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Context for uninitiated and vision impaired:
In the background, a man is sat atop a pile of cookies behind two other men who are seated at a table. This man is Rupert Murdoch, a former Australian and now American; the owner of a large swathe of right-wing journalistic and entertainment media whose empire has contributed to the distrust and downfall of democracy across the Anglosphere.
Pictured on the left is a dark-skinned and bearded man sat looking despondently down at the empty table in front of him. Across from him is an Anglo-Australian man who is wearing a safety helmet and hi-vis vest - a nod to the working class of Australia - with a plate and a single cookie on it. Rupert is saying to the Anglo man: “Careful mate… that foreigner wants your cookie!”
It’s a fantastic political cartoon and a great nod to the way that right-wing media and politicians have consistently convinced significant amounts of working class people to turn their frustrations at their lack of share in capital towards immigrants and foreigners as opposed to the billionaires who hoard all the wealth.
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This might seem like a minor quibble, but that money doesn’t really come from taxpayers, and understanding what seems like a very technical financial thing is really important if you want to understand geopolitics in general. Here’s an except from the beginning of David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5,000 years, easily one of the single most interesting and enlightening books I’ve ever read:
Starting in the 1980s, the United States, which insisted on strict terms for the re- payment of Third World debt, itself accrued debts that easily dwarfed those of the entire Third World combined — mainly fueled by military spending. The U.S. foreign debt, though, takes the form of treasury bonds held by institutional investors in countries (Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Gulf States) that are in most cases, effectively, U.S. military protectorates, most covered in U.S. bases full of arms and equipment paid for with that very deficit spending. This has changed a little now that China has gotten in on the game (China is a special case, for reasons that will be explained later), but not very much — even China finds that the fact it holds so many U.S. treasury bonds makes it to some degree beholden to U.S. interests, rather than the other way around.
So what is the status of all this money continually being funneled into the U.S. treasury? Are these loans? Or is it tribute? In the past, military powers that maintained hundreds of military bases outside their own home territory were ordinarily referred to as “empires,” and empires regularly demanded tribute from subject peoples. The U.S. government, of course, insists that it is not an empire — but one could easily make a case that the only reason it insists on treating these pay- ments as “loans” and not as “tribute” is precisely to deny the reality of what’s going on.
So it’s not coming from US tax payers, this is saying? It comes from Japanese taxpayers, German taxpayers, South Korean tax payers, etc. on top of US tax payers.
That really does not change the situation. It still is a massive amount of money out of US pockets, and the rest is out of US allies’ citizen pockets. It also doesn’t change the failing to pass audits. It also doesn’t change their massive collection of known BS actions done in the past.
Also dosen’t change the fact that they could pay for universal everything with that money.
I think the point is that the money wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t meant for military spending
That’s the one.
What it does change is that the availability of the money and the military machine are linked. It’s not just that American taxpayers are footing the bill; it’s that our military machine is funded by tribute, which we pretend is “debt” that we’re totally going to pay back one day. It’s one system.
To be clear, it’s bad. I hate it. I just think it’s important to understand how the thing we oppose works.
arguably the entire worth of the dollar as a currency comes from it being what taxpayers pay in, so yeah it kind of does come from taxpayers
also, money is fungible with other money, so “this stream of money doesn’t come from there” doesn’t make sense
arguably the entire worth of the dollar as a currency comes from it being what taxpayers pay in, so yeah it kind of does come from taxpayers
Not at all. The dollar’s valuation comes primarily from:
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Its backing by a stable economic and governmental system and the projected power of the military controlled by that government
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Its status at the global reserve currency
Tokyo, Lisbon, and Santiago don’t hold debt and equity in USD because Phil from Bozeman paid the IRS in that currency.
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The fungibility isn’t what’s at issue. The link between the money stream and the military is a system that can’t be understood separately. Thinking of it as taxpayer funded doesn’t make sense.
arguably the entire worth of the dollar as a currency comes from it being what taxpayers pay in, so yeah it kind of does come from taxpayers
I encourage you to read the book. It really changed my perspective on what value even is and what it means. I don’t think you’ll think this after reading it.
Damn, you really changed my perspective there. Thanks for sharing.
Read the book! It’s so good. It’s a tome about debt but it’s extremely readable and so, so interesting!
Already ordered it 😁
Meanwhile people are concerned that the post office isn’t turning a profit.
Which has never made sense to me. It’s a government service. It’s not supposed to be profitable. It just needs to be affordable and reliable.
