While we look at all the USA has done I do have to ask is there an obligation to help other nations? Is there an obligation to help people from other nations also? I keep seeing in my YouTube channel feed videos about struggling Chinese manufacturers due to tariffs. I also keep seeing videos about people who walked hundreds of miles not being able to make it across the border into the USA. As a human I do not want to see anyone suffer. However I also know how supply and demand works. I also know that if I try to walk into many countries and become a citizen I will be deported.
My grandparent worked in a plant making tires for years in the USA. Then without much notice the entire plant closed and they were out of a job. The entire plant moved to another country. Now that country made it on the list of countries where tariffs are being raised decades later. I feel like if we could paint an accurate picture of this imagine the countries of the world as dump trucks with money. The USA and China both have their own dump truck full of cash. Japan, Germany and the UK have dump trucks with large piles of cash. It seems like the USA has its dumb truck of cash just being emptied by the hands of other nations: Israel, Ukraine, etc. Like there is a line of countries wanting to take from the dump truck of money from the USA while China, Japan, Germany, etc just sit and get to keep their cash. I see Trump as being someone who is saying enough and not letting the cash get taken from the dump truck and everyone saying the status quo is being stopped and Trump is to blame.
Reminder that Democrats throughout the past have wanted tariffs. Why not introduce the idea of having very high tariffs and then talk them down? Do you not go into a car dealership with a sticker price of $30k and if you want a final price of $25k not start out with an extremely off the chart offer to begin negotiation?
I recently got into a heated debate with a person who came across as a liberal elite. They have 2 masters degrees, have a BLM bumper sticker, another bumper sticker about wealth inequality being bad (drives a $90k Audi), and that person had said people who come to the USA should not have to learn English or pay taxes. I asked why illegal immigrants should not have to pay taxes and learn English? They got VERY defensive and said because there is so much wealth being held by the 1% that people who migrate here should be exempt from having to pay taxes. They went not to say that even suggesting people learn English is racist and is also ethnocentrism. They also got angry that I even called people who come here without documentation “illegal immigrants”. They said I should instead call them people who are “geographically disoriented” and that just because I “won the lottery of being born in the USA” that not everyone “wins the lottery of being born in the USA” and we need to help everyone. I asked that person who they voted for in 2016 and they said “Clinton of course”. I sent them the following video and I have yet to get a response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m1Z2KfYaVU
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The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
While we look at all the USA has done I do have to ask is there an obligation to help other nations? Is there an obligation to help people from other nations also? I keep seeing in my YouTube channel feed videos about struggling Chinese manufacturers due to tariffs. I also keep seeing videos about people who walked hundreds of miles not being able to make it across the border into the USA. As a human I do not want to see anyone suffer. However I also know how supply and demand works. I also know that if I try to walk into many countries and become a citizen I will be deported.
My grandparent worked in a plant making tires for years in the USA. Then without much notice the entire plant closed and they were out of a job. The entire plant moved to another country. Now that country made it on the list of countries where tariffs are being raised decades later. I feel like if we could paint an accurate picture of this imagine the countries of the world as dump trucks with money. The USA and China both have their own dump truck full of cash. Japan, Germany and the UK have dump trucks with large piles of cash. It seems like the USA has its dumb truck of cash just being emptied by the hands of other nations: Israel, Ukraine, etc. Like there is a line of countries wanting to take from the dump truck of money from the USA while China, Japan, Germany, etc just sit and get to keep their cash. I see Trump as being someone who is saying enough and not letting the cash get taken from the dump truck and everyone saying the status quo is being stopped and Trump is to blame.
Reminder that Democrats throughout the past have wanted tariffs. Why not introduce the idea of having very high tariffs and then talk them down? Do you not go into a car dealership with a sticker price of $30k and if you want a final price of $25k not start out with an extremely off the chart offer to begin negotiation?
I recently got into a heated debate with a person who came across as a liberal elite. They have 2 masters degrees, have a BLM bumper sticker, another bumper sticker about wealth inequality being bad (drives a $90k Audi), and that person had said people who come to the USA should not have to learn English or pay taxes. I asked why illegal immigrants should not have to pay taxes and learn English? They got VERY defensive and said because there is so much wealth being held by the 1% that people who migrate here should be exempt from having to pay taxes. They went not to say that even suggesting people learn English is racist and is also ethnocentrism. They also got angry that I even called people who come here without documentation “illegal immigrants”. They said I should instead call them people who are “geographically disoriented” and that just because I “won the lottery of being born in the USA” that not everyone “wins the lottery of being born in the USA” and we need to help everyone. I asked that person who they voted for in 2016 and they said “Clinton of course”. I sent them the following video and I have yet to get a response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m1Z2KfYaVU
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Foreign aid is 1% of the budget. There are far bigger problems.
>They said I should instead call them people who are “geographically disoriented”
I really don’t believe this person exists.
I also shouldn’t have to explain to a “Progressive” why helping people from/in other countries is good, and that “struggling Chinese manufacturers” are not something we should care about.
