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Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by PoignardAzur on Thursday December 21, 2023 @09:34AM (#38720847)
How much was sent to Ukraine in cash, exactly? And how much of that was taken away from housing budgets?

From what I heard, the vast majority of what was sent to Ukraine was military surplus.

(That's of course ignoring some pretty serious points you're making more or less implicitly, eg that Americans are suffering in a way comparable to "being shelled by Russians" or that the help is send to encourage their "being crooked" and not, you know, fight back against invading Russians. And you're also basically brushing off the part where the help came in with strings attached in terms of fighting corruption.)

Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by JacobiX on Thursday December 21, 2023 @09:46AM (#38721023)
Not the OP, but I recently found the following figures from Kiel Institute for the World Economy:

- US financial commitments 24.964bn €

- Military commitments 43.856bn €

- Humanitarian commitments 2.562bn €

Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by apwell23 on Thursday December 21, 2023 @09:39AM (#38720916)
> military surplus.

curious what happens to this if there are no proxy wars to sponser?

Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by PoignardAzur on Thursday December 21, 2023 @09:53AM (#38721139)
Some is sold to local police departments. Some is sold to your pick of developing nation warlords. Some is destroyed or used for training.

I do agree that it's kind of fucked up that US military spending is so huge that it can make a major difference to the war in Ukraine with mostly equipment it was going to throw away. But (1) that's not a problem that started in 2022 (2) I think there's a huge hypocrisy in complaining about the fact that this equipment is being sent to Ukraine, and not complaining about the fact that this equipment was bought/built in the first place.

If you want to make a dent in the US military-industrial complex, look at the F-35 program: the budget overrun alone is more than three times the worth of equipment sent to Ukraine (except it was spent in cash).

Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by lebean on Thursday December 21, 2023 @10:55AM (#38722074)
Then the war becomes proximate instead. Would you prefer that?
Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by apwell23 on Thursday December 21, 2023 @12:10PM (#38723250)
no? why would i prefer that.
Re:US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level sinc... by esarbe on Thursday December 21, 2023 @09:44AM (#38720993)
Ukraine is not a proxy war.

Ukraine is being attacked by Russia. Ukraine fights for its survival. It has been doing that since 2014, when Russia first attacked Ukraine. It has been doing that without help by the US for 8 years. It will continue to do so, with or without US help.