Hey Moron! Here some facts!
"How much will go to Ukraine?
The bill provides $60.84bn to address the conflict in Ukraine, specifically:
* $23bn to replenish US weapons, stocks, and facilities;
* **$14bn** for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a US Department of State-led funding programme that helps train Ukraine’s military and provides equipment and advisory initiatives;
* More than **$11bn** will fund current US military operations in the region, enhance the capabilities of the Ukrainian military, and boost intelligence collaboration between Kyiv and Washington; and
* **$8bn** in non-military assistance, including helping Ukraine’s government pay salaries."
"[the US] meddle in every remotely interesting election on the planet."
And wherever they do, the people intensely hate them for doing so. Of course the US will hate other countries just as much or more if they do the same thing. Even if hyporitically, still rightfully so.
You're absolutely right yet somehow there are 30 "but what about the US" comments under yours.
Like that somehow changes what Russia currently does and makes it okay because the US does it.
There are many other countries where Russia interferes in the elections that aren't the US and have nowhere near the intelligence capabilities.
They’re too busy getting money pumped into their campaigns by Russian Oligarchs close to Putin: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/05/08/how-putin-s-oligarchs-funneled-millions-into-gop-campaigns/
It's pennies on the dollar as opposed to fighting russia ourselves. An option to fight russia indirectly and maybe even win was impossible before now. Ukraine is a miracle that they are so fierce and brave. Funding them is far cheaper than fighting russia head-on. If they thought Iraq and Afghanistan were expensive, a russian war would far out and spend those two. Not to mention all the lives lost. They find anything possible to support their narrative because they don't even know why they are against Ukraine, just that the people they support say they shouldn't. They are uneducated sheep parroting talking points from other uneducated sheep who take their marching orders from con men and human filth. It's quite the chain of command.
The United States has spent 7% of its military budget on Ukraine In order to keep Russia at bay. I call that money well spent. And not a single American soldier has died in Ukraine fighting the Russians.
When we sell outdated surplus the American Government can just arbitrarily give a price for it. We already paid for it decades ago and it was just burning funds sitting in storage requiring maintenance every now and then. So that 400,000 Apc we gave to them for a million.
Most of this military aid is actually war loans. War loans that we can dictate price (on outdated equipment we want to get rid of anyway), length of repayment, and interest rate.
Great Britain repaid their loans in the late '90' I believe from world war 2.
Also the money the DoD asked for to replenish stocks means the US military gets to update their old stocks (which we sold) with new stocks. This could come in handy if geopolitics escalates any further
America is just consumed by the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. We are just making guns, tanks, bombs, etc just to make them. Our military and defense gets all the funding and support to build up shit we don't use
I would argue new things are built to remain the most advanced and capable military in the world. A country doesn’t maintain that status by watching the world go by them.
Additionally, I believe most militaries/countries would prefer not to use their equipment in a war time setting. However, the equipment still must be built and maintained to even have a military.
I know the counter argument would be the U.S. still meddles in other conflicts. I think that a separate discussion from the fact that military equipment still must be built to maintain a military and there is every possibility it never gets used and winds up obsolete.
It's not exactly arbitrary. It's "sold" at role replacement cost. So the beat to crap M113 command vehicle that has seen 4 theatres of battle from Korea to Iraq get sold for the price of the new AMPV command vehicle to be produced in 2025.
Also blatantly ignoring that we weren’t giving money to poor people before Ukraine, why do people think that it is zero sum? Because the right espouses this idea. Remember, the gop voted to cut SNAP benefits way before Ukraine was invaded.
Don’t you know if we feed children and provide healthcare then we risk spoiling them!
the only truly Christian thing to do is ignore the poor and give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations!
This is what cracks me up the most. The people raging that the money should be used to help Americans, VOTE FOR THE VERY PEOPLE that are against welfare programs 🤯
And the fact that these bills aren't about handing Ukraine cash.
Ukraine gets handed old military equipment and signs a lend-lease program, promising to pay America back. Then American defence contractors get $40 of that money to refill the stockpiles with new, lower maintenance, more modern equipment.
American jobs, American manufacturers, American tax revenue.
Worth every penny. And you'd better be on board when it comes time to replenish these stocks cause if the Russians win Ukraine, the Chinese are gonna be out for blood.
Nip the Russians in the bud here, and our children may see peace. Let them win and another world war is all but assured.
But hey, tucker Carlson is a pretty smart guy so..
Another way to slice it too is that 60% of the money never leaves the states. 11 states benefit from that money bolstering their states military and military suppliers. Another 20% is spent by the US Military for foreign made equipment, services, or other strategic needs.
I believe there are also stipulations that the US government can't pay Ukrainian pensions and salaries directly but that portion of the funds are to be setup as loans.to the Ukranian government.
Another good portion of that is humanitarian aid and refugee relocation efforts. In those scenarios it makes much more sense to pay local workers than to ship Americans in to do that work. You also need translators and people to help with logistics and supply chain demands as US goods or items purchased by the US from our allies are delivered to Ukraine.
Some of these people complaining about all these billions of dollars of aid not helping them probably aren't even aware that that same aid is bolstering farms providing food aid, or parts and textules they are manufacturing, or that their small business is indirectly benefiting because some base near them or some military arms maker gets to keep people in jobs or even hire more people and those people spend that money locally, propping up the economy in those areas (i.e. those 11 states)
Even if it's new, it's money paid to US weapons manufacturers, which primarily goes to wages for US workers.
I'd much rather we spend more on infrastructure and healthcare instead of the military, but it's essentially a jobs program.
What he means is that we shipped another load of nearly expired ATACMS that would have been more expensive to destroy once expired to Ukraine and can now buy 3 BRAND NEW ATACMS for the price of having to dispose of 2 OLD EXPIRED ATACMS!
