The US was pushed into the war by Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt was in favor of joining the war effort directly but faced isolationist opposition at home. The best he could do was the lend-lease agreement with the UK, which was a hard bargain in the US’s favor.
After the war was joined it was sustained by a massive domestic propaganda campaign (all those iconic WW2 posters? Propaganda)
WW2 and the cold-war era space program represent the zenith of technocratic government in the west. What we have seen since is in many ways 50+ years of failure: social unrest, Vietnam war, inflation, terrorism, more war, financial crisis, pandemic. The government has seemed to be unprepared for all of those. While it’s not what I believe personally, I can understand if someone thinks that government will fail to meet the complex challenge of climate change.
The legislative branch of the US government is so thoroughly disordered that it can effectively pass one single piece of legislation per year through the budget reconciliation process. We trust this group of people and this process to solve climate change, when it will not even take up the more targeted and effective proposals such as a carbon tax?
Hopefully, we could have a very big energy crisis. Unlike COVID, energy price rise affects everyone directly, it's not like "I know somebody who..." (unfortunately, the poorer are hit harder). This would affect everyone and would lead to some social unrest. Not that I wish social unrest, but that is a signal that can't be ignored, even though it is a very slippy slope.
Interestingly, the current spike in gas prices down here puts a lot of politicians in panic mode. Gas price, unlike covid, is the result of human negotiator; you can't invoke "bad luck" or "nature's revenge" or whatever....
Nope. Even if 50% of US taxes are "wasted" on things manigandham doesn't care about, it doesn't follow that increasing taxes would simply all be diverted to things manigandham doesn't care about and thus "wasted".
And waste is defined as money spent that doesn't reach any goals, or even make any progress towards them. It's a very common topic on HN about startups spending capital poorly, and likewise profligate spending can be found everywhere in (US) government. $2T in a decades-long war is a recent example, including the hundreds of billions in equipment and resources left behind.
But surely, you knew what I meant. I wonder how much climate change progress could've been made with all that money. Feel free to donate more with your next tax payment if you want.
1. Government spend on stupid shit like welfare and all the stuff in Paul's Festivus report,
2. Government spend inefficiently paying lot of buraucrats between when dollars are taken in and when they leave goernment.
And here we are, pampered boomers and millenials, in a society so selfish and profit and status oriented that we are not willing to accept the slightest inconveniences, or god forbid tax increase, to tackle one of the biggest challenges we ever faced.