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.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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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.
If there were some psychopaths that were insanely dedicated to killing you wouldn't you want there to be a fence between you and them? It's indeed not all that complex. Israel built a fence as a barrier between them and the psychopaths Palestinians elected to be their government. Seemed a better option than sending in the IDF to attempt a regime change. But apparently the fence wasn't effective, so not many options left other than regime change now.
Hamas has always been the problem. How would you protect people from these psychopaths?
Accurate except for the “instead” part. Road maintenance comes from local taxes, whereas military aid comes from federal taxes.
Sorry about all the broken veterans with TBIs. We could have invested in better healthcare infrastructure, TBI treatment research even better armor and helmets for our troopers dealing routinely with IEDs. But instead we got experimental tanks with active camo, a shitty plane which we're phasing out and aid to Israel to perpetuate their ancient religious genocide program.
It's just that US soldiers are poor and expendible and people with money tell us who and what is important.
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
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.
the wikipedia page says:
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.
It's not worth your time to refute one giving youtube link as a backing reference.
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.
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.
So money goes in and gets deleted, and then they create money and they give it away?
When I think of it, I do the same thing every time I buy something.
The money in my bank account doesn't get transferred, the bank just deletes it on their servers and then they create money and give it to the store.
Yes, they both create and delete money. That doesn't mean that the two processes need to be equal or balanced.
Your purchases do, or someone is owed their portion of the transaction. That's not the case when the government is writing bonds or appropriating funding to programs. They can create money freely, regardless of the tax they collect. Taxes serve a different purpose.
That would increase inflation drastically, which is something governments absolutely don't want.
They want inflation to be around 1-2%. Less is no good, because rich idiots would just hoard money instead of investing it. More is also no good because saved money would just disappear quickly.
Tell that to Japan. One of the highest spenders. Still stuck in perpetual de flation for over 20 years at this point.
It's not that simple.
As far as I understand that's the definition of fungibility, right? Every dollar is interchangeable and identical?
So there's no functional difference between deleting $1 and creating $1 except semantics, compared to moving $1, as long as the total value doesn't change.
The government just deleting money and printing money to pay for whatever it wants suggests that those things aren't equal, which would be the problem if it were true.
That’s what causes inflation. When you print more than you delete, at a rate faster than total economic growth.
And there are literal laws of nature that would prevent that from ever changing.
I mean, potholes in my area get fixed pretty quickly, because the local government takes its job relatively seriously.
It’d be way more effective if the road pictured wasn’t absolutely perfect and pothole free
This isn’t a problem if your thought process is slightly more sophisticated than an 8 year old’s.
All children in Gaza are terriosts! Or potential terriosts! Isreal NEEDS to bomb ambulances, hospitals and water wells because that is where all the terriosts are! ya see?Any amount of infrastructure supports terriosism! Bombing is a nessecity!
It's outright ghoulish.
Well, it‘s actually true that Hamas uses civil infrastructure and civilians as shields, you can’t deny that. Of course that doesn‘t mean that Israel can just bomb everything.
in an area where the population density is 5,300 people/km2 "human shields" is a quite weak argument. It is practically impossible to seperate civillian and military infrastructure in such densely populated areas.
For comparision the Netherlands has about 500 people/km2 and it is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.
There is a difference between the close proximity of military and civilian infrastructure because of a high population density and actively choosing hospitals as military bases.
Another great way of not getting your civilians targeted is to wear identifying uniforms.
It's almost like Hamas doesn't want to prevent civilian casualties.
Well that totally justifies killing everyone in sight
No, but it does justify telling all civilians to evacuate weeks before launching an actual full scale attack, increasing their odds of survival from 0% to 90%. War is ugly.
poor poor "palestinian" cinnamon rolls, never did nothin to nobody
awww cry me a fucking river, guess instead of having all those islamofascist muslim nations vote against israel time and time again, they should have gotten egypt to invade gaza sooner, through it's land crossing in raffah, to root out hamas, pij, and all the other terrorists who attack israel. what is that you say, the united nations islamofascists don't mind when muslim terrorists attack israel and kill jews, only when jews respond with force in their defense?
you don't say
Gaza was given to Arabs for self rule and determination in 2005, all Jews left Gaza, even Jewish graveyards were dug up and moved, it was theirs to do with as they liked.
They've spent the last 18 years making into a terrorist Disneyland with a dozen Islamofascist terrorist organizations with the stated goal of killing Jews and destroying the state of Israel, they've fired hundreds of thousands of missiles into Israel indiscriminately targeting civilians, and launched countless cross borders attacks against Jewish civilians, including one that caused the largest loss of Jewish life in any single day, anywhere, since the Holocaust on October 7th.
They were given Gaza to live in freedom and self determination, they used it to kill Jews. They were warned. They chose to ignore the warnings.
These acts of terrorism were perpetrated by the entire Gazan community, they voted for Hamas, and allowed Hamas to rule their government for the last 17 years, Hamas and all the other Islamic terrorists in Gaza are not outsiders, they were born in Gaza of Gazans, they were raised in Gaza, they were educated in Gaza, they married and had children of their own in Gaza, their Parents, teachers, mosques, hospitals, are all in Gaza, from which they use to hid and store weapons to attack Jews, Hamas, PIJ and all the other Islamic terrorist in Gaza ARE Gaza, there has been no uprising in Gaza, there have only been attacks on Israel. This is what Gazans have supported and sacrificed for in every way they possibly could.
And now it's here. I do hope they enjoy what they've worked generationaly to achieve.
There will be no ceasefire this time.
Look everyone, a pro-Israel propagandist with a bunch of easily refuted 'talking points' (lies). I'm always surprised they bother with places like Lemmy.
Colonizers and apartheidists really are the scum of the earth.
Ain't that the truth. Not to mention the Israeli children gutted and beheaded by Hamas back on Oct 7th. Our tax dollars didn't pay for that, but they sure are going toward ensuring more kids and regular civilians are turned into worm food for some nonsensical war over a strip of land neither side really wants to be stuck with.
nonsensical war over a strip of land
I've struggled to understand why civilians on either side have wanted to continue residing in that specific zone after decades of clashes/violence. I know it's not as simple as just uprooting your family to move elsewhere, but as a parent I know I'd rather any other option than living in constant fear of unbridled violence erupting at any moment in a highly volatile area.
Well, a part of it is that the people of Gaza are not allowed to leave.
There are only a handful of crossings out of Gaza and Israel controls all but one. The Egyptian crossing leads out into a desolate desert with no services.
Want to hop on a boat and flee that way? Israel will torpedo you. Want to walk up to the wall to see the boundary of your prison? Israel will machine gun you down, no questions asked, no warnings given.
A large portion of the population of Gaza started out as refugees, forced out of their homes and off of their land so that Zionist settlers could have it.
Even given the option, most if not all will choose to not leave. Since 48 the Palestinians have been chanting "from the river to the sea" and not taking lots of peace treaties offered by Israel and other nations, based on the premise that they'll stay in their current 67 border.
Not to mention lots of Jews also don't wanna live in a non-jewish state of fear of prosecution, pogroms and antisemitism, which you can see examples of happening right now in Europe.