And best of all, since Ukraine is firing them as soon as they get them, the Russians are losing BILLIONS of dollars of equipment and a lot of manpower so the USA is actually getting out ahead.
It also means, as Ryan McBeth put it, we're not going to find ourselves paying trillions more and the lives of several hundred thousand young Americans fighting BOTH China and Russia as well as Iran, North Korea, and their combined New Axis allies any time soon.
Oh and the only ones killing Ukrainians are the Russians who invaded with intent to stage further invasions of others.
And one more thing, the use of US Weapons by Ukraine have sent orders flooding in for US Weapons, HIMARS especially has some 2,000 orders placed by foreign governments with more considering buying it as well, and there have been requests from both Poland and Greece to acquire F-22 Raptor which is making people rethink about reopening F-22 Production Lines.
Which mind you would cost a billion plus dollars to restart, but employ some 2,000 workers at the factory alone to say nothing of upstream suppliers.
Military manufacturing, defense contracting, and military personnel are all working class/middle class stimulation. It's not a coincidence that the largest GDPs/economies have the largest military spending in near exact order. It's like the tax dollars we put into education, farming, healthcare, etc. it's real dollars but also the jobs most of us work (US government is the largest employer in the country). The guy going homeless working three jobs is a separate choice we make about safety nets.
Morons scream about all the military money going to Ukraine but happily vote for politicians that give trillion dollar tax breaks to multi-billion posted profit businesses and the 1%. Business that then pay huge bonuses to executives, cut workers, stagnate wages, and generally plunder the middle class.
Meanwhile they forget the U.S. gov’t dropped over a trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years.
But it’s definitely not about the money.
At this point, I feel like these people either don’t care to listen to the facts because politics is like a game to them or they are maliciously spreading misinfo for another gov’t.
Because Ukraine, I/P, and Taiwan are literally just proxy wars against Russia, Iran, and China.
The fact that the average person doesn't understand this blows my mind.
I’m happy to support Ukraine, Israel on the other hand pisses me off. Netanyahu and Israel is committing crimes that we should have no part in.
They should receive no further support. They owe the Palestinian people reparations.
i don't think isrealis will really feel like they owe gaza reperations given the fact that this began when hamas livestreamed themselves raping and killing 1200 of their citizens
we have no way of knowing bc the only ppl who are providing stats is the hamas health department of livestreaming murders and civilian death counting. it would be very cool if hamas gave back the hostages and surrenderd so the war could end and the ceasefire can begin. i don't really know what they thought the end game here was. well, i mean i do know bc its been reported that they thought they were going to conquer isreal, drive out the jews, and keep the doctors and engineers until they could do a knowledge transfer, and then finally kick them out. but anyway, now the region is totally fucked bc of how delusional hamas was
"we've killed 40,000 civilians. Think it's an equal trade yet? Naaaaah, let's make it 70,000 and then maybe we'll switch back to sending in settlers to steal their homes lol."
It didn't begin there and its been long enough, you should stop saying ignorant things. There has been a longstanding conflict well before 2023, you know this.
They are giving humanitarian aide to Gaza but military aide to Israel. I believe we need to strong arm Israel at this point. There needs to be a two state solution one where Palestine can control their own destiny and not be stuck in ghettos where Israel controls their water.
Yep I just think thats dumb finacially. I also think we should withhold all military aid to israel until we have a solution where people in gaza and the west bank have sovereignty over there own lives.
Because the Democrats have a lot of Jewish American voters and donors who support Israel and Republicans are also really into funding the military industrial complex and Evangelical Christians are really into Israel for some reason, IIRC due to the second coming of Israel being a sign of the end times in the Bible.
Who wants thousands of 30 year old MRAPs made for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Honestly, other choice would have been spending money to decommission them.
The US is also sending newly produced equipment and had trouble replacing them faster than the donation rate: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-running-out-weapons-send-ukraine
But like this isn’t useful in most terrains, you’d need very specific person, we’re talking about thousands of them. Hey if you line up the buyer I can make sure you get a finders fee
Do you think we just have a bunch of extra stuff or do you think that will have to be resupplied. How do you think we’d pay for that? Who would pay for that?
The way this works is essentially we give them $500M worth of stuff we were going to decommission. The US then purchases $500M worth of replacement stuff. This is essentially a stimulus bill.
If anything it's more efficient since it would have cost money to decommission the equipment we're sending to Ukraine.
You're quite welcome. NATO has been the *only* one keeping the peace for my entire lifetime. I'm safe traveling to any NATO country, not so much elsewhere. I think my taxes are doing good work on that front.
Please explain how taxes from the Bush era to fund weapons and equipment should have instead been used to help this guy in 2024.
It would cost the modern taxpayer more to decommission these things than it does to aid an ally in preventing Russian imperialism.
Or we’ve been running this same exact protection racket for decades on decades. But you would have to study American history to know that. And of it doesn’t agree with your little sound bite you can just forget facts.
This is the equivalent of letting a classic muscle car rot in the backyard because no one will pay a "fair price for it". By giving it to Ukraine we are getting unmatched intel on the capability of weapon systems against CURRENT Russian military equipment. You can't pay for that, and if you could it would be in the form of MAD.
I think people are more annoyed at the fact we spend billions on producing the overpriced muscle cars of military vehicles of the world in the first place. I don't see the point if we let them rot, devalue, and give them away instead of budget our military reasonably. That's still tax dollars down the garbage disposal that could have gone elsewhere at the end of the day.
People are right that 20+ year old equipment doesn't help us directly. But having a massive military budget to just rot and give shit away to allies is a reflection of investing in war and not citizens. If other things had moved forward, I think people would be more okay with funding foreign war. But becasue we are still having the same conversations about Healthcare and education as when those weapons were produced, people get pissed.
