Most Americans under 30 "do not support capitalism"

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In other words, you understand exactly why it matters whether the spending is mandatory or discretionary.

The decision to fund social security was made nearly 100 years ago, and it was sidelined out of the discretionary budget so that opponents of the program couldn’t immediately defund it. Probably more importantly, the amount spent on social security is almost entirely dependent on demographics and is not the least bit driven by the will of Congress.

As a result, it is fairly obviously incorrect to suggest that the amount spent on social security reflects the actual priorities of the political or business elites.

Discretionary spending reflects what Congress’ actual priorities are. While your argument that it’s good that so much of the discretionary budget goes to defense is interesting, there is a great deal of room for disagreement on that point. Also, the logic of that argument flatly contradicts the assertion that it makes sense to lump together mandatory and discretionary spending. It’s literally a contradiction to say that you “don’t see what it matters whether the spending is mandatory…” at the same time that you’re arguing that it’s better that the military budget is discretionary rather than mandatory. If it didn’t matter, one couldn’t possibly be preferable to the other.

A protection racket that has its victims sign notarized contracts that hold up in court is still a protection racket – especially when the protection racket also owns the courts!

And also, the alliance was made a long time ago and doesn’t necessarily reflect the current popular will.

Why would you personally take umbrage at the assertion that the US power elite abides by Realpolitik? I thought that was uncontroversial, and it really mystifies me why a US citizen would take it personally when it’s obviously not a reflection on them or the things that make the US pretty cool (which is manifestly not its political elite).

But more importantly, you’re missing the forest for the trees here. The CIA spent decades and millions of dollars subverting free and fair elections in Italy to prevent socialist candidates from getting any power. The US will intervene if anyone tries to invade Italy, but only if Italy has the kind of government the US wants, and the US will go to great lengths to make sure Italy has the kind of government the US wants. That’s not a healthy partnership – it’s an abusive relationship.

This is exactly how I think of it too.

Realpolitik. Of course it was a selfish act. An individual might give away billions of dollars altruistically (though that is exceedingly rare, even for those with many billions to give), but a group of political elites would never do such a thing without believing they’re getting a good deal.

That argument does very, very little to rebut the notion that it reflects the attitudes of many in the US military during the cold war. I don’t think there’s usually very much turnover in military hierarchies over a period of 2 years.

That does absolutely nothing to rebut the notion that it reflects the attitude of many in the US military during the cold war. (It might support the notion that such an opinion was justified, but that’s a different argument entirely.)

This is hilarious. Patton’s quote doesn’t count because it’s from before the cold war; this one doesn’t count because it’s not from before the cold war. Just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, huh?

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All this about spending priorities, and no one has mentioned the black budget or the fact that most spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was not reflected in the military budget:

As for war costs, Mr. Bush included little or none in his annual military budgets, instead routinely asking Congress for supplemental appropriations during the year.

Obviously, these expenditures need to be taken into account in any reasonable analysis of US spending priorities.

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But they are protected because the combined strength of NATO (including but not limited to nuclear MAD) makes it highly unlikely that there would be a WWIII. Living on the new frontier line of NATO, I find this a rather good deal. Despite plenty of bellicose rhetoric from Russia directed at us over the past few years, no physical attack has materialized. At the same time, Georgia and Ukraine, which individually are tougher targets than the Baltics but don’t benefit from outside alliances are both suffering from Russian aggression.

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One could argue (and many do) that Ukraine is actually suffering from a US-staged anti-democratic coup, and that the Russian government is trying to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine from the US-backed government. (I suspect the truth is some combination of these positions.)

And it wouldn’t be the first country to get that treatment from the US, BTW.

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Jock strap. Or hip holster…either works!

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You can’t combine a quote from a General who died 4 years before NATO was formed and was giving a personal opinion in response to news of 2 million Poles being taken for slaves and after literally in the middle of a phase of denazification in Germany before we were even at war with the Soviets, combine that with a Commander over a decade after NATO was formed when we were actively hostile to Soviets and use them both together as generalized statements as to why NATO was formed.

Besides the fact that neither of them were politicians and had no actual involvement in the creation of NATO, it completely distorts what the sentiment was at the time by conflating two completely different time periods.

