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DarkRange55

DarkRange55

Enlightened
Oct 15, 2023
1,318
Just a musing…

A lot of small towns in America used to have the railway station now the railway station doesn't matter as much or in some parts of Northern Ohio they have been important because they were part of the canal system that doesn't get used anymore. There might have been a coal mining town, a copper mining town, lodging, ect. So its a natural economic reason why these areas are no longer as popular, its sad but its one of those things thats just as a passage of time. If you build a town to mine the copper, eventually you'll run out of copper and you'll run out of town. But the reason for a lot of preexisting small town expansions was for military bases. This story is all across America, there's bases everywhere. So Base Realignment and Closure, Congress shut down 350 installations in five rounds: 1998, 93, 95, 2005. This can be a big deal for the economy of these small towns when this happens.

Most of you if you're old enough can probably think of a base somewhere near having this happen. This can be a big deal for the economy in places but this was seen as necessary to save money. Well how much money? Well it's very interesting. Not long ago I read that the US sent nearly $14 billion to Ukraine in one round to help them. And that money, I'm sure, will be wisely sent, right? It's gonna be spent to kill people. Thats the best case scenario really, I mean thats what they want it to be used for is to kill a bunch of people. Most of it will probably end up in people's pockets just like most of these situations. But okay, $14 billion. And again money doesn't really matter to the federal government unless it's about taking your money. The only time they're interested in money is when they're taking taxes from you. So we're gonna throw $14 billion at Ukraine to prolong the fighting.

So they closed 350 installations in 5 rounds (and some of them were repurposed or turned into something slightly different so they weren't all closed completely, many of them were. And a large amount of them were the nucleus for a small town. It creates something that people seem to like or at least the media would tell you that people like which is diversity but real diversity in that its people from all over the country, all types end up there because thats what the military is all people get mixed up. So the closing of these installations and all the equipment and many of them had to become superfunds sites because they had to do a lot of different things and stuff like that. According to Congress these rounds constitute a combined savings of $12 billion annually.

$12 billion annually is all it was costing for 350 defense installations that not only serve one of the few legitimate purposes in my opinion of the federal government which is national defense, but it also had the bonus of contributing to these local economies. But to save $12 billion which ain't shit to these people, if anything the Ukrainians should be pissed off that they're not getting more money. But they condemned hundreds of small towns to oblivion, slow death to save $12 billion "fake" dollars. And its even more ironic considering that we've come full circle and our retarded government now has us head-to-head again with the Russians with a greatly reduced ability to defend ourselves and to respond to attack.

And think of all the other things thats into that, the towns that don't have the money, now you've reduced the size of the military drastically. Especially something like the Air Force, these are highly trained positions, you can't just bring that back. If they wanted to open all these bases back up they couldn't. I was reading about some of these units and one of them is the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing is a previsionary Air Force unit… as provisional unit it may be activated or inactivated at any time. This is part of the way that they pump up the numbers in our military to make it look like its bigger than it is. They have these different units that they move around, they rebadge shit, do all kind of shit like this. I don't (necessarily) believe its in the government's mandate to directly provide aide to people. I do believe though that if in the process of fulfilling its actual constitutional obligations if one of the side effects is that, that has the benefit of helping people, thats good.

Its like we're still this giant military industrial-complex but your people don't even get the fuckin' benefit of it. Just like we're this huge rich country and our people are getting poorer and poorer. According to the TV we're still the most powerful military in the world, I find that difficult to believe with this sort of thing but to save $12 billion dollars… and how much money did they spend on that piece of fucking shit F-35 that they took tax payers money and just threw it at them. Hey this would be good because you can turn around and sell this on the foreign market, they're not gonna get that money! Who give's a damn if anybody buys these planes? It doesn't help anybody. The amount of money that we spent to research them you wont even be able to pay that back even if they gave a cut of it to the government or the tax payers for paying every fucking dime of this shit. But at least when we used to throw unknowable quantities of money at the military-industrial complex at least it had the added advantage of keeping the local pizza place open. And now you don't even get that. Our government spends more money than ever and you don't even get that. I find that very interesting. That's what happened to Leavenworth. Had to become a tourist attraction.
 
sserafim

sserafim

they say it’s darkest of all before the dawn
Sep 13, 2023
8,008
I don't have the attention span to read all of that lol. Condense it into TLDR and maybe I will
 
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DarkRange55

DarkRange55

Enlightened
Oct 15, 2023
1,318
B
I don't have the attention span to read all of that lol. Condense it into TLDR and maybe I will
Basically the cyclical rise and fall of small towns is to be expected but many small towns are formed around a military base. Many domestic bases were closed to save money but this had the consequence of evaporating local economies (and their towns) and also came full circle in the Cold War 2.0. The money "saved" is peanuts next to the aide to Ukraine.
 
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SexyIncél

SexyIncél

🍭my lollipop brings the feminists to my candyshop
Aug 16, 2022
1,491
Basically the cyclical rise and fall of small towns is to be expected but many small towns are formed around a military base. Many domestic bases were closed to save money but this had the consequence of evaporating local economies (and their towns) and also came full circle in the Cold War 2.0. The money "saved" is peanuts next to the aide to Ukraine.
Wonder if that's neoliberalism vs military Keynesianism

Chomsky had the best explanation of military Keynesianism I know, in "Understanding Power" or on youtube. (The footnotes are in a separate website/book, because they'd double the book)
 
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