We are having our cake (pumping cash into our defense industry) and eating it to (replenishing aging arsenals, advertising to prospective arm buyers, get invaluable real-world data on how our weapons work, decimating the military of a chief geopolitical rival).
There is no downside here form the US perspective. Every dollar spent is returned in ways that no other expenditure could replicate.
If you're talking about pumping cash into our defense industry, the whole point is that's taking production away from elsewhere. Defense is getting bigger, something else is getting smaller in the short term.
Sure, the whole thing has some some ancillary benefits, like getting real-world data, or "advertising to prospective arms buyers", but those benefits don't make up anywhere near what we're spending. If we only wanted those benefits, we would get them far cheaper by themselves.
So no, there are absolutely downsides. This is the very broken glass fallacy that I referred to. I'll repeat the final paragraph of the original for you to read -- you may want to read the whole Wikipedia article though:
> It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Again -- I totally support what we're doing, for the record. But money doesn't come free. We shouldn't pretend like this is all almost for free or something. It's not.
In your analogy, we are paying to help Ukraine go after the kids throwing stones at windows.
> Again -- I totally support what we're doing, for the record. But money doesn't come free. We shouldn't pretend like this is all almost for free or something. It's not.
Yes they did. That's basically the entire point the article is trying to make.
That my original content was refuting.
This seems to assume the economy is a fixed-size pie. Is that a valid assumption?
This arms production isn't adding to economic growth to increase the size of the pie -- it's merely shifting it. Because its outputs are being sent abroad and not in a way that increases the economic efficiency of anything.
If this money were being invested in American business that built products and services sold to Americans, then it would be part of domestic economic growth and the pie would get bigger. But it's not. It's just shifting money instead. The pie size is fixed here.
Why should we assume money diverted from one industry to the defense industry is not a net again for the US economy?
Clearly you're better off if you have an intact window and you can spend your six francs on something you don't already have. But once your window is broken, replacing it is an equally viable economic decision compared with other uses of your six francs. The window breaking represents an economic loss, but replacing it might actually be the most economically advantageous decision of the ones available ("I wish it wasn't broken" not being an actual option).
In the case of the Russia invasion of Ukraine, Russia already broke the metaphorical window by throwing a giant rock through it. So now the relevant economic benefits discussion of sending weapons to Ukraine to use to shoot Russians vs buying everyone in America a pony should be framed (hah) post broken window, not from some hypothetical perspective where keeping an intact window is an option.
I totally agree there are economic downsides, nobody should be arguing they don't exist. But I think it's important to make it clear the economic downsides are from Russia starting the war. Once they did so, I think it is reasonable to argue our best economic response is to help Ukraine defend themselves.
If most of the money is going to modernise the US military while freeing up old stock to send to Ukraine, that’s arguably money that would eventually have to have been spent anyway.
Windows do need to be replaced eventually. If you’re replacing an unbroken window a few years before it would’ve been strictly necessary, the cost associated with that early replacement isn’t very high.
Considering how attractive US military exports are becoming, I’m not convinced that the spending is a net negative for the US economy in the long term.
Is this great to support allies, defend Europe, send a message to China? Of course. These are all great things.
But the point is, it costs the amount of money we're spending. The article is arguing that the money somehow comes back to America. It doesn't. It's not free. All of that production capacity is going to arms manufacture, instead of the economically productive things it would have gone to otherwise. It's not "all upside". It costs something.
If I had a time machine, I'd tell the British, French and Americans to assist the Czechoslovaks against the Germans instead of strongarming them into capitulation. It would have saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Many historials believe that without the boost from absorbing the Czechoslovak military, it would not have been possible to blitzkreig across France and the rest of Europe.
But it costs money. That's the point here. The same as assisting the Czechoslovaks, in your example, would have cost money.
The article is trying to make it sound like the money comes back to us, and therefore it's free or something like that. It's not. I'm certainly hoping it's a good long-term geopolitical investment, but it's not free money.
The history of the US defense stockpile post WWII is relevant here .. if new things aren't regularly built the skills pipeline withers, knowledge is lost, old weapons 'rot' as explosives become unstable and the last person that built those particular FPGA target aquisition and guidance cards retires.
For better or worse the US defence industry operates by pushing tanks and shells out of it's back end while building fresh goods to stack on the shelves, all the while employing a good number of US citizens and indirectly pumping money into early tech education.
The question here is if not Ukraine (for the "old stuff") then where?
A much bigger question goes to whether such a bemonth of a weapons R&D | production industry that occupies such a large percentage of the US economy should be scaled back by a factor of five (and still be larger than any other countries).
Even necessary wars are a waste.
Running away and letting Russia’s baseless aggression continue unchecked will lead to more war in the long run, both from Russia and China.
Because Russia started the war, we are now faced with paying the cost of winning it or of paying the cost of losing it. We choose to pay the one that we think will be less, _but it is still a cost we were forced to pay by someone else_. It is a net harm to us either way! (Not to mention the harm to Ukraine!)
