Accurate except for the “instead” part. Road maintenance comes from local taxes, whereas military aid comes from federal taxes.
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.
Really hoping self-healing asphalt tech advances quickly in the next decade.
That must be nice.
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
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.
has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists.
In other words… it upsets the rich people that got us into this mess.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are aware of the fact that central banks are usually independant institutions and whenever the government meddles with them, that countries currency gets fucked by the market?
Also in todays interconnected financial and real economy there is only so much control any government canexert iver its currency, because the currencies values is significantly determined by the exchange from imported and exported goods.
While both points are true, that still doesn’t change whether taxes fund these programs.
Sure there are other complexities like “how much is too much? Can we just keep doing it forever?” but those questions have more to do with the labor force of said country and their exports, and almost nothing to do with their tax rates.
The central banks control the amount of money based on the tasks they were given for their operation. That does not relate directly to the way the government is spending or taking money.
It is simply not the governments taxes and spending that is making or deleting money. It is the system of how the private banks can borrow or deposit money at the central bank with a certain interest rate,that is making or deleting money.
And youll have noticed that it is not the central bank granting loans to the government but bonds being sold on the market for the government to take debt.
MMT is techbros just trying to say, “don’t look behind the microvaluation curtain, it doesn’t matter.” But in the amounts that they’re trading on, it absolutely does matter.
It’s actually anarchocommunists mostly.
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.
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?
There would be no Hamas if israël hadn’t invoked it. It was a response against the occupation and slaughtering israël had been doing since more than 70 years ago until now.
Now THAT’S overly simplifying things to the point of a flat out lie.
You act like every nation there (and beyond) hasn’t wanted to kill Jews since before modern Israel.
Giving a different name to Hamas wouldn’t change anything.
The Palestinian people voted for Hamas after Israel removed their settlements and ended the occupation of Gaza. Israel withdrawing from Palestinian territory was not considered to be an act of peace, they saw it as an act of weakness and a sign they should vote for fascist strongmen to fight even harder. Maybe you’re too young to have been around when that went down and your internet research didn’t explain the circumstances in which Hamas took power. Gaza turned to fascism, leaving no real option for peace.
The emotional fervor that fascist propaganda provides is attractive to the young. But it’s the same story we’ve seen before. Fascists take power, then because they can’t stop having destructive conflicts their country ends up destroyed.
Hate destroys everything. Doesn’t really matter what the justification for that hatred is, it destroys people and countries. Try not to let it destroy you, ok?
after Israel removed their settlements and ended the occupation of Gaza.
You seem to be living in an alternate universe where those things actually happened.
Here’s the reality: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Also what does fascism mean? That’s a rhetorical question by the way, we all know you’re going to Google it and then delusionally shoehorn your interpretation in it.
Maybe you shouldn’t use those psychopaths are a political props to validate your political position.
Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
The symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, The Hill, October 22, 2023
Netanyahu’s policy, however, was in direct opposition to most of the Israeli defense and security establishment, which viewed cooperation with the PA to be in Israel’s security interest. Fans of the Netflix series “Fauda” will recognize that cooperation. Most security experts felt the PA needed to be strengthened, not weakened.
Since returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu made no secret of his desire to keep Hamas and the PA apart for his own political purposes. For example, in 2017, the PA and Hamas were negotiating a possible takeover by the PA of civilian control of the Gaza Strip. Even though the United States and Egypt supported this reconciliation, Netanyahu was adamantly opposed — lest it empower the PA.
Why Netanyahu helped fund Hamas and how that backfired for Israel, India Today, November 1, 2023
“Whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu as saying in 2019.
Prince Turki al-Faisal’s accusation against Israel comes days after a report by Reuters, citing a source privy to the matter, stated that Qatar’s financial aid to the Palestinian families in Gaza passes through Israel. The funds are transferred electronically from Qatar to Israel, following which Israeli and United Nations (UN) officials hand-carry the same over the border to the Gaza Strip.
How Netanyahu’s Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel, CBC News, October 28, 2023
Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that “if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas’s strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister.”
In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu’s “strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.”
