Hey let's argue some more
 

From Wikipedia
How about that? :confused:

We could get rid of about 15% of that by nuking the japanese .....again.... :)

But where would we ever get a decent car?. I refuse to drive a Volvo.

I expected you to say something somewhat offensive, but... wow.
Just wow.

I think it'd be more profitable (as far as reducing debt) to nuke china ;)

That's not really a lot of money....

....I mean, I wouldn't say no....


I do like Volvos though... good cars. Yes.

I think your stastic is misleading, the amount of US money in circulation is way way less than the amount of money in the US economy. Think stock market, bonds, and other investment stuff. Not circulating in bill form, but still a shit ton of money that moves around in the economy.

Or you could simply stop wasting money on nukes, how about that?

Maybe we should stop forgiving loans to other countries and stop international aid shipments at our expense?

But noooooooo....we can't do that. People might speak badly of us. ;)

Benevolence incurs financial debt. If we weren't benevolent, we'd be the richest country in the world. Instead, we're one of the nicest.

:)

Sorry, but that's utter bullshit.

US foreign aid is absolutely pitiful compared to what other countries are giving.

got some numbers?

I'm not comparing it to anyone else. I think other countries should stop aid too if they get flak about their activities. (And many do.)

Perhaps managing our national finances has taken a back seat for way too long. Time to collect!

:)

And that would save you how much?

Probably as much as the Pentagon spends on toilet paper.

Cut down your overblown military and take care of your trade deficit.

Here are the stats for 2004. (Source: OECD - The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

The US provided more than twice the developmental aid as the second place country, Japan. Yet we're also the stingiest per GNI (gross national income), at only 0.16%.

So specifically, we'd save $19 billion, which is 24% of the aid provided by the top 22 providing countries.

We could buy a nice new fleet of strike bombers with that money. :up: (.....j/k ;) )

But seriously, Bush just requested a budget increase of $419 billion for 2007 just for our military forces, and I don't like that either. If it were up to me, we'd scrap all the superfluous military resources (which could be up to 50% in my opinion) and put that money into beefing up trade economies of the foreign countries we target with aid money so they won't need aid money. That would better help everyone involved, including us.

indeed, for the most part giving money in aid to countries does not help them much at all, look at Africa for the past 20 years and look at south east asia.

Investing in the economy of these countries will help them far more than pouring money into the country which (usually) ends up being poured into the swiss bank accounts of their corrupt government officials.

But what if they start competing with your industry?

Rather keep them poor and dependant.

no way, if they compete with my industry all the better. That's fucking capitalism, if they're better than me, they deserve to win and I deserve to lose.

Then why all the whining about lost jobs and all the "buy American" talk? (not from you personally)

Actually it would, at least in the long term, benefit everyone. But not from a competitive standpoint.

sore losers I guess

We've been losing the industry competition game for years. The latest casualties are our top three automakers. That's not something that "might happen"...it's already happening.

That's why it's in our best interest to make countries self-sufficient in the trade economy wherever possible. More international competition means a diversification of the trade economy. Currently Japan kills us in the automotive industry, and China is coming up fast in many industries we used to dominate, to the point that they'll surpass us within ten years. Diversification will make it harder for any one country to dominate. Without this, the United States will lose in this era of heavy trade competition, and it'll happen within this generation.

The question is who do you want running US foreign policy in the future? Someone with my attitude as described above, or someone who'd rather quash the viability of any country who may compete with us? We can arrange for either approach, you know. :)

but STILL......we're assholes.

so is everyone else; what sort of scale are we measuring with here anyway?

hogsheads

We're protrayed as assholes, for certain. And sometimes we are. But we maintain the title even during our good acts as well.

This is why I sometimes wish we could just release morality and live up to what many people "want" us to be...full-time assholes. But no, being generally benevolent means doing it all the time, even through the harshest criticism.

"America is imperialist"? OK, let's conquer France and North Korea and Iran. I don't mean occupy and perform "peace-keeping", but conquer...add them to our list of assets, and even make them new states of our union. Take all their natural resources, and leave the native inhabitants whatever's left. "America is tyrannical"? OK, let's openly torture all prisoners from other nations, and put it on television even.

I'm just getting tired of it all.