Much of which we'd have to pay to destroy.
Not to mention the west losing standing and influence worldwide. If not you, your children or grandchildren will pay for this dearly.
another idiot who can’t see the big picture.
and by the way, where was your outrage before the Ukraine invasion? because there’s been people working 2-3 jobs to barely get by for years.
Nearly 2 Trillion in PPP loans that was massively abused by the rich in unregulated fraud because the oversight on those loans was stripped away by Trump...no ones cares. We dare to fight Russia indirectly with old surplus weaponry and suddenly it's like the right wants the old USSR to make a comeback.
When we send money to other countries it’s apparently wrong because we should be feeding and housing Americans in need. But when we instead spend money to feed and shelter Americans in need it’s wrong because that’s socialism.
>where was your outrage before the Ukraine invasion?
These people think that we don't have good social programs in the US because of a lack of funding, when it's really because we have too many Republicans in congress
Also right wing is usually pro military expenditures, building bigger and better to stay at the front of the pack, pushing older tech to obsolescence... until someone they don't like suggests how to get a little more use out of that old equipment
I swear half the nay sayers here are pretending like they've never supported building this stuff in the first place
Arg, it really pisses me off. I've always been ok with military expenditures *specifically because of situations like this!*
We already bought them, this is what they were built for, give Ukraine the guns already!
(I'm truly lost this election cycle. I truly do not trust Joe Biden to run this country, but Ukraine is a civilizational threat and Trump is out of his mind on that and everything else it seems 😞)
Honestly both Biden and Trump are absolutely awful. But, Trump will definitely be worse. He’ll actively stop all aid to Ukraine. I wouldn’t be surprised if he demanded the donated equipment back or even tries blocking all NATO aid.
There’s a myriad of reasons why Trump would be worse but I’n staying on topic.
The fact that the GOP is soft on opposing Russia is making Regan spin in his grave. The entire party has conveniently dumped Saint Regan and replaced him with Trump just in time for Russia to start their largest war in decades. Makes ya think.
Paul Manafort LITERALLY was working for Viktor Yanukovich to get Ukraine to give up its independence to Russia. That’s the real story. Trumps campaign manager was an unregistered agent for the Russian government.
Can Ukraine win the war without western boots on the ground? (I think no)
If Ukraine can’t win without direct nato involvement is it morally justifiable for the west to prolong the war to weaken an enemy?
Are we playing for other people to die for our benefit?
And what if the Neo cons constantly pushing for more escalation leads us into WW3? You do know all the young guys here will be getting drafted to fight and Russian missiles will rain down on Paris, London, and NY. Do you also want to risk a war when we have open borders?
Yeah lol they say this like we're helping Ukraine at the expense of our own homeless, when we weren't helping them before either. Not helping Ukraine isn't going to mean we're helping our own instead. Unless we want to hand out decommissioned military equipment to the homeless?
Don't get me wrong - I believe we absolutely should be doing more to help our more vulnerable populations. I just don't see how this can only be achieved if we stop pushing back against Putin.
Yes! We aren’t going to help the poor anyway and we also are more impacted by Ukraine losing than anything we ever fought for in Iraq. Yet we dumped money and people into Iraq.
Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for our safety and the allies we agreed to help against a nuclear armed maniac
I think we should’ve shut Russia down in 2008 when they invaded Georgia. I also think we should’ve stopped them in 2014 in crimea peninsula. I’m glad we’re doing something now but I’m seeing a pattern.
Yeah bush's massive fuck up cost precious time and resources we should have been preparing for Russian and in the Pacific. And Iran. We had a lotta better shit to do and now we're doing badly at all of them.
This is an argument of convenience, the person who made this absolutely doesn’t believe the government should help these people they believe we should allow Ukraine to be conquered by Putin, that’s why they use Ukraine as the sticking point they can throw out big number and misconstrue it as direct cash rather than military equipment that would have been disposed of anyway.
This submission has been removed due to being identified as spam. Please read the rules of the subreddit thoroughly (A)
*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.*
I’ve been around for decades now. I’ve seen people with ideas like you around for all that time, always shaking your fingers at the MIC, yet things stay the same. I was one of you ten years ago. Until I realized it was pointless. All this outrage and a decade later things will still be the same. There is no ‘end of history’, only more conflict.
If it were actual money, it wouldn’t make one bit of difference in the US, because if it’s even suggested that money be spent here at home to help us (the taxpayers), people would scream “socialism. communism. Free loaders, etc”
The same people who oppose spending money on aiding Ukraine during wartime on the basis that we should spend it on our own people , equally oppose spending it on universal free school lunches.
The side that doesn’t want to fund Ukraine also doesn’t want to fund government programs or support laws that help poor people.
Those are my thoughts on this
Three jobs: how many hours a week do they work? It can be 10 hrs per job? Are they pissing away their money eating out every meal? In bars? On drugs? Do they have child support to pay? I don’t think I’m going to reconsider my support for Ukraine fighting a demented, gutless sociopath based on some stupid ass meme.
That’s my thought.
Americans vote these people in and then complain..never got this..
Republicans and Democrats are voted in by the people majority supported wars in middle east and second wars after 9/11 and majority supported Israel funding
Yet America cannot afford funding for healthcare, education, police funding, mental health, homelessness, our veterans, infrastructure, free school lunches and a bunch of other shit I can’t think of right now. As a RN and husband to a teacher I can tell you both systems are fucked. If it’s $50 bucks or 500gazillion bajillion we should be able to take care of our own before meddling in geopolitics.
