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Comment by strangesmells02 | Hacker News Reader

The United States makes an astounding amount of money in taxes already.

Why isn't the emphasis on using the current tax dollars more efficiently?

Every government institution that I have been a part of has massive amounts of waste and not on a small scale either..but on a large scale. universities, scientific research labs, government grants, defense industry, bailing out banks who gamble with client money, etc.

They lost billions in Iraq. No one knows where it went.

We're giving billions to Ukraine with zero strategic interest to the United States.

Bills pass constantly in Congress with funding riders that have absolutely nothing to do with the bill itself.

We don't need more taxes in America.

We need some accountability for where our current money taken in taxes is being allocated.

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>They lost billions in Iraq

You're absolutely correct, but I just want to emphasize the scale: trillion. That's over a thousand billions. It's an amount that's so huge it's truly hard to comprehend and visualize.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_W...

Exactly. They spent Trillions which is insane.

What I was referring to is like 12 billion just unaccounted for!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_misappropriat....

Well you seem to be making two parallel points. It's common and uncontroversial to rail against bureaucratic inefficiency. But you sully that point by mixing it in with less obvious areas of "waste" like Ukraine. There is accountability for Ukraine aid. The government is very open about that aid and there are competing politicians who are openly against it. The electorate can vote for their preferred policy if it's that important to them.

You seem to argue that it's only accountability if it results in your ideal policy. I disagree - after all, if instead you got your way then would I be able to argue that the politicians weren't held accountable for throwing Ukraine to the wolves? Hardly.

Syria, Yemen, Crimea, Darfur, Rwanda...we throw countries to the wolves all the time. In many cases the USA IS the wolf. I think the USA killed half a mil innocent civilians in Iraq part 1 and 2? The people in charge clearly arent hung up on noble intentions.

Russia has the economy of Italy so its not even remotely a threat militarily or economically. They have nukes but no matter what happens in Ukraine it doesnt get rid of those.

The US exports more oil than it imports so its not really oil fields.

So I dont understand the strategic interest of Ukraine.

I think our tax money could be used for something better.

If its your view that the billions given to fight the Ukraine is an efficient use of resources thats cool. Ignore that part of my post. It wasnt meant to start a flame war, I am open to friendly discussion though

> So I dont understand the strategic interest of Ukraine.

How is it not in Americas strategic interest to decimate its biggest military rival, whilst committing a small fraction of its yearly military budget?.

At the same time it reduces Russian military exports and makes them look incredibly weak.

It also helps defend democracy in Eastern Europe.

> biggest military rival

Russia has the economy the size of Italy. Three American states have bigger economies than Russia. Were more advanced than them on every level technologically economically militarily. The only thing they have is nukes which they'll still have no matter how Ukraine turns out.

We would wipe the floor with them in a head on military conflict.

> defend democracy

That's been the propaganda reason for previous wars...

> Russia has the economy the size of Italy. Three American states have bigger economies than Russia. Were more advanced than them on every level technologically economically militarily. The only thing they have is nukes which they'll still have no matter how Ukraine turns out.

That doesn't mean they aren't a military rival, Russias been building up there military stocks for decades, and inherited huge stockpiles as the successor state to the USSR.

That stockpile pile is being so quickly decimated that Russia is starting to dig into there stockpiles of tanks that are 60+ years old.

> That's been the propaganda reason for previous wars...

In what way is helping a country defend itself from a brutal imperialistic invasion not helping defend democracy?.

> helping a country defend itself from a brutal imperialistic invasion not helping defend democracy?.

It's not anything that I'm willing to work a few extra hours a week to pay for.

That kind of attitude and appeasement is exactly what lead us to WW2.

World wars are over. Countries have Nukes now.

> We're giving billions to Ukraine with zero strategic interest to the United States.

This is a bewilderingly head-in-the-sand assertion.

I haven't seen any evidence showing that Ukraine provides any strategic interest to the United States.

I'm open to being wrong if I see any compelling evidence.

It's significantly weakening one of the US's greatest geopolitical enemies for a small fraction of the US defense budget.

Even if you don't care about the US's geopolitical aims and want to reduce the defense budget, eliminating Russia as a military threat is the best justification for reducing the defense budget and stabilizing European democracy.

Russia is not a military threat though. It has an economy the size of Italy. Three US states each have bigger economies than Russia. The US blew past it on every level militarily, technologically, and economically decades ago.

It has nukes but Ukraine doesnt solve that.

>Russia is not a military threat though

Community Notes: Russia is literally invading a US ally right now.

So what?

USA is not the world police.

If there's no strategic interest or benefit I don't think I should have to work a few extra hours per week to help pay for that war.

