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| ▲ | roughly 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more. I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well. | | |
| ▲ | cvoss 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term. | | |
| ▲ | roughly 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily. | | |
| ▲ | mhb 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Surely? It's far from clear that the benefits of these initiatives would be net positive. | | |
| ▲ | roughly 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The poster above asserted maximizing ROI wasn't a goal - that, and I quote: > protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance Given the number of our citizens that die from, eg, preventable diseases, that seems like a far, far higher moral call than a war against Iran. |
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| ▲ | throwaw12 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance If you are relating protecting citizens with current situation, NO country dares to attack US citizens in the US soil. US, at this time, doesn't need to protect its citizens, especially in the US, from attacks by other nations, 0, none. No threat. | | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | On the contrary, by starting this war the government kmjust made terrorist attacks more likely. It's laughably naive to think this dumbfuck war has anything to do with Trump caring about regular Americans. |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I suggest that the US is putting its citizens at considerably more risk than they were in last week. | |
| ▲ | sheikhnbake 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's less about maximizing ROI and more about proper stewardship of resources taken by or provided to the government. | |
| ▲ | ikrenji 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | excuse me? the government's job is absolutely to maximize its ROI. I'm not paying taxes just for the money to be wasted | | | |
| ▲ | tstrimple 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's all about government efficiency for some folks until the time comes do drop bombs on girls schools. Then there is no need for ROI or smart spending. |
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| ▲ | s1artibartfast 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 99% of school lunches have zero ROI. Parents can provide them just fine. | |
| ▲ | hedora 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Everyone except the president is suggesting this will turn into a regional forever war. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | He was posting on Truth Social yesterday about how the US has enough materiel to fight forever. The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better - As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought
"forever," and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!). At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be. Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries. Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time, and our Country's money, GIVING everything to P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!) of Ukraine - Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth - And, while he gave so much of the super high end away (FREE!), he didn't bother to replace it. Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP Obviously he's full of shit but he's actively trying to balance the idea tht it will be over quickly wit the idea that the US has unlimited warmaking capacity. Neither is true of course. | |
| ▲ | mothballed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It already was a regional forever war. The US just decided to partake in the festivities. | |
| ▲ | baxtr 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The same "everyone" that said Ukraine will be taken in 2 weeks max? No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both. | | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is not a good take. Obviously no one knows, but there very serious and good reasons to believe this will not end easily or well. | |
| ▲ | hedora 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'd be curious to know what group thought that Ukraine would be taken in 2 weeks, but also thinks that the Iranian war will be a quagmire. Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest. | | |
| ▲ | baxtr 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You’re missing my point. No one can know at this stage. It’s called fog of war. Those who pretend offer easy explanations because people crave easy answers. It’s not satisfying to say: "it’s very complex, we can’t know, here are the odds". But that’s the current state of affairs. |
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| ▲ | sheikhnbake 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on. | |
| ▲ | throwaw12 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US! Can you imagine the scale of this number? 3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network | | |
| ▲ | hedora 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The Sentinel ICBM project (already at 2x initial budget, and set to balloon further) will be the most expensive project since the interstate freeway system was built. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/the-air-forces-new-icb... So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget. | | |
| ▲ | ikrenji 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | well yeah. the pentagon wastes 1 trilly per year. a lot of stuff can be paid for with that kind of money. |
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| ▲ | amelius 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How many subsidized meals would it represent if you only account for the kids that need one? | | |
| ▲ | roughly 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Honestly, a lot of these programs become substantially more expensive when you add the bureaucracy and hoops required by means testing. The economics are easier if you just give kids food and skip sorting out whether they deserve it or not. |
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| ▲ | TFYS 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction. | |
| ▲ | beepbooptheory 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | When would it ever be 2 meals a day? | | |
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| The question is fundamentally poorly formed, and as a consequence, so is the rebuttal. A state can pay for anything, since it doesn't have to be in a budget surplus. Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household. If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy. If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly. What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.) |
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| ▲ | roughly 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, I mean, it'd definitely be better if we could just tell the deficit weenies to fuck off, but given that we keep having to have that argument with everyone to the right of Bernie, it's nice to be able to throw it back in their faces in their own language, too. | |
| ▲ | collinmcnulty 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is not exactly true on the scale of these interventions. The state can't run out of money but it does run out of the time and talent of its people, the resources of its land, and the patience of its partners. State capacity is a real limit, and where we direct the money is a pretty strong proxy for where we spend these, the true resources of the state. We don't pay for bombs with dollars, we pay for them with schools, roads, and hospitals. | |
| ▲ | s3p 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Where do you see a question? | | | |
| ▲ | ikrenji 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | he was saying the state should be paying the school free lunches, what are you on about | | |
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