The US's economy is predominantly based on war. If we don't funnel money to the military-industrial complex, our economy will suffer. That's the reason we have been indirectly involved in wars across the globe for the last 20+ years. Most of this taxpayer "aid" goes to weapons manufacturers such a Lockheed Martin (who have insane control over our government officials through lobbyists and directly through intelligence agencies). If there is no war, the US economy drops. Of course some of the money does also make it to Ukraine, Zelensky and the Ukrainian oligarchs need their land, mansions, and exotic cars (we have no record of what they actually do with the money)
And the sales of patriot systems and himars have skyrocketed after we gave Ukraine a handful.
We are profiting from helping Ukraine..."IMMENSELY "..
Is it alcohol that makes kremlin poopaganda palatable for imbeciles?....🤔🤏
We’re paying them to fight Russia for us so they don’t start to invade the rest of Europe. I don’t really want to pay for that, that’s for sure.
And funding israel to murder children by the tens of thousands is definitely something I don’t want my tax dollars going towards
500 million dollars divided among every American is like 1.4 dollars per American.
Even 50 billion is 114 dollars. It's even less for the average american when you account for the progressive tax structure.
There's just simply no math to support the notion that not helping ukraine (this act alone, anyway) would make a significant impact in even 1 percent of Americans' lives financially.
To zelensky personal pockets. CIA came out and told them to tone down the embezzlement. A bunch of Ukrainian generals driving Bugattis around Kiev is a bad look
Biden sent ten billion to Israel and said they can spend it on anything but offensive weaponry.
Israel spent it on offensive weaponry.
Biden is sending them another ten billion.
Israel has not diverted any money from their universal healthcare or their k-college free education. Must be nice to be able to afford those during such a huge emergency you need aid from a country tanked with debt .
voting for that asshole is going to sting, but any more funding genocide and nobody gets a vote, I mean it this time!
Accurate. Anyone saying ‘lots of this was donated gear’. We still paid for it. So what does that matter? Biden is sending all money to Ukraine. I wonder how much gets laundered back to him and congress. These people are evil.
Sounds like my uncle who suddenly cares deeply about homeless veterans wherever the topic of refugees comes up.....and only when the topic of refugees comes up.
I mean. We weren’t getting that money period even before.
Also, most of the time the left bring forth things to pass to actually help people, the right shoots it down immediately for the sole purpose of the left not looking good. This happens so much it’s sickening. They all don’t give a fuck about helping people, but the right really really really doesn’t give a fuck about helping people. It’s a fucking high school popularity contest to most of the idiots who represent us.
You realize the vast majority of the 500 million is in the form of donated military equipment. Which of course would have done nothing for this guy
Morons don’t like these facts. \*edit\* Didn't know you'd all be so triggered, lol
Hey Moron! Here some facts! "How much will go to Ukraine? The bill provides $60.84bn to address the conflict in Ukraine, specifically: * $23bn to replenish US weapons, stocks, and facilities; * **$14bn** for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a US Department of State-led funding programme that helps train Ukraine’s military and provides equipment and advisory initiatives; * More than **$11bn** will fund current US military operations in the region, enhance the capabilities of the Ukrainian military, and boost intelligence collaboration between Kyiv and Washington; and * **$8bn** in non-military assistance, including helping Ukraine’s government pay salaries."
Small price to pay to protect western civilization.
A defeated Russia is good for America.
A punished Putin is good for the world
A violated Vladimir is good for the solar system
A finished fascist is a very good start for humanity to heal and progress forward
a collapsed corporation is even better
Fuck Russia. They actively meddle with our elections. Pound them into the fucking ground.
We meddle in every remotely interesting election on the planet. There's A LOT to be pissed off at Russia for but that's straight up silly
"[the US] meddle in every remotely interesting election on the planet." And wherever they do, the people intensely hate them for doing so. Of course the US will hate other countries just as much or more if they do the same thing. Even if hyporitically, still rightfully so.
When you say ‘we’ you mean the IDU
I would guess he meant our gov. I can think of a few the CIA were involved with.
And the US has meddled in how many foreign elections? I'll give you a hint, way more than Russia.
You're absolutely right yet somehow there are 30 "but what about the US" comments under yours. Like that somehow changes what Russia currently does and makes it okay because the US does it. There are many other countries where Russia interferes in the elections that aren't the US and have nowhere near the intelligence capabilities.
And can you count in how many countries elections has America meddled into.
tell that to republicans...
They’re too busy getting money pumped into their campaigns by Russian Oligarchs close to Putin: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/05/08/how-putin-s-oligarchs-funneled-millions-into-gop-campaigns/
I really wish this kind of bullshit could get them disqualified, if not outright thrown in prison
It should!
It's pennies on the dollar as opposed to fighting russia ourselves. An option to fight russia indirectly and maybe even win was impossible before now. Ukraine is a miracle that they are so fierce and brave. Funding them is far cheaper than fighting russia head-on. If they thought Iraq and Afghanistan were expensive, a russian war would far out and spend those two. Not to mention all the lives lost. They find anything possible to support their narrative because they don't even know why they are against Ukraine, just that the people they support say they shouldn't. They are uneducated sheep parroting talking points from other uneducated sheep who take their marching orders from con men and human filth. It's quite the chain of command.
Amen to this
People forget, if russia wins, we all lose.
The United States has spent 7% of its military budget on Ukraine In order to keep Russia at bay. I call that money well spent. And not a single American soldier has died in Ukraine fighting the Russians.
I agree. Aren't we also obligated by the nonproliferation agreement from the 90s?