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I say the US joined it because the North Atlantic Treaty which established NATO was basically a transatlantic version of the Treaty of Brussels which already had five member states. Those five countries plus Canada, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the US were the founding members of NATO.

Germany, of course, was not part of NATO at its founding because Germany was under fully occupied control at the time and had no federal government. They didn’t have most of their sovereignty restored until six years later at which point Western Germany applied for membership in NATO.

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US-supported, maybe, for a sufficiently ambivalent and distant definition of support. Saying it is US-staged is the realm of tinfoil hats and Kremlin trolls. Similarly, “anti-democratic” would stick if the outcome was a dictatorship, not when new fair and democratic elections are called immediately afterwards. And most importantly, it was Russia that chose to escalate it into a war - that is not “protection” in any reasonable sense.

Though this is drifting rather far off topic.

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I agree that quotes from random US generals are not the best evidence for prevailing sentiment in the US military.

The fact that they weren’t politicians is not helpful to your argument – US generals probably had much more influence on the creation of NATO than any individual politicians.

One could argue that the consistency in perspective between the two quotes spanning the creation of NATO is evidence that the same perspective dominated throughout the intervening period (e.g. the period in which NATO was created.

These two quotes by themselves constitute really weak evidence, but I think there’s plenty of good evidence that these aren’t a distortion of the prevailing sentiment regarding the USSR at the time. I would not suggest dying on this particular hill. I’m sure we can find enough similar quotes from both generals and politicians to establish the rabidly anti-Soviet sentiment of the period.

The Soviets hadn’t invaded any western European countries since they invaded Germany as an ally of the future members of NATO, so the “dare invade any more…countries” is a suspiciously prejudicial phrasing.

And do you really think the US government ever did anything because someone asked nicely? That one really strains credulity. The US entered into NATO because the ones who made the decision believed they would benefit more than the commitment cost.

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Assuming this without adducing any evidence is obviously begging the question.

Asserting that the elections were fair and democratic is, again, begging the question.

Russia maintains that it never invaded Ukraine and only provided material support to the ethnic Russian rebels to prevent a humanitarian disaster. This may be false, but if you assume it is false without adducing any evidence then you are again begging the question.

Only if you think the rivalry between US and Russia has nothing to do with capitalism or support for capitalism. Honestly, the topic here is much more limited and much less interesting than any of the ensuing discussions – how much mileage can we possibly get out of an extremely flawed poll that doesn’t tell anyone anything?

Let me recap to avoid getting any more off-topic:
@bucaneer: NATO is great because the US doesn’t start conflicts in Europe and Russia does
@wysinwyg: Actually, that’s arguable. Many people believe that the US has a large hand in provoking the conflicts in question.
@bucaneer: The notion that US intelligence would interfere with sovereign governments in Eastern Europe is just a conspiracy theory.

I can’t argue that it’s not a conspiracy theory to suppose that US secret intelligence interferes with sovereign governments. But I can argue it’s an especially plausible conspiracy theory given the ample evidence that US secret intelligence interferes with sovereign governments. (Which isn’t to say Russian secret intelligence doesn’t play the same sorts of games.)

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It was a treaty. It was negotiated entirely by politicians and diplomats. The military literally has nothing to do with the State Department. Then it had to be voted on by Congress - which again has nothing to do with the US military. Without public support, there is zero chance it would have passed considering we were still cleaning up the mess from WW2.

So no, I don’t think sentiment by military commanders means jack when looking at the creation of a treaty.

No, they didn’t invade any western European countries. They did however install puppet governments throughout eastern Europe after the war and then annex half of Germany for daring to create a currency.

I can’t believe I"m having an argument about whether Stalin’s Russia was perceived as a huge threat or not. This is a man who sent 14 million people to the Gulags for slave labor.

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I think it is completely absurd to suppose that the opinions of the leaders of the US military has absolutely no impact on US foreign policy. The State Department has nothing to do with the US military? They have the same freaking boss! The president is advised by the military and the state department and makes decisions on behalf of the military and the state department!

So none of the 4-star generals in the US military had any say whatsoever in the terms of a treaty concerning a military alliance but getting buy-in from Sadie Humphrey of Weehawken, NJ was a huge necessity? The president was much more concerned about what Jed Simpson of Omaha, Nebraska thought about the NAT than he was what his closest military advisors thought of it? How else do I interpret the notion that military sentiment “means jack” but that it couldn’t have happened “without public support”?