And yet they used to turn a profit. Until Republicans passed a law requiring them to prefund retirements for 75 years out with the USPS Fairness Act. Fairness Act, which imposes this burden on the USPS while no other federal agency (or private business) is required to prefund retirement benefits…quite fair.
This has been revoked recently, we no longer are required to prefund the plan. One good thing DeJoy has actually done.
It hasn’t been beneficial in terms of us getting a raise or anything since there hasn’t been a contract with the NALC in almost 2 years now but I’m sure it shows in the now 66¢ cost of a stamp (price may be more by the time I press send on this message).
a law requiring them to prefund retirements for 75 years out with the USPS Fairness Act
If I’m reading this article (or this one) correctly the USPS Fairness Act was the thing that stopped the need to prefund retirements. The one you’re thinking of is apparently called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
“People” aren’t. It’s regressives that are trying to disenfranchise mail in voters. Then they put a regressive in charge of the USPS who is trying to run it into the ground so they can be like “oh gosh look how bad it is!”
Republicans want to privatize every public work. USPS isn’t supposed to turn a profit. It’s supposed to be a public good that is sold at cost so we all benefit. It used to be subsidized.
Republicans want to turn it into a new industry a la UPS, FedEx, etc, so it’d cost way more to send a letter. The love of money is the root of all evil. It’s also the root of the Republican party.
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Anytime a journalist thinks about covering this they probably die in a tragic accident suddenly.
Yeah, by shooting themselves twice in the back of the head.
Those crazy journalists.
“ He fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.”
But it’s unpatriotic to question spending dropping multi million dollar bombs and using expensive tech to wage war in impoverished countries.
Yes. Also it’s anti-Semitic to object to genocide.
We need the Karen’s to combine their might and talk the the Mega Manager.
I’m scared it might work. Or excited. Can they talk the Mega Manager into using bunker-penetrating bombs to get Putin?
The Karen Bunker Buster is a secret weapon only the Elder Karen’s can nag enough to summon.
We’re all outraged but theres no customer service complaint phone number for the black hole that all of our taxpayer dollars disappear into
Just call
9110118 999 881 999 119 725 … 3. I’m sure they’ll help get you sorted.Edit: Forgot the new emergency services number even though it’s so easy to remember.
Aw you didn’t need to write down that phone number for us. Everyone has that memorized. So easy. 😆
Fore!
It’s funny because the audit process for FedRAMP approval businesses is an absolute nightmare.
What’s a FedRAMP?
It’s the authorization a company has to have before their systems can access/store federal government data.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has the 800-53 which is a ~500 page document that’s just a list of controls that must be followed, and companies have to get audited once a year to make sure they complied with the controls the previous year.
The fun part is that most of the controls are worded super vaguely, and you’re at the mercy of the auditor’s interpretation of them.
I know one of the people who is an author of 800-53.
It was funny since an auditor was arguing with her. The auditor said I know this better than you do.
She replied back, I wrote it then showed her named in the credits.
That’s pretty great. I had to go full Karen on our auditors to speak to their supervisors because apparently the NIST definition of a term doesn’t matter if the auditor feels differently. And it was actually an unambiguous definition.
The worst part is the auditor still claimed they knew it better than the person who wrote it.
We got them removed as that’s a level of arrogance that can’t be tolerated.
What does this auditor gig pay?
I would assume six figures. They were an outside audit firm.
One day the Pentagon will just drop warp drives and energy 2 out of nowhere and the world will be like “what?”
“Drop” is the wrong word. It’s going to be more like “hoard for 50 years until they discover energy 3 and mega-warp, then sell the concept rights for energy 2 and warp to a corp”
Who will then sell it back to us. As the free market intended.
No. They will only rent it to you.
Probably used to throw million dollar bombs on countries like mine
I’ll have you know they’re fifty thousand dollar bombs, inflated to million dollar bombs because the taxpayer is paying
Been there, done that. It goes to other assets… and probably to the CIA for funding Regan’s Iran/Contra deals.
Shut up, Robert Greenwald! I’m busy shouting at people who believe different things than me!
the outrage will not be televised
Well, the military has a lot of projects and operations the public doesn’t, and shouldn’t, know about. If you see about a sting in Syria on CNN, so do the hostile insurgents, or whomever are the enemies du jour. But how can you expense the operation on a public budget sheet, if the operation can’t, for security reasons, be public? The answer is simple: you spend $10,000 on $10 toilet seats, and the $9,990 now accounted for dollars are paying for equipment, ammunition, transportation, training, payroll, and benefits for something that officially never happened.
Which is funny because the audit process for FedRAMP compliance is a fucking nightmare.