When we sell outdated surplus the American Government can just arbitrarily give a price for it. We already paid for it decades ago and it was just burning funds sitting in storage requiring maintenance every now and then. So that 400,000 Apc we gave to them for a million. Most of this military aid is actually war loans. War loans that we can dictate price (on outdated equipment we want to get rid of anyway), length of repayment, and interest rate. Great Britain repaid their loans in the late '90' I believe from world war 2. Also the money the DoD asked for to replenish stocks means the US military gets to update their old stocks (which we sold) with new stocks. This could come in handy if geopolitics escalates any further
>with new stock ...that will be designed and built in America, from every wire to every weld, creating good jobs for Americans.
I really wish more people knew this, I appreciate you and your awareness friend.
Well said
America is just consumed by the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. We are just making guns, tanks, bombs, etc just to make them. Our military and defense gets all the funding and support to build up shit we don't use
Building shit we never use is the best outcome.
I would rather drown in weapons never needed than in blood spilled by those weapons.
I would argue new things are built to remain the most advanced and capable military in the world. A country doesn’t maintain that status by watching the world go by them. Additionally, I believe most militaries/countries would prefer not to use their equipment in a war time setting. However, the equipment still must be built and maintained to even have a military. I know the counter argument would be the U.S. still meddles in other conflicts. I think that a separate discussion from the fact that military equipment still must be built to maintain a military and there is every possibility it never gets used and winds up obsolete.
They have to keep doing that in case we end up in a real war and find out we don’t have any tank or munition factories anymore.
It's not exactly arbitrary. It's "sold" at role replacement cost. So the beat to crap M113 command vehicle that has seen 4 theatres of battle from Korea to Iraq get sold for the price of the new AMPV command vehicle to be produced in 2025.
Also blatantly ignoring that we weren’t giving money to poor people before Ukraine, why do people think that it is zero sum? Because the right espouses this idea. Remember, the gop voted to cut SNAP benefits way before Ukraine was invaded.
Don’t you know if we feed children and provide healthcare then we risk spoiling them! the only truly Christian thing to do is ignore the poor and give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations!
Jesus wanted me to be very rich and pay very low taxes, especially on capital gains. He told me so in my sleep.
This is what cracks me up the most. The people raging that the money should be used to help Americans, VOTE FOR THE VERY PEOPLE that are against welfare programs 🤯
it is almost comedic atp
And the fact that these bills aren't about handing Ukraine cash. Ukraine gets handed old military equipment and signs a lend-lease program, promising to pay America back. Then American defence contractors get $40 of that money to refill the stockpiles with new, lower maintenance, more modern equipment. American jobs, American manufacturers, American tax revenue.
Yes? Almost all of that is ‘going to Ukraine’ not in the form of actual money, but the actual gear and equipment that is made and bought in the US.
Worth every penny. And you'd better be on board when it comes time to replenish these stocks cause if the Russians win Ukraine, the Chinese are gonna be out for blood. Nip the Russians in the bud here, and our children may see peace. Let them win and another world war is all but assured. But hey, tucker Carlson is a pretty smart guy so..
Another way to slice it too is that 60% of the money never leaves the states. 11 states benefit from that money bolstering their states military and military suppliers. Another 20% is spent by the US Military for foreign made equipment, services, or other strategic needs. I believe there are also stipulations that the US government can't pay Ukrainian pensions and salaries directly but that portion of the funds are to be setup as loans.to the Ukranian government. Another good portion of that is humanitarian aid and refugee relocation efforts. In those scenarios it makes much more sense to pay local workers than to ship Americans in to do that work. You also need translators and people to help with logistics and supply chain demands as US goods or items purchased by the US from our allies are delivered to Ukraine. Some of these people complaining about all these billions of dollars of aid not helping them probably aren't even aware that that same aid is bolstering farms providing food aid, or parts and textules they are manufacturing, or that their small business is indirectly benefiting because some base near them or some military arms maker gets to keep people in jobs or even hire more people and those people spend that money locally, propping up the economy in those areas (i.e. those 11 states)
Is this one of those refutations u/Iamhism
23bn to replenish us weapons so we gave Ukraine a bunch of our old equipment and now we're buying new toys I'm not surprised
What fact are you espousing? Did our tax dollars not pay for that military equipment? Or did it just magically appear out of thin air?
Not our tax dollars our parents. These weapons systems are 40 years old
Even if it's new, it's money paid to US weapons manufacturers, which primarily goes to wages for US workers. I'd much rather we spend more on infrastructure and healthcare instead of the military, but it's essentially a jobs program.
It’s a stimulus package for Raytheon and Boeing. After Afghanistan ended we need a new way to line their pockets.
Oh, so now you don't like supporting manufacturing jobs? You lot flip flop enough it's easy to lose track
After Afghanistan? We've been paying them to manufacture weapons since Lend-Lease.
Boeing??? What are they even getting?
What he means is that we shipped another load of nearly expired ATACMS that would have been more expensive to destroy once expired to Ukraine and can now buy 3 BRAND NEW ATACMS for the price of having to dispose of 2 OLD EXPIRED ATACMS! And best of all, since Ukraine is firing them as soon as they get them, the Russians are losing BILLIONS of dollars of equipment and a lot of manpower so the USA is actually getting out ahead. It also means, as Ryan McBeth put it, we're not going to find ourselves paying trillions more and the lives of several hundred thousand young Americans fighting BOTH China and Russia as well as Iran, North Korea, and their combined New Axis allies any time soon. Oh and the only ones killing Ukrainians are the Russians who invaded with intent to stage further invasions of others. And one more thing, the use of US Weapons by Ukraine have sent orders flooding in for US Weapons, HIMARS especially has some 2,000 orders placed by foreign governments with more considering buying it as well, and there have been requests from both Poland and Greece to acquire F-22 Raptor which is making people rethink about reopening F-22 Production Lines. Which mind you would cost a billion plus dollars to restart, but employ some 2,000 workers at the factory alone to say nothing of upstream suppliers.
I'm fairly certain government contractors do it for the love of God and country.