Netanyahu’s current finance minister, West Bank settler Belazel Smotrich, explained the approach to Israel’s Knesset channel in 2015: “Hamas is an asset, and (Palestinian Authority leader) Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden.”
“But each time Netanyahu was asked, ‘Why don’t you negotiate with Abbas,’ he would say, ‘I can’t negotiate with a Palestinian Authority that doesn’t represent all Palestinians.’ And so he would use Hamas and this division to justify his absolute objection to any negotiated peace agreement.”
“Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas, as though it was an environmental organization. This is a policy of submission to terror,” he said, adding that Israel was paying Hamas “protection money” to maintain the calm.
The prime minister also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
not fixing potholes have been around longer
They haven’t been fixing potholes since 1949? Those potholes must be huge.
Yup, longer than the US has been sending aid to Israel, which actually started in the 1970s. Sorry for introducing facts into your ragefest.
LOL! Let me rephrase, then…
They haven’t been fixing potholes since the 1970s? Those potholes must be huge.
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little. Ho hum.
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little. Ho hum.
While you may boast about valuing ignorance over knowledge, there are others on this site that might appreciate learning a little history. So my time may have been wasted on you, but not wasted for the others people on this site.
Being proud over being a waste of other people’s time LOL.
Let me rephrase that for the terminally bewildered, then…
To think… you wasted all that energy to achieve so little.
Ho hum.
Ok keyboard warrior, maybe you should turn off your computer and go outside.
Not actually all that good at OSINT, are you?
Try thousands of years bc. This didn’t “start” in 1949.
No, it started in 1949.
The idea that there’s anything coherent about Zionist justifications for a modern-day Israel based on thousands-year old scripture is pure and absolute white supremacist and antisemitic hogwash.
Yeah, but the money that should be fixing potholes, and paying teachers, and providing healthcare has been going to war for as long as the USA has been around.
TBH, The US pays more for healthcare than defense. Hell social security is the number 1 expense.
It’d be way more effective if the road pictured wasn’t absolutely perfect and pothole free
For the meme, maybe, but IRL maybe the road is no as nice as that one section.
This isn’t a problem if your thought process is slightly more sophisticated than an 8 year old’s.
Someone can’t take a joke
Can’t imagine what about the subject matter would fill anyone with anything less than the giggles.
Love the false equivalence. Your city taxes can’t fix the potholes because your federal taxes pay for a military.
Those federal taxes cannot be allocated to state funds which cannot then be allocated to city funds to maintain roads?
No because they must be spent to kill Palestinian children. Get your Merican priorities straight.
You’re not wrong, but original point could still be right, depending in the road. There are many federal highways and interstates, where this equivalence makes sense. However most other roads are state, county or city owned.
Federal tax funds the maintenance of the Interstate Highways.
Where do you see an interstate highway in the pic?
Mobile billboards go where people are. I saw a Pro-Life billboard on a similar truck, where it was parked was not linked to the content on the sign.
and the interstate highways aren’t that bad in terms of shape tho?
We send $5,000,000,000 in outright charity to Israel, not including what our legislators are about to fork over as soon as they get their stock portfolios situated in the best ways to profit from it.
That’s $100,000,000 per state that could be used to fix potholes or help Americans in other ways, but we’re silly geese who 100% support neglecting our own people in favor of war, so we’re getting what we voted for.
It’s been a closer to 3B for a while. Against a budget of $1.7T. It’s not even a rounding error.
It’s always cute how warmongers pretend that those billions wouldn’t make a huge difference for struggling Americans.
I don’t know what in that sentence gives you the confidence to call me a warmonger.
And also, no, it wont really. Unless you redefine “huge difference”. We spend $522B on social/economic assistance programs at the federal level. So a
0.005%0.5% increase? Hardly a huge difference.how did you get 0.005%? 3 x 100 / 522 is a 0.575 percent increase
3/522, no reason to multiply by 100. Not sure why you are.You’re right my bad.
that’s how percentages work lol. if you have 100 usd, 100.5 usd would be a 0.5% increase not a 0.005 percent increase (which you would get by dividing 0.5/100, right?)