>no strategic interest or benefit

There is a lot of strategic interest in the US helping against Russia.

>I don't think I should have to work a few extra hours per week to help pay for that war.

Then vote for different politicians or move countries.

These current politicians are continuing to skyrocket the national debt.

I don't have to vote for new politicians. I just have to wait for the dollar to collapse.

I suppose that not allowing Russia to massively increase their power is an important benefit well worth billions to the US.

I don't understand how Russia is considered powerful. Its got an economy the size of Italy. Three US states each have economies larger than Russia.

The US is light years ahead of Russia, economically, militarily and technologically.

Two competing partial solutions to fiscal health?

Why not both.

I don't know whats a more intractable problem making the government more efficient or taxing "wealth".

I'm open to both but my gut instinct tells me that there would be less unintended side effects by just making the government more efficient.

However, I can imagine massive problems trying to do either.

Less side effects. But also much harder to implement. Especially when the people with the power to change things are incentivized not to change it.

So let just settle for the next best thing while we ride this clown show for as long as it can last. Because let be honest, the US gov is still doing an OK job compared to some truly dysfunctional ones out there. Not many Americans are dying to emigrate yet.

I think people come here despite the government.

If they wanted a good government they would move to some country in Europe which pays slightly more taxes but they get way more value for it.

I don't think the US government is doing a good job at all for the amount of taxes we pay.

As someone from europe let me assure you that the government also provides shit value for all the taxes we pay. The majority of taxe money get's just wasted and that is even the best case, worst case it is used for active suppression and attack of people and their rights.

It's hard evidence that shows European healthcare systems being more effective yet costing much less.

European countries have safety nets much more rigorous than the United States.

Education is much cheaper in many European countries than the US.

Also a wealth tax is pretty hard to implement itself. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37989924

There are practical limits to efficiency. I have worked in both the public and private sector in my decades long career, and I can't say that private efficiency is that much better than public efficiency.

I disagree. Maybe you've worked in more efficient government agencies, but I've worked in both sides and the private industry groups Ive worked with arent perfect but are massively more efficient.

Or perhaps you have just worked for more efficient private industry groups.

There is waste in private enterprise to be sure. The key difference is that that mostly punishes people who voluntarily invested and can choose to stop investing if they get fed up with it. That's (practically?) not at all the case in terms of federal government waste.

What makes that the key difference? Doesn’t it depend on what you care about?

The voluntary part is the key difference from a libertarian perspective, but it is not the most important bit if your goal is to, say, minimize suffering for the worst off in society.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and now Palestine. The blood thirsty war mongerers must keep it going. Disgusting.

These taxes would only affect an incredibly small amount of the population, so it's pretty much invisible to anyone but billionaires. We definitely need accountability more than taxing billionaires though. Most billionaires would probably settle just under the threshold that they get hit with these taxes. There is also plenty of infrastructure to hold more assets without it counting towards your billionaire status. It may actually become an unenforceable tax, but I don't think we know yet.

Ukraine is destroying Russian military equipment and killing its soldiers; I think that's a strategic win to weaken Russia. Plus the US frankly needed to claw back some of its reputation after Trump, so aligning against an invader helps that while avoiding outright war.

Russia's economy is the size of Italy.

The United States would utterly destroy them and any other country (except mayyybe China) in an outright military battle. Like it wouldn't even be close. No help from Ukraine needed.

We have 11 aircraft carriers here in America. No other country has more than 2 aircraft carriers. Our military dwarfs other militaries both technologically, financially, and in sheer power. Just spitballing but I bet we could probably reduce our military strength by 50% and still beat almost every country in the world.

We struggled with asymmetrical guerrilla warfare back in Vietnam so that could be a problem but in a head-to-head battle like world war II, we're unbeatable. I'm also assuming they've advanced quite a bit in knowledge/technology of taking on asymmetrical geurilla warfare nowadays.

However, the massive force equalizer is Russian nuclear weapons and I don't see Ukraine getting rid of any of those.

> However, the massive force equalizer is Russian nuclear weapons and I don't see Ukraine getting rid of any of those.

I learned something new today! Apparently Ukraine used to be the third largest nuclear power in the world, then handed them all back to Russia.

> The former Soviet Union had its nuclear program expanded to only four of its republics: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. After its dissolution in 1991, Ukraine became the third largest nuclear power in the world and held about one third of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, delivery system, and significant knowledge of its design and production.[2] Ukraine inherited about 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 nuclear warheads remained on Ukrainian territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...

Interesting. did not know that. Looks like they possibly destroyed some too back in the 90s?

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