Agreed. I read the headline as "... US Airlines' ..." not "... US Airline's ..." and it seemed much more concerning. Instead it's a single airline I've never heard of. Looking them up, they are more established than I might have guessed (started as Casino Express Airlines 38 years ago, but current incarnation is only 4 years old), but also pretty small - roughly 1/100 the staff and 1/50 the fleet of United.
It’s really not. It just is short hand for a government deciding that something really important is worth throwing a lot of resources at. I’ve heard it used to describe plenty of things western governments do too.
I would love if there was some magic way I could share my passwords between my desktop and phone Firefox installs without a damn login or account, because I don't want a damn account.
Don't you have this already? Chrome and Firefox both have these. Devices have solid password manager integration, I use mine across 3 OSes and who knows how many devices.
Most of us didn’t vote for Trump. A slim majority of voters did, many of them because he is generally anti-war. (I’ve never liked or voted for him, but his desire to end wars is sincere.)
Many of his ardent supporters are confused as to what we’re doing in Venezuela right now and feel it’s the opposite of what they voted for.
You certainly don’t expect this level of surprises from someone’s second term, but the unprecedented path of his political career has certainly made it much different.
We’ve never lost a war but we’ve definitely failed to accomplish our objectives a few times along the way. We built the greatest hammer the world has ever seen then asked it to saw lumber and wondered why it failed.
That’s not true at all. We just don’t talk much about the ones we won.
Last year I went to Grenada, which we invaded in the 80s. They love us for it and have statues of Reagan on the island. Without us, they probably would have suffered the same fate as Cuba.
Where would South Korea be without our intervention? Etc.
Well, goes back to your definitions of “won” and “war”. Both are fairly blurry.
We definitely accomplished our objective in Grenada, which we invaded. I’d call it winning a war. There were boots on the ground who did what we sent them to do.
Korea was definitely a war and the ostensible purpose was to repel North Korea, which we and our allies did. If that’s not winning a war, what is it?
It’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to.
I don’t agree with Trump about much but he’s correct that the other liberal democracies have been more than happy to have us foot the bill for keeping the wolves at bay while looking down on us for doing it.
You have to consider how much it felt like progress for Europe to become less militaristic. The continent had been obliterated by war and then divided and filled with tanks during the cold war. For Europe, reducing military spending was seen as a welcome step away from the internal conflicts of the past. This is changing now, and while America may see this as a victory I find it hard to welcome headlines like “Germany to massively increase tank production” for all the negative historical echos.
I’d also be very surprised if US military expenditure decreased by a single cent as a result of increased spending by other NATO countries.
These are fair points and I get it, but the world of today is very different than the world of the early to mid 1900s. Lack of military is far from the only thing keeping Germany from attacking other European countries now. I feel reasonably confident that no matter how many tanks Germany builds, they won’t go rolling into France in my lifetime. What they may do is repel Russia (though even then, I am skeptical that any major nation will attack a NATO country.)
> It’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to.
That's just explaining why it's not worth the expense.
The reason what you're doing here - pointing to the national debt as a reason not to spend on a particular thing - is so fallacious is twofold:
1. There is always a national debt
2. There are always things we spend money on, nevertheless
What this fallacy avoids is the necessary question of prioritization. Some things we'd like to spend money on are more important than others. In truth, there's always money for any given thing. There's never money for everything we might desire to spend money on.
"Well, it’s worth it, we just can’t" is just nonsensical. It's either worth it or not, and making that decision requires some work.
It's a fallacy that's used by politicians all over the political spectrum, and it's highly useful for them. "We cannot possibly afford that thing you are asking for" is a lot less alienating to voters than "it's either that thing you are asking for, or this thing my donors have demanded."
It’s Hacker News, not an essay. It isn’t fallacious, it’s an abbreviation.
It would be possible for us to continue propping up our allies who seemed (until Trump made it clear we might just take our ball and go home) completely uninterested in meeting the defense obligations agreed to, but it would come at a cost that would bankrupt us without us making other major sacrifices. We shouldn’t have to make those sacrifices to ensure the security of people who claim to be allies but don’t meet their own contractual obligations. I don’t find myself agreeing with Trump on very much, but on this one, he’s not only right, he’s the only person who could have caused any change. No other politician of either party was ever going to convince Europe to significantly increase military spending, even with the threat of Russia at their door.
It’s fairly obvious that was meant, and your comment is basically just the standard hacker news “aaaaactually”
"Propping up our allies" in Europe and therefore having a great deal of sway in international affairs netted the United States a great deal of money for a very long time. There's a longer argument to be had (one directly related to what Piketty is saying) but clearly no desire for it, which is fine.
Look at the chart representing the US national debt (or debt to GDP) and pick a point at which you say "wow, that's when we started borrowing beyond our means." I rather doubt the date you pick will be anywhere close to the time eight decades ago when the US decided to start "propping up our allies." That worked well for us financially for a really long time, and the contributors to the current debt crisis lie elsewhere.
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