You’re quite right, I’m a dummy.
Yeah, just that 3 billion comes out to $60,000,000 if divided equally between all 50 states. Instead it’s being pissed away on other countries’ wars.
By any stretch that is huge.
You’re absolutely using the warmonger’s logic to support your position here, so no need to clutch your pearls.
Except that it’s half a percent. It’s another half a penny on every dollar.
It’s not huge by any stretch.
Exactly. Israel already received tremendous amount of money way before the conflict. And yet, US Congress voted to allow more military aid package to Israel. The money could have gone to those who need them more, both to domestic and to Ukraine who are still fighting the Russians.
Israel already received tremendous amount of money way before the conflict.
The conflict has been ongoing since 1949.
US sends money to Palestine, too. So does much of Europe.
Isn’t this a photoshop? Boring Dystopia is a lot more poignant when the content it shows has some reality to it.
While the point the image is trying to make does have quite a bit of reality behind it, the shopping is to its detriment.
Just put the babies in the potholes.
Baby bones don’t have a high enough density and material integrity for that to be an appropriate solution.
You’re not using enough. You’ve gotta re-pack the hole once compacted a bit.
Exactly. It’s like he has no idea how to build a road at all.
What if we reinforce them with rebar?
Mr. Swift over here…
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You’ve clearly never been to Wyoming.
One of my favorite facts (factoids?) is that if everyone in the world stood shoulder to shoulder we’d all fit inside the single city of Paris.
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Also, to billions would likely die due to the enduing infrastructure crisis.
Sweet Photoshop champ.
The u.s destroyed half my country, killed tons of my people, bought up the wreckage and now owns us. But none of you gave a shit, cause the news didn’t tell you to care
Yeah that doesn’t really narrow it down.
That’s true for a lot of the states, let alone other extant sovereign nations.
And what country is that?
According to his comment history, the US.
Sounds about right
How are we supposed to know if the news doesn’t tell us?
What country
Tupac cares if don’t nobody else care
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This is 100% how it works for most of the people here in America.
It’s why they’re rooting for another hundred billion of our tax dollars to be sent to other country’s wars even though they’re living with a 30-50% cost of living increase under Biden, who has no intention of sending us our own money in the form of aid.
Sorry to hear you did not get the option to become a vassal state and a US military base like so many others. It did give us a few good years at the cost of corrupting our societies and souls.
Big daddy if you’re watching I’m only joking, I love you with all my heart and bow at your magnificence!
Nah, they didn’t care because it didn’t give them a chance to be Anti Semitic. All of these from the river to the sea chants are explicitly calling for a fucking genocide and people are proudly lining up to scream it.
Wild times we live in. There are significant human loses happening in Yemen, China, and a host of places right now but this group of terrorists in Gaza with their supporters in Iran have figured out the tik tok algorithm a whole lot better the poor people of Yemen or the Uyghurs ever did so those people are simply forgotten.
Well gotta spend money to make money I guess
This is literally true; heads are comfy in pits of sand.
What does this abstraction contribute to the discourse? Does it rile up support for fixing potholes? Does it rile up support for Palestine?
My feeling is it obfuscates the issues and makes progress seem impossible.
It draws attention to the fact that we are paying money to shoot missiles at innocent Palestinian children.
Ok, but is this the first time? For as long as I’ve been alive there has been pot holes and there has been discontent in the middle east. So if anyone was wondering, yes, I know america has a failing infrastructure and is waging war across the world. In fact, I believe this is common knowledge.
Not everything is about you.
Thus, the common knowledge part.
People are always mad about pot holes and military spending where have you been?
This is my point! At least I know one person gets it.
Perhaps the frustration is exacerbated by the lack of progress relative to the amount of money spent and time since these issues have manifested. It’s also particularly visible in our increasingly globalized and interconnected world.
Weird take.
What’s so weird? Watch last week tonight every week. The problems are known. It’s the solution that we have to tell people about.
Awe, look at you using all of this weeks vocabulary words in a sentence. A++
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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.
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.
