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

[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.