Qasim Rashid, Esq.
MAGA: We're cutting Govt waste!
So—cut bloated Defense budget?
MAGA: NO
Stop funding Pentagon until it can pass an audit?
MAGA: NO
Adopt universal healthcare which costs 50% of private insurance?
MAGA: NO
Then how?
MAGA: Cut food stamps, housing, SS, & Medicare & give billionaires more money
nhgeek
@QasimRashid yes that's it in a nutshell; they keep banging OUR heads against the wall and expecting this result
a fish named dog 🎗️
@QasimRashid Fun fact, by the way - I did the analysis once and scaling only for the Swedish population if we adopted Swedish healthcare policies we would not only cut the deficit - the government would run a *surplus* of $15 billion in 2022.
If you want to do the math yourself, all numbers are for 2022. Sources are:
https://measuringworth.com/datasets/exchangeglobal
https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/pong/tables-and-graphs/population-statistics---summary/population-and-population-changes/
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/2022-population-estimates.html
https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet [only count Medicare & Medicaid spending]
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/#us-deficit-by-year
Paul Sutton
Sounds about right
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
> So—cut bloated Defense budget?
> MAGA: NO
Under Biden Harris Israel went from getting 3.4 billion a year to 12.5 billion a year to commit genocide. Under Trump he went the other direction, from 3.7 billion at the start of his reign to 3.4 billion at the end.
To put this more generally to numbers, under Trump the military spending went from 651 billion to 695 billion, an increase of 6.3% over his 4 years in office. By contrast under Biden military spending went from 695 billion to 886 billion, a whopping increase of 21.5%. Put in other terms that is a 191 billion increase under Biden and a 44 billion increase under Trump, in other words a huge 4.34x greater increase by Biden than by Trump.
John BS
I mean, sure, but this kind of whataboutism actually doesn't solve the problem (which *is* the 2-party system leveraging small but divisive issues to "manage" the plebs and achieve outcomes that no reasonable American would actually support).
Qasim isn't wrong: the Rs are basically false advertising and using their position of power to further damage the social safety net for the poorest Americans while further enriching our corporatist overlords.
Freemo isn't wrong, because the Ds are just as guilty of ridiculous spending (if not more so) than the Rs.
However, we aren't getting anywhere by continuing in the same 2-party voting system. We need to have the courage to vote for our values to send a message to the people at the top. If enough people "waste" their votes, then it's no longer a "waste" as the actual public sentiment would be measurable and our politicians would have to account for it to maintain reelection eligibility...but for now, the population of America is acting insane: repeating their mistakes and expecting better results.
My 2 cents, lemme know what you think (and sorry Freemo, it's been a while because life has been happening all at once, I hope you're doing well :) )
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
It isnt what aboutism, its showing that Trump has a history of cutting back on spending or at least spending less in almost every category. I am not saying I like him, but arguably of the two choices when it comes to the issues listed here, here is by far the better one by a 4x difference.
John BS
On this one particular issue he is "better than *the* alternative", yes; however, the problem lies in the dyadic assumption that we are subscribing to when voting in general (which is what I was trying to address). I'm not saying you made a bad point, I think it's good to put these things into relative perspective. But the response at least seemed to be "look they only increased the spending a little compared to Biden" when Qasim's original point was that they aren't cutting waste despite promising to. An increase is the opposite of cutting.
Thus, it seemed like "that guy increases it a lot, but this guy only increased it a little," when the original point was that actual decreases should be made instead since that is one of the campaign promises that fails to be enacted each time the Republicans are in power.
So, fair enough perhaps this wasn't whataboutism per se, but it seemed to me to distract from the original point Qasim was making. Apologies for the misclassification :)
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