The U.S. on Friday announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, in what is the Biden administration’s first major package drawing on America’s own stockpiles to help Taiwan counter China.
This is a bit of a cynical take. $345m is not that much to the US government. It’s not going to deprive anyone in the US. Plus, what are homeless people going to do with military equipment?
If it was $345bn I’d agree but this is barely even going to register on the accounting spreadsheet.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
> This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . > This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Okay, this is a nice sentiment but the money is long gone. It was spent when the equipment was made. It will either be scrapped or left to rust in a hangar.
This is a bit of a cynical take. $345m is not that much to the US government. It’s not going to deprive anyone in the US. Plus, what are homeless people going to do with military equipment?
If it was $345bn I’d agree but this is barely even going to register on the accounting spreadsheet.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. > This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . > This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Okay, this is a nice sentiment but the money is long gone. It was spent when the equipment was made. It will either be scrapped or left to rust in a hangar.
“Let us beat swords into ploughshares.”