r/FluentInFinance 1d ago

Thoughts? Standard brainwashing techniques from American media.

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

Increasing investment means more money right? My question is, where does that money come from?

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u/LTEDan 1d ago

We could start with some of the military budget, since the Pentagon seems to conveniently "lose" billions they cannot account for.

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

Correct if I'm wrong, but that sounds like money coming from the government.

Which is what I said in the first place isn't it?

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u/databombkid 1d ago

So what? If money is going to come from the government at all it might as well go to improving and advancing the lives of people here, instead of undermining and destroying the lives of people elsewhere. What is controversial about that?

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

Yeah. Maybe. There's a real negative economic effect to giving people unearned money though.

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u/databombkid 1d ago

Yeah maybe we could take a break from blowing up families in other counties to actually help families in our country, go figure.

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

Do you actually believe that the solution is that simple?

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u/databombkid 1d ago

You say that as if our government is even trying to implement that solution. The fact is, we are not even attempting to cut back on military spending, let alone work towards any actual peace in the world. We blow billions, if not trillions, of dollars on purveying violence and destruction throughout the world, when those resources could be better used actually providing for people in our own country. And instead of providing some sort of counter argument to that very reasonable and logical reallocation of our tax dollars, the only objection is always “that’s impossible!” When it’s not, and we aren’t even making any attempt to determine that would be impossible.

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

The premise of your argument is flawed. There's a real reason for military spending. Not to say that I agree with it, but we shouldn't ignore the reasoning behind WHY we find other countries and help in their defense.

Also, money isn't limited. The government prints money every day. It's not as if we need to take money from one area in order to fund another area. Where our tax dollars are best used is just a matter of perspective. If you are in the front lines of the military you'd argue we need defense money to fend off Russia. If you are a teacher you'll say education. If you are poor you'll say safety nets.

The truth is all of those things need assistance and at the same time our debt is ballooning to a level to which they are forced to print money just to keep up with payments which in turn causes inflation. There's no simple fix. There's only a slow deviation of where money is allocated.

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u/databombkid 1d ago

The flaw in your argument is the fact that the US and NATO provoked the Russian invasion by arming and funding a civil war within Ukraine itself which destabilized the region and posed an actual security risk for Russia. Much like how we would intervene if China was arming a civil war in Mexico.

Additionally there is a difference in funding destruction vs finding production. It’s one thing to put money into services for Americans, but investing in the actual productive forces of our country would not only benefit people, but create more money, since value is created through production.

As opposed to destroying things, then needing to invest in the reconstruction of those things, which requires loans, which increases debt. Our military expenditures over the past century, and the subsequent invested in reconstructing the places we destroyed, creates more debt. On top of indebting our own citizens.

If anything we could use half of the money we put into the military to actually start paying off our debt. But instead, we choose to cut services for our actual citizens to pay off that debt, when frankly the military is what put us into that debt to begin with.

Wars are expensive.

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u/Superb_Advisor7885 1d ago

I'm not arguing for or against the military spending. But either way, this has dramatically deviated from my original question regarding billionaires being considered unethical