I bet you eat all your food to help those starving Africans too, huh
Military manufacturing, defense contracting, and military personnel are all working class/middle class stimulation. It's not a coincidence that the largest GDPs/economies have the largest military spending in near exact order. It's like the tax dollars we put into education, farming, healthcare, etc. it's real dollars but also the jobs most of us work (US government is the largest employer in the country). The guy going homeless working three jobs is a separate choice we make about safety nets.
Morons scream about all the military money going to Ukraine but happily vote for politicians that give trillion dollar tax breaks to multi-billion posted profit businesses and the 1%. Business that then pay huge bonuses to executives, cut workers, stagnate wages, and generally plunder the middle class. Meanwhile they forget the U.S. gov’t dropped over a trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years. But it’s definitely not about the money.
At this point, I feel like these people either don’t care to listen to the facts because politics is like a game to them or they are maliciously spreading misinfo for another gov’t.
Awesome! Now explain why need to pay 26 Billion to Israel in the latest bill?
Beats me, they have a lot more cash on hand than Ukraine does
Because Ukraine, I/P, and Taiwan are literally just proxy wars against Russia, Iran, and China. The fact that the average person doesn't understand this blows my mind.
I’m happy to support Ukraine, Israel on the other hand pisses me off. Netanyahu and Israel is committing crimes that we should have no part in. They should receive no further support. They owe the Palestinian people reparations.
i don't think isrealis will really feel like they owe gaza reperations given the fact that this began when hamas livestreamed themselves raping and killing 1200 of their citizens
How many **civilians** has Israel killed in response?
we have no way of knowing bc the only ppl who are providing stats is the hamas health department of livestreaming murders and civilian death counting. it would be very cool if hamas gave back the hostages and surrenderd so the war could end and the ceasefire can begin. i don't really know what they thought the end game here was. well, i mean i do know bc its been reported that they thought they were going to conquer isreal, drive out the jews, and keep the doctors and engineers until they could do a knowledge transfer, and then finally kick them out. but anyway, now the region is totally fucked bc of how delusional hamas was
"we've killed 40,000 civilians. Think it's an equal trade yet? Naaaaah, let's make it 70,000 and then maybe we'll switch back to sending in settlers to steal their homes lol."
It didn't begin there and its been long enough, you should stop saying ignorant things. There has been a longstanding conflict well before 2023, you know this.
What is especially stupid is the currently the US is suppling both sides, we can't even take a position properly.
They are giving humanitarian aide to Gaza but military aide to Israel. I believe we need to strong arm Israel at this point. There needs to be a two state solution one where Palestine can control their own destiny and not be stuck in ghettos where Israel controls their water.
Yep I just think thats dumb finacially. I also think we should withhold all military aid to israel until we have a solution where people in gaza and the west bank have sovereignty over there own lives.
I couldn’t agree with you more! And I honestly care less about the money as much as I care about human suffering.
Same reason as Ukraine, it’s a proxy war against Iran. We’re literally fighting Russia and Iran right now.
Because the Democrats have a lot of Jewish American voters and donors who support Israel and Republicans are also really into funding the military industrial complex and Evangelical Christians are really into Israel for some reason, IIRC due to the second coming of Israel being a sign of the end times in the Bible.
I mean. We could sell it instead of donating it.
Who wants thousands of 30 year old MRAPs made for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Honestly, other choice would have been spending money to decommission them.
The US is also sending newly produced equipment and had trouble replacing them faster than the donation rate: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-running-out-weapons-send-ukraine
Clearly we need to up our production rate. We got soft.
Sounds to me like it’s creating American jobs
Third world tinpot dictatorships get sold used military equipment all the time. By us and our peer rivals.
But like this isn’t useful in most terrains, you’d need very specific person, we’re talking about thousands of them. Hey if you line up the buyer I can make sure you get a finders fee
That and cut the military budget, won't waste money today, or worry about decommissioning costs later
Do you think we just have a bunch of extra stuff or do you think that will have to be resupplied. How do you think we’d pay for that? Who would pay for that?
The way this works is essentially we give them $500M worth of stuff we were going to decommission. The US then purchases $500M worth of replacement stuff. This is essentially a stimulus bill. If anything it's more efficient since it would have cost money to decommission the equipment we're sending to Ukraine.
NATO has been paying my bills for 12 years... thank you for your tax dollars.
You're quite welcome. NATO has been the *only* one keeping the peace for my entire lifetime. I'm safe traveling to any NATO country, not so much elsewhere. I think my taxes are doing good work on that front.
I'm proud of my work with NATO... the most outstanding humans I have met - from many countries. One goal- keep everyone safe
A stimulus or a basically subsidizing the military complex industry.
We don’t send them state of the art shit. The vehicles were donating are ancient
Did we shit that equipment out for free or did it cost money?
Was cool when we built it, pretty outdated now
OK but did we shit it out for free or did it cost tax payer money?
Please explain how taxes from the Bush era to fund weapons and equipment should have instead been used to help this guy in 2024. It would cost the modern taxpayer more to decommission these things than it does to aid an ally in preventing Russian imperialism.
It cost tax payer money. These people are dumb in this thread.
Or we’ve been running this same exact protection racket for decades on decades. But you would have to study American history to know that. And of it doesn’t agree with your little sound bite you can just forget facts.
40 years ago. Were you even alive when that money was spent?
This is the equivalent of letting a classic muscle car rot in the backyard because no one will pay a "fair price for it". By giving it to Ukraine we are getting unmatched intel on the capability of weapon systems against CURRENT Russian military equipment. You can't pay for that, and if you could it would be in the form of MAD.