Sorry, I’m not actually going answer the question but I’m sure somebody else will. Someone else can summarize for you why tariffs make the entire country worse off and are a regressive tax. And people will surely explain to you which be a screamingly obvious difference in Hillary‘s position in 2008 on immigration and what Donald Trump wants.
But this post combined with some others we’ve had over the last couple of weeks just unlocked something for me.
I now understand why the Democratic Party seems to have less respect for Bernie Sanders versus people like Elizabeth Warren or AOC. And I now understand the Bernie Trump voter.
>They said I should instead call them people who are “geographically disoriented”
Out of all things that have never happened, this has not happened the most.
What do you nerds get from making up stories like this?
Is there an obligation to help my fellow man? Hmmm. Let me see? Do I suck as a human being or not?”
Foreign aid is 1% of the budget. Stopping foreign aid is not going to suddenly bring back manufacturing, or whatever you are arguing for in this post. It will (and has already) condemn tens of thousands of people to death.
Plus, the US only “helps other nations” when it’s in our best interest. Sometimes I agree with those interests and sometimes I don’t. But the issue is not that the US is too generous or kind.
Your story about the Audi driving liberal elite sounds real lol. Even if it was, I won’t judge you on one maga interaction, and you do the same for us.
Reported for flair.
Also:
>They said I should instead call them people who are “geographically disoriented” and that just because I “won the lottery of being born in the USA” that not everyone “wins the lottery of being born in the USA” and we need to help everyone. I asked that person who they voted for in 2016 and they said “Clinton of course”.
r/thingsthatdidnthappen
I think to the extent we are helping other nations out in practice it is almost always in our self interest to do so. Even the few time’s when it might not be we’re doing so because the people making the decisions believe it to be.
>Should the USA be obligated to help other nations? At what point would you say enough helping others?
Do you think we “help” other countries purely out of the kindness of our own hearts? Or do you think that we also benefit in some way when we grant foreign aid? Sometimes in massive ways.
These are made up numbers but please play along for a minute. Are you familiar with the concept that if we spend say a billion dollars in relief or aid somewhere in the world, that we actually end up saving more than that at a later date?
As a not so made up example, say we spend a bunch of money building freeways in Spain during the cold war. Spain then grants us military bases and aligns with us against the USSR. In this example, did were we “obligated” to “help” Spain and Franco? Or did we use our financial power to grease the wheels and give ourselves some important military bases that we could use to control the straight of Gibraltar? Such a position would be invaluable in a hypothetical war in the Mediterranean.
Another not so made up example. Say we send a bunch of food to Haiti due to an earthquake and massive amounts of gang violence. Do you think that we do this purely because we’re bleeding hearts that love to spend your tax dollars on unworthy third worlders? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, our spending in Haiti prevents EVEN MORE Haitian refugees from coming here?
People really look at our aid spending and think we’re just a bunch of bleeding heart saps that throw our money away to people that don’t deserve it. When, in reality, we have something to gain by “helping others.” Because we aren’t just helping them. We’re spending money and resources SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE it benefits us to do so.
I don’t believe for a second anyone with a single brain cell argued with you that illegal immigrants shouldn’t have to pay taxes. Also “geographically disoriented”- there’s no way you argued with a real person about this. If they ACTUALLY were offended they would’ve said “migrants” or “undocumented” not disoriented.
None of this happened.
“Obligated” no but we should anyways because foreign aid and multinational alliances are a fundamentally good idea.
>Like there is a line of countries wanting to take from the dump truck of money from the USA while China, Japan, Germany, etc just sit and get to keep their cash.
Is your opinion that the United States is unique out of all nations in terms of spending money that goes to other nations?
Do you believe that no other nation does this? Every single other nation spends zero dollars that go to any nation but their own?
If you care about Americas foreign power at all or about our allies, yes. China is so good at producing batteries for EVs because they have the refineries but also because they have the raw material on their own and from places like Africa where they invest heavily in the infrastructure.
Also, anti free trade is just bad. This isnt the 90s anymore, China isnt just prodcuing “knock offs” or cheap goods, they produce more precise machinery than anyone else and have more patents year per year for high tech innovations than the US. For tariffs look at BYD vs Ford. Due to Americas protectionist attitude towards out auto industry we have no innovation, lackluster environmental regulation has led to auto industries producing massive inefficient cars. If you leave the country you’ll see BYD everywhere but in the EU, Canada and other major American allies but now thats changing as EU is in talks with China to remove the tariffs for their cars which we should have done long ago to make American car makers actually care.
The only way for America to truly even somehow have the chance to remain as the super power alongside China (now due to Trump their rise is inevitable within this decade) is by focusing on our allies and on neutral countries. Investing in Asia, Europe and South America would do nothing but increase out soft power, our government has money, the issue isnt helping out other countries, they use that to distract from the real issue which is corruption.
When it stops making us the richest country the world has ever seen ever with the strongest military the worlds ever seen to back it.