Thanks for admitting this. When you said “prevent them from invading any more western European countries”, you falsely implied that they had.

The USSR occupied Eastern Germany as part of a treaty with the other Allies – unless you’re talking about something a little more obscure, I think this is another unreasonably prejudicial presentation of the USSR’s actions.

WTF?! I have been arguing the whole time that Stalin’s Russia was perceived as a threat! Where do you get this?

I can’t believe I’m having an argument about whether the US military has any impact on US foreign policy…

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In ~20 years, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted, and benefits will need to be reduced ~25% to match the then-current tax collections.

At that point (but not before), I expect that some priorities may change.

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Has the use of the word “capitalism” to refer to a system of economy to which there might be alternatives been popular at all before Karl Marx?

Here in Austria, I always understood “Kapitalismus” to refer to the extreme variant of market economy where the rich get richer and the poor don’t get any poorer because they just starve. The word “Kapitalismus” has always had a sour taste of 19th-century factories staffed by children working 25-hour shifts, or something like that.
The positive term was “Marktwirtschaft”, meaning “market economy”. Only politicians who want to put more emphasis on the “social” in “social market economy” will even use the word “Kapitalismus”.
As for socialism… the Social Democrat Party of Austria was officially the Socialist Party of Austria until 1991. For the things the Soviet Union did, as well as for some of the “ideal” scenarios that no one has ever actually tried, we use the term “Kommunismus”.
So, > 80% of Austrians will probably reject both “Kapitalismus” and “Kommunismus” in a survey.

I wonder how the everyday definitions have shifted in other languages / countries.
Maybe Americans under 30 are just readjusting the words they use to be more in line with other parts of the world.

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It really doesn’t smell good when they manure, that’s for sure. And, turkey is worse than cow. But it only lasts a week, or until it rains enough. I do tend to break out the smell-pretty candles when they manure around here, but I wouldn’t dream of telling the people who were here for generations that they have to stop what they are doing. What a bunch of whiny, litigious assholes.

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I think there’s been a big propaganda push in the US to conflate the concepts of capitalism and market economies. Presumably, capitalism requires some notion of capital, and discussions of the history of capitalism tend to start with the (re-)invention of reserve banking in 14th century Italy (or sometimes the Templars). On the other hand, market economies have demonstrably existed pretty much throughout human history, and almost certainly before that too.

It’s hard to argue against the efficacy of market economies. It’s really hard to figure out how much anything should cost (and therefore how much time, energy, and material should be invested in procuring it) without a market pricing it. Command economies are just computationally intractable.

But I don’t think there’s any contradictions involved in the notion of workers controlling the means of production and exchanging the ends of production in the context of a market economy.

IMO, the problem is that capitalism seems to result in small groups of people having disproportionate control over “the market” – over time if not immediately*. State socialism seems like a system where we say, “fuck it, someone’s going to control the market, might as well be bureaucrats instead of plutocrats.” I still have some hope that some form of libertarian socialism could be less awful than either of those options.

*Realistically, wealth is already unequal before the introduction of capitalism, which then exacerbates that inequality. That’s my current model anyway.

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Strongly agree. Of course, most of this discussion is well outside my area of historical expertise… although I appreciated the reference to the Delian League. :slight_smile:

To a very large extent, “Capitalism” is the recognition that some people have more resources than others. This cannot be changed, even if we stop having babies and start cloning people with identical genomes. Once you have more resources, you can do more things. Trying to wholly abolish the economic system of capitalism (rather than trying to regulate and tame it with social, cultural and political systems, like religion or socialism) is a doomed effort. You can’t really achieve a stable and uniform distribution of all resources, and as long as that is true some will control more capital than others.

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That explains why this whole place smells vaguely of poutine farts…

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I did not expand on my arguments for fear of derailling the thread, but if you insist:

The 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine were observed by many international observers who were generally satisfied with their fairness. See for the example the OSCE report (and perhaps compare it with the report on latest elections in Russia - the latter tends to note more systemic faults). The outcome of both elections is also accepted as legitimate internationally, including by Russia.