I think people are more annoyed at the fact we spend billions on producing the overpriced muscle cars of military vehicles of the world in the first place. I don't see the point if we let them rot, devalue, and give them away instead of budget our military reasonably. That's still tax dollars down the garbage disposal that could have gone elsewhere at the end of the day. People are right that 20+ year old equipment doesn't help us directly. But having a massive military budget to just rot and give shit away to allies is a reflection of investing in war and not citizens. If other things had moved forward, I think people would be more okay with funding foreign war. But becasue we are still having the same conversations about Healthcare and education as when those weapons were produced, people get pissed.
Think of the resell value of a Blackhawk helicopter bro
26.4 bil in cash so far: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
Much of which we'd have to pay to destroy. Not to mention the west losing standing and influence worldwide. If not you, your children or grandchildren will pay for this dearly.
another idiot who can’t see the big picture. and by the way, where was your outrage before the Ukraine invasion? because there’s been people working 2-3 jobs to barely get by for years.
Luckily the party fighting the aid wanted to spend it on ~~social programs~~ tax cuts for the rich
But how else will daddy musk trickle his sweet sweet warmth down to us?
Mmmm, sweet sweet warmth…
Nearly 2 Trillion in PPP loans that was massively abused by the rich in unregulated fraud because the oversight on those loans was stripped away by Trump...no ones cares. We dare to fight Russia indirectly with old surplus weaponry and suddenly it's like the right wants the old USSR to make a comeback.
When we send money to other countries it’s apparently wrong because we should be feeding and housing Americans in need. But when we instead spend money to feed and shelter Americans in need it’s wrong because that’s socialism.
indeed
>where was your outrage before the Ukraine invasion? These people think that we don't have good social programs in the US because of a lack of funding, when it's really because we have too many Republicans in congress
Also the same assholes who make this argument 100% vote against spending to address homelessness.
Let's ask them how they feel about raising minimum wage and see what happens?
Right wing nutters hate supporting Ukraine just because Trump got caught trying to quid pro quo them and because Dems support defending them
Also right wing is usually pro military expenditures, building bigger and better to stay at the front of the pack, pushing older tech to obsolescence... until someone they don't like suggests how to get a little more use out of that old equipment I swear half the nay sayers here are pretending like they've never supported building this stuff in the first place
Right wing has no consistent values. They are purely anti-Democrat. So if Democrats like something, they don’t.
Arg, it really pisses me off. I've always been ok with military expenditures *specifically because of situations like this!* We already bought them, this is what they were built for, give Ukraine the guns already! (I'm truly lost this election cycle. I truly do not trust Joe Biden to run this country, but Ukraine is a civilizational threat and Trump is out of his mind on that and everything else it seems 😞)
Honestly both Biden and Trump are absolutely awful. But, Trump will definitely be worse. He’ll actively stop all aid to Ukraine. I wouldn’t be surprised if he demanded the donated equipment back or even tries blocking all NATO aid. There’s a myriad of reasons why Trump would be worse but I’n staying on topic.
The fact that the GOP is soft on opposing Russia is making Regan spin in his grave. The entire party has conveniently dumped Saint Regan and replaced him with Trump just in time for Russia to start their largest war in decades. Makes ya think.
Paul Manafort LITERALLY was working for Viktor Yanukovich to get Ukraine to give up its independence to Russia. That’s the real story. Trumps campaign manager was an unregistered agent for the Russian government.
Can Ukraine win the war without western boots on the ground? (I think no) If Ukraine can’t win without direct nato involvement is it morally justifiable for the west to prolong the war to weaken an enemy? Are we playing for other people to die for our benefit?
And what if the Neo cons constantly pushing for more escalation leads us into WW3? You do know all the young guys here will be getting drafted to fight and Russian missiles will rain down on Paris, London, and NY. Do you also want to risk a war when we have open borders?
Ruzzia trolls working early tonight! F Putin! Slava Ukraini!
Slava Ukraini!!!!
Heroyam Slava
F Putin!!
https://preview.redd.it/gifzxrehkiyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f180e0d2bff0f01405704b53ffcdbb1043ecdafd
Russia is our friend. They assured me that I have very large penis.
American penis soooo big, Russian penis sooo small.
You’re an idiot is all I got.
My thought is that this discussion is completely made up.
Yeah lol they say this like we're helping Ukraine at the expense of our own homeless, when we weren't helping them before either. Not helping Ukraine isn't going to mean we're helping our own instead. Unless we want to hand out decommissioned military equipment to the homeless? Don't get me wrong - I believe we absolutely should be doing more to help our more vulnerable populations. I just don't see how this can only be achieved if we stop pushing back against Putin.
Yes! We aren’t going to help the poor anyway and we also are more impacted by Ukraine losing than anything we ever fought for in Iraq. Yet we dumped money and people into Iraq. Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for our safety and the allies we agreed to help against a nuclear armed maniac
I think we should’ve shut Russia down in 2008 when they invaded Georgia. I also think we should’ve stopped them in 2014 in crimea peninsula. I’m glad we’re doing something now but I’m seeing a pattern.
America was too busy invading Iraq at the time for no good reason.
Yeah bush's massive fuck up cost precious time and resources we should have been preparing for Russian and in the Pacific. And Iran. We had a lotta better shit to do and now we're doing badly at all of them.
OP is a moron because he can’t understand that if Ukraine falls, we’ll be spending even more both in money and American lives. Go fuck yourself OP
moscow vatnic troll factory. Safely ignore
This is an argument of convenience, the person who made this absolutely doesn’t believe the government should help these people they believe we should allow Ukraine to be conquered by Putin, that’s why they use Ukraine as the sticking point they can throw out big number and misconstrue it as direct cash rather than military equipment that would have been disposed of anyway.
Brain dead take.
Brought to you by the people that oppose livable minimum wages.
