Quote Originally Posted by MattZed View Post
Helz, we don't live in a world where we can only think about the US and everything will be fine. Keeping the world peaceful is hard work, and taking the moral high ground is important to our position as world leader. Half the reason the first world likes us so much and chose to side with us during the Cold War is because we gave them aid to rebuild their economies after WWII. It was chump change to them, but they thank us for it now. If the Soviet Union had been the only superpower giving out aid, you might be looking a communist Europe today.

It's the same philosophy with refugees. It makes up pocket change in the federal budget, but it makes us look like the good guys. We need coalition partners to fight Daesh. Joining the US in military operations isn't popular in many countries' parliaments, and if their anti-war folks can point to us not willing to be team players, it's that much harder to get them behind us.

Price matters. If it were 20% of the federal budget, you bet I'd be having major objections to our refugee policy. But it's less than half of a percent. It's a great deal.
I suppose this is where we differ in opinion. Our defence budget in 2016 was roughly 1.68 trillion. Thats 3 times more than the next 10 highest spending countries combined. We straight up should not have any need for allies while spending that much. And if people are going to 'help out' a just cause only because we dump billions on silly things are they really even our ally to begin with?
Show me a guy that will pay 100k a year to make friends and I bet he will have tons of them. But if he ever gets in a bind and has nothing more to offer all those people who were pretending to be his friend will just leave. You can not buy loyalty. Thats just not how shit works.
In contrast US charities received something in the area of 375-390 billion dollars last year (Depending on what sources you look at) from citizens, foundations, and corporations. Thats good shit. Thats Americans helping out because they want to while the government does their part by offering tax breaks for people who donate. I believe thats exactly how it should be. It makes extremely little difference what the government does but the things it does do reflects an immoral practice of forcing people to give their money to others. The key factor in any business relationship is that both sides have to benefit. When this is the case things go smoothly with each side happy. When its just one side helping the other it does not work out. We should allow the country to help people in the direct interests of America (Such as if we need more engineers, lets imagrate some over who can work to support themselves while providing a needed service to the country.) But demanding money from the citizens of a nation to go and give away to people who have done nothing for those citizens and without the express intention that they will start to contribute is fucked up. I really dont think we should be blowing our tax dollars to go and police the world when we can't even pay our bills. The climbing national debt is a very real issue.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatt.../#69fc5e715ebd
As of April 2015 every tax payer in America basically owes One hundred and fifty four thousand dollars to foreign nations. The debt to GDP ratio is well over 100% which to put the nation in terms of a 'person' is like if you made 60k a year and owed 70 or 80k. Keep in mind that a 'good' debt to income ratio as viewed from lenders is no more than 38% of your income. This basically reflects the attitude of a 16 year old girl who just got a credit card. 'I can spend whatever I want because daddy will pay it off later.' The only difference is that our children will be the ones who pay because we wanted to put on a cape and save the world for a bunch of assholes who never really did anything for us in the first place.
I think America should help other nations. But I hate that direct government charity is justified in any way. I think that attitude reflects a generation with no concept of how money works with a ruling class exploiting it to get their jollys and get rich. Its going to be interesting to see what happens when people stop rioting over silly crap and start rioting over things that matter.
Quote Originally Posted by MattZed View Post
Also, oops wasn't calling Trump voters dumb.
I did not mean to infer that he was. I simply feel like that's what that line points out. 'Educated people voted for Hillary, Uneducated people voted for Trump'