On Relief

[hkellick]

It's interesting. There's been a lot of hub bub about the fact that many countries across the world are contributing to the effort to help out in Southeast Asia, including the U.S.A. What makes this interesting is that there's a great deal of criticism that the U.S., the richest nation in the world (?), is not giving as much as they could.

My first response is "Of course not. We can't even afford to put proper armor on our soldiers."

Until it struck me.
Maybe the U.S. isn't half as rich as we'd all like to think.

No, seriously. I know it goes against common sense and what you read about, but what if the U.S. is hurting and trying not to show it.
We went to war, but we can't afford to give our soldiers good armor, good health care etc.
It doesn't seem to be going towards making sure the intelligence we're gathering overseas is better.
Most of our education reforms are badly underfunded. Hell, most of our schools are badly underfunded.
Even George Bush has said that Social Security is in trouble.
We are running the biggest national debt we've ever run. Ever.

So.. seriously.. here's the question. Where's the money? What's the money drain?
Sure, it could be the tax breaks. We're definately losing money there.
It could be the war. I understand very little about where money going towards "The war effort" really goes. It's obviously NOT to the common soldier.

Where *IS* the money?

I have no idea what the answer is. I'd definately like to know the answer, though.

Comments

[lainiest.livejournal.com]

The money's probably somewhere in the ... what is it, three trillion dollar debt we have going now?

[lite.livejournal.com]

But WHY are we running up a three trillion dollar (or whatever) debt? Where's the money going that we are suddenly so far in the red?

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

The war. And we still can't afford body armor.

Oh, and Halliburton.

[tikva.livejournal.com]

It's important to keep in mind that everything's relative. What you make in a week (possibly in a day) is considerably more than what many of the people in these countries see in a year. The standard of living here is on a completely different scale. One trip to the supermarket will tell you why the US is considered such a rich country.

[mythagon.livejournal.com]

The US is extremely rich, but the money is not necessarily in the government. Our GDP is twice that of the next closest nation (China), but I think a lot of the cash is in the hands of very very few people. Think of how many actors and business leaders and CEO's are worth obscene amounts of cash. Sure, they are all over the news all the time, but in proportion to the rest of the country, we're talking about less than 1% of the US population. Together they could probably pay off the national debt a few times over, but I don't think they ever would. I wouldn't were I that rich. I've seen how the government handles cash.

A note about the giving: the one thing that other nations are not taking into account with their aid calculations is the individual contributions. In a lot of European countries, they are taxed significantly higher then we are giving their governments more cash to play with (and they get things like universal healthcare and good education systems in return). The average US citizen isn't taxed as much, so we have more personal wealth. I think the majority of US aid is going to come from people on their computers clicking the 'donate with paypal now!' buttons. How you track that I have no idea, but I bet it will be significant.

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the money is all going to a handful of influential CEOs and into some sizeable offshore bank accounts...

I got this in an email...

[angiepenguin.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about figures for the rest of what government does, but here's some figures I got in an email about the war in Iraq.


Subject: War figures

Source: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy/display_acts.php?regioncountry=-Iraq

The Occupation of Iraq (With An Iraqi Face)
Some figures (as of 3 September 2004):

Total USA troops in Iraq 137,000
Total UK troops in Iraq 11,000
Total non USA - UK troops in Iraq 15,500
Sorties flown by USA - UK 20,753
Cruise missiles launched (at a cost of $1 million each) 800
Precision guided ("smart") munitions used 18,467
Non-guided ("dumb") munitions used 9,251
Cluster bombs used (each breaking into 200 bomblets - 5% fail to explode on impact) 900 +
Authorised strikes against media facilities 10
Number of mines in Iraq 8 million
Iraqi military deaths 6,370
Iraqi civilian deaths 40,000 +
Iraqi civilian injuries (Baghdad) 8,000 +
Iraqi civilians missing (Baghdad) 1,000 +
Kurdish deaths 75 +
USA - UK military deaths (during the invasion) 137
USA - UK military personel missing (during the invasion) 4
USA - UK military personel injured (during the invasion) 473
Missing or dead journalists 30
Iraqi prisoners of war 9,000 +
USA - UK military personel killed after end of invasion (1 May 2003) 1100 +
USA military personel wounded 5,140
Non USA - UK - Iraqi military personel killed after end of invasion (1 May 2003) 39
Cost of war to USA $126,100 million
Number of oil wells under USA and UK control 900
Cost of the 1200 USA-appointed Iraqi Survey Team (looking for weapons) $300 million
Percentage of population that had access to safe water before the invasion 85%
Percentage of population that now has access to safe water 60%
Number of weapons of mass destruction found 0
Number of military funerals attended by the USA president, George W Bush 0

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: War figures - (some more figures)

I have no reason to doubt these figures,...except for the one typo;...the war has cost $126.1 billion, not million. I know,...because each one of those Tomahawk cruise missles cost just under a cool million, and each of the 9,000+ smart munitions about $35,000!

And I could not resist taking the total cost of the war and dividing that by the number of oil wells stolen. I came up with $140.1 million dollars as the price per well we paid to steal them (separate from the lives expended, of course). I'm no commodities economist,...but it seems to me that even if we never gave a dime of the revenue from these wells back to the Iraqis, even at $50 a barrel it would take 2.8 million barrels of oil per well before the cost of the war were to be ammortized;...and actually that's not accurate, because it doesn't factor in extraction/production/distribution/shipping costs. So it might be DOUBLE that!!

I wonder what the cost of searching for, finding and developing a well like those we stole costs in the free market world, and what sort of savings were realized by our invasion, if in fact there is one?

Cruise missiles launched (at a cost of $1 million each) 800

Cost of war to USA $126,100 million
Number of oil wells under USA and UK control 900

[positron.livejournal.com]

As far as government revenue goes, where the money is going is a matter of public record (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/).

But with respect to our soldiers, it was my understanding that it's not so much that we can't afford the armor as much as it is that either (1) we can't produce various types of armor fast enough, or (2) that certain departments don't have that money in their budget specifically. The fact that we don't have the production capacity is not due to money, but rather a long-term downward spiral in warmaking ability, both here and abroad.

Education is a different issue in the U.S. compared to most other first-world countries, as it is not totally centrally administered and funded. Municipal, State and Federal governments all have their hands on each school, resulting in a clusterfuck of administration and funding, with teachers unions thrown into the mix just to assure it remains a complicated enough problem. Funding alone does not make a school worse or better. A public school in a bad neighborhood can spend ten times as much per student as a private school in a rich neighborhood, and still turn out a far worse education. Education as an administrative and cultural issue, not a funding issue.

Not having enough money has never stopped the government from spending. The U.S. government is not as rich as it purports to be, as so much of its spending is from borrowing. What's worse, a lot of what it spends is actually capital sent in by other countries. Forget our reliance on foreign oil. What about our reliance on foreign capital? But that trend is not due to the war in Iraq (a rather significant cost) or to foreign aid (a rather minor cost), or to tax breaks (which we still aren't quite sure were a net cost or income). It's just due to an overall belief by the populace that the government can spend without limit and that the world economy won't eventually come crashing down because of it.

It's not so much that the U.S. is hurting and trying not to show it, but rather that the U.S. is hurting and nobody really believes it, either here or abroad.