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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Who doesn't like their tax dollars being spent on killing people instead of socialist stuff like healthcare, education, social workers and government services that actually serve citizens.
The USA could afford what's being provided to Ukraine and socialized benefits. But chooses not to because of some dumb reason or another.
This is the answer. It isn’t a zero sum game.
It's more the hypocrisy of some people. The ones who cheer for a huge defense/foreign aid budget year after year no matter who it's for, and then leave bitchy comments on FB about student loan forgiveness being "unfair" because it uses their tax dollars.
I mean, yeah, they have the biggest money printer on the planet, so they could've socialized almost everything for their citizens if it didn't go all into their black budgets, military, bribery and foreign meddling instead, but here they are, 32T in debt, double the debt from 10 years ago, ~100k of debt per person. If that's not a failed state, I don't know what is.
You don't know what is.
You probably don't know what is it. I mean, look at South Africa for a recent example of a failed state.
perhaps do some research on the colonial history of South Africa and Western exploitation and read up on the definition of the term failed state and then look at some news reports regarding the US. I don't know how some of you people keep on coming up with these cheap rebuttals that you obviously haven't spent more than a minute of thinking on.
So, in your mind, helping to prevent civilians from dying in a war zone and stopping countries being taken over by foreign powers to be exploited is not a worthy humanitarian effort?
European countries are taking somewhat decent care of Ukrainian refugees, which can't be said for refugees that aren't white skinned.
And did you just collate military equipment with a humanitarian effort or am misreading that?
I'm in full support of any real humanitarian aid possible: Support their wounded and sick, support their people with basic needs (generators/energy, food, water, clothing, temporary housing, psych support etc).
Sometimes I'm really surprised at some of these questions you people come up with.
Edit: Typo.
The main difference between Ukrainian refugees and what we usually get is that Ukrainians are, without exception, well-educated enough to start working right away, and not just in unskilled low-income jobs. Compare that with, say, Somalis with virtually no education, and not even able to sit through a class because they never got accustomed to as kids, then competing with natives for a very limited number of those low-income jobs. That's why Ukrainians get working permits straight away while we'd rather pay welfare for the Somalis until they're ready.
I don't know what it is with Seppos and making everything about race. There's actual fucking issues with integrating people from non-developed countries that are completely absent in the case of Ukraine. Ukraine may be piss-poor, yes, but its fundamentals are solid, quite a bit better than Romania and Bulgaria even I'd say and those are EU members.
EDIT: While PISA numbers are to be taken with a whole salt shaker as measuring good education is notoriously difficult (see "teach the test") Ukraine outranks Greece across the disciplines. More or less head-to head with Italy.
I was talking about the way they were treated, not which refugee is the better worker drone.
Ukrainians don't burn their passports and refuse to aid in their identification, if that's what you're alluding to because that's the kind of stuff gets you shitcanned in the "You can stay in a camp with full board and meagre pocket money and leave the country at any time but forget starting a life here" way, as the only reason to do that is if you don't actually qualify for refugee status or asylum. But, again, nothing to do with race.
Your basically proving my point, I rest my case.
What, because I assume that people would rather have a life than hang around in limbo in a camp? Yes, yes I do. OTOH it's also completely besides the point as I'm describing, plain and simply, the difference between your "brown" and "white" immigrants. The difference is that they come from different conditions, not that they have different levels of melanin -- I mean seriously they often don't. You have yet to make even an inkling of an argument to the contrary.
Europe has taken in millions of non-white refugees and taken great care of them. How many have Russia and china taken in? India? Brazil?
India and Brazil, famous white countries. Aren't you people the "this is whataboutism" spam guys?
Look it up. I'm not your personal researcher, sorry. I'm happy to provide sources to backup claims I've brought up myself.
I never compared Europe to other nations in terms of harboring refugees and I didn't even imply that Europe hasn't been taking in refugees. I wish you'd spend a bit more time reading and understanding what people are writing instead of just coming up with cheap rhetorical or whataboutism questions.
My point is people to want to go there. They want to go to Europe because they'll have good opportunities and be treated relatively well.
That's what Russia is doing yes.
The US is already spending as much federal tax dollars per capita on healthcare as the UK spends on the NHS. Figures that bailing out hospitals when patients invariably default on their debt is expensive: In the US they have tons of people ending up in ER requiring expensive treatment that would've been way cheaper and easier to treat preventively -- but to do prevention you need to be able to afford a doctor's visit. Sure you can stop spending that money but then you either let hospitals go bankrupt, or you have to allow them to reject patients and have them dying on the streets. Even for Americans that's a bit too much.
I don't really have the numbers for education but one big point there is that in the US, education is largely funded by local taxes, that is, schools in low-income areas are severely underfunded, while those in high-income areas are overfunded. If anything it should be the exact opposite, the worst areas need the best schools to lift them up.
But fixing either would cut into corporate profits and/or severely alleviate income equality (and, in the US, thereby, race inequality) so, yeah, don't hold your breath.
They have no need for healthcare, education and stuff. They are afraid of their own shadows, they just need guns to defend themselves. In the end, they can just eat those bullets to survive. ...or shoot some skool.
Why would countries just ignore global authoritarian threats
To be global authoritarian you have to be the wealthiest and most powerful. And currently there is only one government and its army that takes this title.
I guess being able to trigger global nuclear war is not global enough threat for you?
What is a "global authoritarian"?
Yo, mate! Your words! I copied them from your post...
Yes and do you understand what they mean?
I do!
This is a meaningless term used in this way. Every state is authoritarian, by definition. The only "state" that isn't authoritarian is anarchy, and that's only not an authoritarian state because it's not a state. Use more accurate terms if you want to make a point.
Countries are ignoring global authoritarian threats, by ignoring themselves, but that's probably not the point you were trying to make.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism?wprov=sfla1
Like when so much money is funnelled into US politics that only two capitalist 'parties' are able to compete, and they have almost identical policies except for some window dressing?
Like when the republicans block democrat legislation, even though the democrats are in power?
What happened to Roe v Wade and how?
Like when the previous POTUS secures a GOP majority on the Supreme Court, which the current POTUS can't change?
Like suppressing votes by criminalising being black and requiring voter ID?
The problem with the term 'authoritarian' is that it's either meaningless and applies to everybody or nobody and is used as a weak rhetorical device, or it's given some theoretical basis and it applies to every state and is used to shed light on state relations. Either way, it's not a coherent criticism in an of itself.
Not much fun or use "debating" someone who says this kind of thing.
Probably for the best.
Yeah, that was a whole lot of pathetic whataboutism, wasn't it?
It's not whataboutism, whatever that means. It's an illustration that the use of 'authoritarian/ism' as a pejorative against one state in particular is a kind of inverse category error. The fact that a state is authoritarian is not automatically negative (except to anarchists); the term applies to every state. Hence, to use 'authoritarian\ism' to imply a negative is only coherent if one means to criticise the state form itself.