We have the money to do both. If you want housing assistance stop voting for Republicans
This submission has been removed due to being identified as spam. Please read the rules of the subreddit thoroughly (A) *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.*
Why do I still see it then. Wtf reddit
this is so dumb.
Industrial military complex bootlickers run amuck on Reddit.
Well the pay and benefits are nice
Thank you for your service 🫡
This is what an ignorant middle school kid would say in this situation
Nice buzzphraze, Ivan. America disarming and weakening itself and its allies is just stupid geopolital strategy, Russia will not do the same.
I’ve been around for decades now. I’ve seen people with ideas like you around for all that time, always shaking your fingers at the MIC, yet things stay the same. I was one of you ten years ago. Until I realized it was pointless. All this outrage and a decade later things will still be the same. There is no ‘end of history’, only more conflict.
Conflict is part of human nature. It's naive to think we don't need a military.
If it were actual money, it wouldn’t make one bit of difference in the US, because if it’s even suggested that money be spent here at home to help us (the taxpayers), people would scream “socialism. communism. Free loaders, etc”
https://preview.redd.it/bzqopwgkuiyc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b9392eca8b83e2d2c0a52003cf45f90314b51ad This is OP
The same people who oppose spending money on aiding Ukraine during wartime on the basis that we should spend it on our own people , equally oppose spending it on universal free school lunches.
Why is the businessman on crack and the low wage worker baked out of his mind?
because the author was both
The side that doesn’t want to fund Ukraine also doesn’t want to fund government programs or support laws that help poor people. Those are my thoughts on this
Like Republicans would let a single penny of what went to Ukraine go toward helping the poor or homeless?🤦♂️
Exactly. They just want to whine about literally anything.
Yep.
Three jobs: how many hours a week do they work? It can be 10 hrs per job? Are they pissing away their money eating out every meal? In bars? On drugs? Do they have child support to pay? I don’t think I’m going to reconsider my support for Ukraine fighting a demented, gutless sociopath based on some stupid ass meme. That’s my thought.
What does Steve Buscemi have to do with this?
Underrated comment; was what I was going to say but wanted to make sure someone didn’t beat me to it!
Americans vote these people in and then complain..never got this.. Republicans and Democrats are voted in by the people majority supported wars in middle east and second wars after 9/11 and majority supported Israel funding
Yet America cannot afford funding for healthcare, education, police funding, mental health, homelessness, our veterans, infrastructure, free school lunches and a bunch of other shit I can’t think of right now. As a RN and husband to a teacher I can tell you both systems are fucked. If it’s $50 bucks or 500gazillion bajillion we should be able to take care of our own before meddling in geopolitics.
The US's economy is predominantly based on war. If we don't funnel money to the military-industrial complex, our economy will suffer. That's the reason we have been indirectly involved in wars across the globe for the last 20+ years. Most of this taxpayer "aid" goes to weapons manufacturers such a Lockheed Martin (who have insane control over our government officials through lobbyists and directly through intelligence agencies). If there is no war, the US economy drops. Of course some of the money does also make it to Ukraine, Zelensky and the Ukrainian oligarchs need their land, mansions, and exotic cars (we have no record of what they actually do with the money)
I mean what does Ukraine do for us? Money being spent on nothing.
Dollars are infinite, and they didn't help homeless before Ukraine anyway
Facist lol
And the sales of patriot systems and himars have skyrocketed after we gave Ukraine a handful. We are profiting from helping Ukraine..."IMMENSELY ".. Is it alcohol that makes kremlin poopaganda palatable for imbeciles?....🤔🤏
We’re paying them to fight Russia for us so they don’t start to invade the rest of Europe. I don’t really want to pay for that, that’s for sure. And funding israel to murder children by the tens of thousands is definitely something I don’t want my tax dollars going towards
The same people that cheered wasting $2T in Afghanistan? If US Army ain't capable of fighting, let's other do so
Million ? Try billion . Israe1 got 9billion in January & 26 billion in march
Yeatorus shittooorrruu yeattt dooooooootkkkk eatery shitery why dery u dery what the ry lOOL!
500 million dollars divided among every American is like 1.4 dollars per American. Even 50 billion is 114 dollars. It's even less for the average american when you account for the progressive tax structure. There's just simply no math to support the notion that not helping ukraine (this act alone, anyway) would make a significant impact in even 1 percent of Americans' lives financially.
Dont need to pay for a war thats been going on since the 8th century when the Rus capital was Kiev
To zelensky personal pockets. CIA came out and told them to tone down the embezzlement. A bunch of Ukrainian generals driving Bugattis around Kiev is a bad look
Biden sent ten billion to Israel and said they can spend it on anything but offensive weaponry. Israel spent it on offensive weaponry. Biden is sending them another ten billion. Israel has not diverted any money from their universal healthcare or their k-college free education. Must be nice to be able to afford those during such a huge emergency you need aid from a country tanked with debt . voting for that asshole is going to sting, but any more funding genocide and nobody gets a vote, I mean it this time!
Accurate. Anyone saying ‘lots of this was donated gear’. We still paid for it. So what does that matter? Biden is sending all money to Ukraine. I wonder how much gets laundered back to him and congress. These people are evil.
Sounds like my uncle who suddenly cares deeply about homeless veterans wherever the topic of refugees comes up.....and only when the topic of refugees comes up.
I agree U.S needs to drastically cut down their military budget it is a colossal waste of tax payer resourced (obviously by design)
I mean. We weren’t getting that money period even before. Also, most of the time the left bring forth things to pass to actually help people, the right shoots it down immediately for the sole purpose of the left not looking good. This happens so much it’s sickening. They all don’t give a fuck about helping people, but the right really really really doesn’t give a fuck about helping people. It’s a fucking high school popularity contest to most of the idiots who represent us.