense that dollars are fungible) your dollars given in taxes will make up a percentage of total dollars spent this year by the federal government, and thus, you are paying for whatever they are doing. Along with other people.
And there are literal laws of nature that would prevent that from ever changing.
Financially the US is gaining from it all, like she is from the Ukraine war. The point is good, but Israel buying weapons systems from the US means less potholes.
This is literally true; heads are comfy in pits of sand.
The u.s destroyed half my country, killed tons of my people, bought up the wreckage and now owns us. But none of you gave a shit, cause the news didn’t tell you to care
What country
And what country is that?
According to his comment history, the US.
Sounds about right
Tupac cares if don’t nobody else care
Nah, they didn’t care because it didn’t give them a chance to be Anti Semitic. All of these from the river to the sea chants are explicitly calling for a fucking genocide and people are proudly lining up to scream it.
Wild times we live in. There are significant human loses happening in Yemen, China, and a host of places right now but this group of terrorists in Gaza with their supporters in Iran have figured out the tik tok algorithm a whole lot better the poor people of Yemen or the Uyghurs ever did so those people are simply forgotten.
This is 100% how it works for most of the people here in America.
It’s why they’re rooting for another hundred billion of our tax dollars to be sent to other country’s wars even though they’re living with a 30-50% cost of living increase under Biden, who has no intention of sending us our own money in the form of aid.
Yeah that doesn’t really narrow it down.
How are we supposed to know if the news doesn’t tell us?
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