A country is a collection of all its citizens. I'm a citizen of the US. And when people verbally attack the US in general, they're also attacking me. And if you accuse me of doing something I haven't personally done, then after a while I may feel obligated to do it. After all, if I have to suffer the punishment, maybe I should do the crime. I've earned the right to, haven't I? Served my time for it?

Lesson: Make your attacks specific. It's a very simple matter of avoiding prejudice. When you group the US together and call it "evil", it includes me, and that's a debate you'll lose as quickly as it begins.

You know, the citizen has no idea where the real money is going in the military. It's priviledged information, we don't know it, so we can't decide. Military policy isn't something civilians can really change, short of a revolt.

I mean come on, they wouldn't even admit Area 51 existed, and it's right there on Google Earth!

I thought military spending was decided by elected politicians?

And my argument isn't about where in the military the money is going, it's that claiming the deficit was being caused by foreign aid is complete nonsense if you look at the size of both, and that the real cause may perhaps lie somewhere else.



@Scor:
How specific is saying we?

The US are criticized as a whole because they're acting as a whole, without much visible opposition.

It's up to you whether you want to identify yourself with that whole.

First, Volvos are superb cars.

The Netherlands give 0.8%...

In our case however, we should stop throwing away all our money to those who don't know what to do with it (no offense Africa) and finally give the army some friggin' money to buy bullets and toilet paper with. Seriously, I read in the newspaper our army often doesn't have enough bullets to practice with!!

The US government acts as a whole. If you lump everyone in the US together, then we have incentive to live up to your desires and start openly taking over other countries. No more pussyfooting around and playing politics. It'll make our expansionist goals more streamlined, for sure. All that money that used to be spent on foreign aid and diplomacy can now be used for vast occupation forces and concentration camps.

I identify myself with my country. I love my country. But I'm not going to judge it in one motion in any context. Nor would I want to do so to any other country...and I catch myself accidently doing it from time to time, as sometimes it's too easy a trap to fall into. Things aren't so simple in this world we live in.

The bottom line is, if enough people outside the US want to portray ALL of us who live here as imperialist tyrants, then after a while I'll play along. God knows I'd only get richer doing it. But do you really want to turn those of us on your side against you, and truly unite America against the rest of the world?

Your best bet is to let us* identify with our country, know that it needs changing, and then act to change it from within. Convince us otherwise at your own peril.


* us = people in the US who share my opinion, that we should rise above the accusations and hold the course of trying to improve how the US interacts with the rest of the world. We're your allies within. Please don't spite us.

America in a nutshell:

Here you go peasants, eat this food while we overthrow your government, install a dictator, then go to war with you to remove him in ten years.

:blah:

I accept, from the rest of your post, that this isn't really your argument, but:

We don't elect Generals. Being a General in the military is like being the Pope--seriously, go to a fort when a General's around. The classic story (confirmed by my girlfriend's father, one of the most honest people I know) is that when a General visits an installation and doesn't like something, it gets renovated OVERNIGHT. A general, there for whatever reason, commented to someone offhandedly that the bathroom (a very large military bathroom, mind you) was bad. The next day, everything in the bathroom had been stripped and replaced. It's crazy, but that's how the power structure works.

This is not the kind of power structure citizens have much say in at all. You can argue that we elect the politicians...but really, no politicians on my ballots genuinely want to decrease government spending across the board. So really...

Volvos aren't any better than anything else. It's all the same shit these days.

But as far as the rest of this thread goes, I seriously have to agree with Scor.

*pokes head in, sees the same ol' bullshit, shakes head, and backs out of thread*

What did you expect from the "hey let's argue some more" thread? Consensus? :p

It may be capitalism, but there is a difference between the free market, and substandard cloned goods produced cheaply in countries with poor workplace safety....

cant we just make more money to pay teh debts?

Also, if you don't have anything to back your money up, it's worthless. Simplified example: All of the cash that you have is backed up by gold in Fort Knox. If that gold weren't there, your cash would be worthless, and you wouldn't be able to buy anything with it. So, printing more money while the amount of gold in Fort Knox remains the same would mean that the money would decrease in value as more of it is printed. While more dollar bills might be floating around in circulation, their gross value remains the same.

That's not quite true - most countries including the USA no longer back up their cash with actual gold... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...merican_dollar

In part, they do.
The rest of our money is backed up with other bling.

http://static.flickr.com/6/9142126_176310be7e.jpg