Sky News asked U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen if America can afford another war. She said, "Absolutely."
She's wrong.
Americans can't afford another war. The world can't afford another war. The future of this planet can't afford another war.
Let's start with Americans:
The majority of economists don't seem to have the slightest clue what ordinary people are going through. They say inflation is "down," but that means prices are still going up, just not as fast as they were. While the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans are doing fine, everyone else has depleted their savings. They now have less cash on hand than ever.
Look at any financial magazine or newspaper, and they'll tell you the truth. The average family is hurting, badly.
Economists and affluent liberals have the audacity to explain the economy to them. They cite statistics like unemployment and GDP.
Every year, our politicians decide what to spend our tax money on. They spend as much on weapons as everything else combined. Economists now have the audacity to tell us this isn't enough.
They want more.
We spend more on our military than any other country in the world. Despite that, we lag far behind Russia and China when it comes to the actual production of things like jets, tanks, ships, and missiles. Our military wastes extraordinary amounts of money, and the elite don't care. Meanwhile, they fight over whether poor children deserve lunch. They pass the harshest laws to make sure the homeless and jobless aren't ripping them off.
Now let's talk about the planet.
We just lived through the hottest summer in human history, and the planet has now officially breached 1.5C degrees of warming over preindustrial levels. Coward scientists lecture us on the numbers. They tell us that it doesn't mean anything. We shouldn't worry until the planet stays 1.5C above normal for 20 or 30 years. Only then should we act concerned.
The planet is running out of resources. We've likely passed peak oil and peak diesel. The world can't produce enough.
Entire cities are running out of drinking water, even in the U.S. Climate disasters are destroying our infrastructure faster than we can rebuild. Insurance companies are abandoning homeowners.
That doesn't sound like we can afford another war.
Janet Yellen doesn't speak for us.
She speaks for the rich.
The rich believe they can "absolutely" afford more wars, because they don't pay for these wars. They dump the cost on us.
We pay for them.
We don't just pay for these wars with our tax dollars. Now we're paying for these wars with our future. The money that goes to these wars is money that could go toward making public schools safe. It's money that could go toward feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless. It's money that could provide everyone a living wage and affordable healthcare.
Instead, we get schools where children are taught to play dead during mass shootings. We get hospitals where we're more likely to get infected with a deadly disease than cared for. We get big box stores full of junk food and electronics that fewer and fewer of us can afford.
We get jobs where we have to constantly fight for fair, living wages against CEOs who make more than 300 times as much as the average worker.
Meanwhile, think tanks and military strategists tell us we're not prepared for the armed conflict with China that everyone seems so hungry for. They tell us we would run out of munitions in less than a week.
A week.
But we can "absolutely" afford more wars?
Gimme a break.
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