this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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About 24 billion is non-military financial aid and 4 billion more is humanitarian, so that's a big chunk not being spent on bombs. Slightly more than half of the remainder is the estimated value of old stock being sent over and therefore could not be "spent" on assistance for Americans anyway. The remaining 23 billion that is actually money spent on equipment and training is less than half of one percent of annual federal government expenditure. Weapons for Ukraine are not the reason money isn't being spent on what you want it to be spent on.
How many billions of dollars do you want to spend on bombs?
Depends on what the countries sending it can afford and what it would take for Russia to stop invading. That's not the point I'm making. The point is that the none of the countries aiding Ukraine are currently spending anything anywhere close to enough of their budgets to significantly affect any other spending they do. If you're unhappy with how your government directs the other 99.6% of its budget, yeah, I get that. I am at mine too. But helping Ukraine is not the problem there.
No one is helping Ukraine! It's all just a ploy to keep the war going forever.
Where do you think inflation comes from? It comes from throwing money into the war machine.
Ukrainians sure as hell seem to feel otherwise. I'll also note that you lumped in $28 billion of non-military financial and humanitarian aid from America as "throwing money into the war machine", and America's aid is proportionally more military than most countries. Eight million Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war are being housed across Europe, and that is counted in the assistance figures too. If you don't think housing refugees counts as helping, then frankly go fuck yourself.
It does not come from half a percent of the federal budget. The amount is simply nowhere near big enough. If all of the American spending on assistance to Ukraine was actual new money printed, it would increase the money supply in the US by a grand total of 0.35%. Hell even if the entire US military budget was new printed money it'd still only add 4%, and that's a ludicrously unrealistic scenario
Inflation is coming from countries all over the world leaving the US dollar to trade in their own currencies. Part of that is because America spends infinite money on war, and it's also a side effect of the unprecedented sanctions regime against Russia. There is now a self-fulfilling cycle of dedollarization happening because of this war.
Is dedollarisation why inflation rates were similar across Europe over the past year? Have the sanctions ended without me noticing and that's why the rates are now pretty much back down to normal in the US? And what happened to aid to Ukraine being the cause of inflation a moment ago?
Their inflation is pretty heavily tied to shit like pipelines getting blown up and the Black Sea trade route being shut down. Inflation is complex, but are you really arguing the war is unrelated? Also, you know, they're also throwing their own money on the fire.
That doesn't undo the inflation that already happened! The sanctions are priced in.
It is, but I just wanted to highlight the multifaceted ways the burning money pile in Ukraine is causing inflation.
I'm arguing that the US is largely isolated from the economic effects of the war, and that this is evidenced by the lesser inflation spike in the US compared to Europe. America is barely exposed to the Russian and Ukrainian markets and is even a net exporter of some highly impacted commodities like natural gas.
Nobody said it undid anything. If what you said was right, though, then surely the rates would stay high given that the circumstances you claim are causing them haven't changed? Since they haven't, it seems unreasonable to pin the blame there with no further justification.
I think that actually you just started with a conclusion you wanted to reach - that whatever America is doing is bad in all situations - and said whatever came to mind to get there. The war in Ukraine does drive some inflation, but the US is largely isolated from it, and this is further evidenced by the fact that American inflation was already high before the Russian military movements in late February 2022. I mean really, can you think of nothing else that happened in the past few years that might perhaps have reduced production and trade across the world, thereby increasing prices? Something that has, unlike the Russian invasion, become less of a problem in the past year?
I'm sure that choosing a 0.4% decrease in government spending over equipping millions of people to defend their homes from a militaristic empire is somehow a move for human rights in your eyes, though.
So inflation is Russia's fault.
We just need to let NATO turbo-fuck Russia and make it a vassal state. It's a failed state as-is and a constant irritant.
Do you want global nuclear war?
Do the Russians?
That is but a small part of all the reasons why inflation could occur.
You're right, part of it is the sanctions regime and global dedollarization.