There is plenty of evidence of Russian military involvement in Ukraine, of varying degrees of directness: from the fact that the separatist territories, despite having basically no economy, have managed to fight a war for nearly two years now without running out of supplies and ammunition for their frequently-used tanks, artillery and MRLSs; to presence in Ukraine of a tank model only used by the Russian army; to individually identifiable Russian army vehicles appearing in Ukraine; to statements by separatist leaders claiming active participation of Russian forces in combat; to Russian soldiers captured while fighting in Ukraine; to satellite imagery indicating that Ukrainian territory was shelled from across the Russian border. The point is that Russian role in Ukraine is primarily warmongering, not humanitarian, in nature.

With that out of the way, on to the main point (I think) of our contention:

You used the phrase “US-staged”, which to me would imply that US had a leading role, that the revolution would not have happened without it. An EU-aligned Ukraine is within US interests, but that alone does not prove that US actually went out of its way to make it happen. It is entirely possible to satisfyingly explain the course of the Ukrainian revolution as an internal matter: the obvious popular enthusiasm for EU (especially in Kiev), the disappointment about lack of progress after the 2004 Orange revolution, the conspicuous government corruption, sparked into popular outrage by Yanukovich’s sudden reversal regarding the EU Association Treaty and made worse by clumsy handling of the ensuing protests. If you wish to argue the point further, it’s up to you to provide evidence that US had some decisive input in the matter.

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I understand the importance of having the SS and Healthcare under the mandatory budget. But we are talking about the military budget. Which is fine where it is in the discretionary category. But at the same time when one shows JUST the discretionary budget in an effort to show how the military budget is too large, is as disingenuous as showing just the mandatory spending showing how much the much SS and healthcare takes up. I have also seen people post the discretionary budget claiming the thin sliver was the food stamps program etc, which wasn’t the full picture, as most of the welfare spending comes from the mandatory budget. Show the full budget if you want to accurately compare what programs the US spends it’s money on. Feel free to add more information by splitting up and showing the discretionary and mandatory spending.

Actually I was saying it was GOOD that it was in the DISCRETIONARY category because it allows one to alter the budget easier. It shows we don’t have set costs that we must meet, like we do with SS etc. That we could scale down if we wanted to.

While I agree that the threats in the world when NATO was formed are not the same as it is today, 1) no one is forcing member nations to stay, and 2) 12 nations have joined since the end of the Cold War, nearly all of them previously part of the Warsaw Pact. So perhaps you’re blanket statement that it doesn’t reflect “the current popular will” isn’t entirely correct.

I assume you keep up on current news. One nation not part of NATO and was recently invaded by Russia is the Ukraine. Do you think Russia would have send in troops had it been part of NATO?

I think I have a fairly decent grasp on history. I already agreed that the alliances the US makes is also usually beneficial to the US (and thus the elites who run it.) Nor am I naive, I know that the US doesn’t always behave, doesn’t do everything thing out of the kindness of their heart, and is a bully and manipulative at times. But I am also not cynical enough to believe that the US doesn’t do the right thing for the right reason some times. Some times the right thing also benefits the elites, but that doesn’t mean that was the only reason it was done… And while I recognize that the people in government are often aligned and influenced by elites, as you call them, I am also not cynical enough to believe that there is some sort of Illuminati pulling ALL the strings and only for selfish reasons. (A quote of mine someone should someday make famous is: “Which is scarier? That the nation is controlled by unseen forces, or that there is nothing directing a master plan. That we are just all bumbling around in this world, barely competent?”)

The offense I mentioned was specifically that the US wouldn’t defend it’s NATO allies. Not only would that be a really bad move strategically and for the realpolitik to NOT support allies against invasion, but I don’t think the average American would stand for Soviet tanks in, say, France in the 1950s.

Make no mistake, I am not an imperialist as I was labeled before an edit. Nor a blind flag waiving patriot who thinks the US is always right and charging in to save the day. The history of the US is messy and full of screw ups, people doing things for the wrong reasons, and the manipulation of others for gain. But I also don’t buy into the narrative that the US is an Evil Empire or what ever you want to call it.

TL;DR - one can have a more nuanced view that falls between “USA! USA! USA!” and “Rawr! AMERICA BAD!”

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