A fair accounting of the costs would discount the items that are old and were going to be used somewhere else or scrapped if not used here, halving or possibly even decimating this estimate of direct costs.
That is direct costs, however. The indirect costs are astoundingly huge, as we all know.
Yeah I mean, believe me, if I could cut the portion of my tax dollars that went to war to zero, I’d do so in a heartbeat. That’s just not how it works in the US though under either party.
Everybody wants the government to do things; nobody wants to pay for all the things that the government is doing. (If we had a balanced budget, tax rates would currently be nearly twice as high, which would provoke mass outrage and people being removed from office.)
Everybody has different lists of what the right things are for the government to be doing, but (almost) nobody has an empty list. Well, if it's going to do things, it has to get the money from somewhere. It's either tariffs or taxes or deficit. Deficit is the least honest.
So an honest person, wanting the government to do some things, should be willing to pay some taxes.
Everybody also significantly underestimate what the government does for them.
"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" -- Life of Brian
Just imagine what business would be like if you couldn't trust that a contract you signed would likely be fulfilled. The government court backstop is what ensures that.
There are a very small number of things I agree with r/Conservative on, but that this was a stupid war to start that America definitely isn't winning is one of them.
A fair accounting of the costs would discount the items that are old and were going to be used somewhere else or scrapped if not used here, halving or possibly even decimating this estimate of direct costs.
That is direct costs, however. The indirect costs are astoundingly huge, as we all know.
Does that cost include the loss of life?
They recently stopped counting human lives as having any value
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/climate/epa-human-life-va...
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Fear of armed reprisal for nonpayment..?
Yeah I mean, believe me, if I could cut the portion of my tax dollars that went to war to zero, I’d do so in a heartbeat. That’s just not how it works in the US though under either party.
There's a bit more to it than that.
Everybody wants the government to do things; nobody wants to pay for all the things that the government is doing. (If we had a balanced budget, tax rates would currently be nearly twice as high, which would provoke mass outrage and people being removed from office.)
Everybody has different lists of what the right things are for the government to be doing, but (almost) nobody has an empty list. Well, if it's going to do things, it has to get the money from somewhere. It's either tariffs or taxes or deficit. Deficit is the least honest.
So an honest person, wanting the government to do some things, should be willing to pay some taxes.
Everybody also significantly underestimate what the government does for them.
"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" -- Life of Brian
Just imagine what business would be like if you couldn't trust that a contract you signed would likely be fulfilled. The government court backstop is what ensures that.
There are a very small number of things I agree with r/Conservative on, but that this was a stupid war to start that America definitely isn't winning is one of them.
Just like Nixon in Vietnam and Ronnie in Iran, the purpose isn't to win, it's to hold on to power