We shouldn’t be glad that we gave Ukraine money and they are spending it with defense companies based in the US. Even if we take some solace in that fact, all it does is shift the money around; it doesn’t grow our economy. Just because it could be worse does not mean it is a net benefit.
> There is no downside here form the US perspective. Every dollar spent is returned in ways that no other expenditure could replicate.
Suppose we gave "American aid." Instead of giving military items to Ukraine, we pick the names of 10 millions of Americans out a hat, and buy them things. Only restriction is it has to be made in America.
This has all the same effects on the US economy as military aid to Ukraine. It pays the salaries of some people in the US. It uses some raw materials that we have to buy. It costs us in taxes. It diverts some labor to whatever we're buying for the American consumers, and away from all other industries (this can be inflationary).
But the difference is, at the end of the day, those 10 millions Americans have something they didn't have before. America is slightly richer than if we'd given stuff to Ukraine.
So the aid to Ukraine is more beneficial to the US than if we were giving Ukraine money to buy Chinese goods, but still less directly beneficial to the US than if we spent the money on ourselves.
P.S. Like the grandparent post, I'm not bothered by this. I think it's appropriate to aid Ukraine, but it has a real cost to the US. I'm just bothered by the fact that you're so loudly getting the economics wrong.
I already said there are absolutely ancillary benefits. But that doesn't mean it's not costing money. It's costing a lot of money! The article is trying to make the point that the money is just coming back to the American economy and therefore, in a sense, isn't "costing" us. But that's false. We are spending real money.
Is the money worth it to affect the war effort? Of course. But it's real money being spent. It's not "coming back to us".
Here is a chart showing US-Ukrainian trade before the invasion: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/country-papers/2618-2019-s...
Ukraine was a growing trade partner with a trade balance that benefited the US and all those numbers go to 0 and stay there if it become a Russian puppet state. That's just one of many examples of how these arms transfers can provide a real, material gain to the US economy, which, as I have stated, cannot be replicated by spending money in any other way. It's not some fluffy "ancillary" benefit.
But that's not what the article is arguing, and that's not what I'm arguing against.
Like I said, you're having a totally separate conversation. But you're framing it as some kind of rebuttal to what I'm saying. And it's just not.
The US want a strong army, a debatable policy, but that's how it is. A strong army needs to be maintained, otherwise, well, look at Russia. And this is done by keeping people active, both soldiers and suppliers. If instead of building weapons, they decided to give random Americans what they want, like cars, computers, houses, whatever, sure, there will be some happier Americans, but also a weaker army, that may not be fit for the what they may be needed for in the future.
But from the article:
> This makes it “a misnomer” to call the $68 billion he calculates we have spent to arm Ukraine “aid.”
I really think the article, and people commenting in this thread, are blurring the lines between idea "this might be good for US military preparedness" (arguably true) with "this is a free lunch because it's paying american workers" (just false).
To summarize my position as unambiguously as possible: there may be second-order benefits, but aid to Ukraine is an economic cost to the US, not a free lunch. If you want to argue for non-economic benefits, I'm not saying anything in this thread that contradicts you.
2) how many would it be if we were not providing them with assistance? Do you think they're just going to roll over and capitulate if the US turns off the tap? They didn't do that in the first few days of the war when they had very little assistance and practically none of their allies believed they would last the week, why would that happen now?
Seems like it? What else would they do?
Just look at what's happening, they are going to end up losing anyway despite the amount of money that the West has been giving them.
(4 days ago) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/at-what-cost-ukraine-st...
https://meduza.io/amp/en/news/2023/11/25/head-of-ukraine-del...
Meduza is a pro-western publication, blocked in Russia, and can in no way be called a tool of Russian propaganda.
That article doesn't make the claim that you claim it does. In fact it actually makes an opposite claim.
"Moreover, there was “no trust” from Ukrainian authorities that the Russian side would follow through."
Russia has betrayed their "deals" with Ukraine many many many times. Of course Ukrainian and "Western" authorities have no trust that Russia will uphold them "this time".
YOU cannot claim that Ukraine "continues to fight mostly because the West tells them to" while completely ignoring their actual opinions on the matter. You do not appear to have actually seeked out their opinions on this matter. And their opinions on the matter are clear:
60% of the Ukrainian population supports continuing to fight. That's slightly down from 70% a few months ago, but still pretty high. Around this time last year, it was around 90%. There is and was a strong desire to continue resisting. To claim that "the West makes them" is fucking farcical, and yes, Russian propaganda, for which you have provided no substantiation.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/512258/ukrainians-stand-behind-...
And by the way, the article alludes to the exact opposite "betrayal": the peace talks were a sham to get Russia to pull back from Kiev.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23427
It's literally in their constitution not to hold an election during wartime! There are legal issues with doing so! Even disregarding the practical issues!
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/11/ukraine-democracy-warti...
Stop pretending you have any idea what Ukrainians are thinking right now. You're obviously extrapolating from your own interpretation of headlines and not even bothering to look for a primary source or even reading the details of whatever sources you are reading - that is completely absurd.