{"id":1437024,"date":"2023-11-05T00:25:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T04:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1437024"},"modified":"2023-11-05T00:25:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-05T04:25:00","slug":"dont-fall-for-bidens-latest-talking-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/dont-fall-for-bidens-latest-talking-point\/1437024\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Fall For Biden’s Latest Talking Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t Fall For Biden’s Latest Talking Point<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

As the long-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia stalls and a new war in Gaza draws the world\u2019s attention, American support for funding Kyiv\u2019s war has\u00a0waned<\/a>. In an effort to reverse this, the Biden administration is changing its messaging. A Politico\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from last week details how White House aides are now telling members of Congress to sell Americans the lie that continuing to send money and weapons to Ukraine is good for the economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

President Joe Biden made this point himself when he\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0a $105 billion proposal to send military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan:<\/p>\n

We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas. And so much more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With this new talking point, the Biden administration is echoing Senator Mitch McConnell, who has\u00a0for months been saying<\/a>\u00a0that the war in Ukraine is an excellent deal because American companies get paid, the Russian regime is weakened, and only Ukrainians have to die.<\/p>\n

Setting aside the morality or\u00a0practicality<\/a>\u00a0of Biden and McConnell\u2019s foreign policy ambitions, the argument that all this military spending is good for the American economy relies on one of the oldest, most pervasive economic fallacies in our political discourse\u2014the broken window fallacy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First outlined by French economist Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat in his\u00a0essay<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThat Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen\u201d and later expounded upon by economic journalist Henry Hazlitt in his\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0Economics in One Lesson<\/em>, the broken window fallacy is the false belief that spending money on restoring things that have been destroyed can make an economy richer.<\/p>\n

To make this point, Bastiat used the example of a broken shop window. After his careless son breaks a pane of glass, a shopkeeper is forced to hire a glazier to repair the damage. A group of bystanders reflect on the situation and question their impulse to condemn the boy. After all, they ask, \u201cwhat would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Hazlitt\u2019s telling<\/a>, the bystanders point to all the economic activity that will come from the shopkeeper\u2019s purchase of a new $50 windowpane. \u201cThe glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum.\u201d That leads the crowd to the fallacious conclusion that because of all the resulting economic activity that his breaking of the window incited, the shopkeeper\u2019s son should be considered a public benefactor.<\/p>\n

The problem with this thinking, Bastiat and Hazlitt explain, is that it cites only the economic activity that can be seen to result from the broken window. What goes unseen is the cost\u2014all the economic activity the shopkeeper would have instead spurred had he not been forced to buy a new window.<\/p>\n

And because the shopkeeper would have preferred to spend the $50 elsewhere, the breaking of the window can only be considered a net loss. The glazier benefits from the shopkeeper\u2019s loss, but the shopkeeper and therefore the overall economy are made poorer.<\/p>\n

How does this relate to the Biden-McConnell talking point? After all, isn\u2019t the destruction happening far away in Ukraine and Gaza?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important not to get distracted by the act of destruction in Bastiat\u2019s parable. The central element of his argument is not the broken window alone but the fact that the shopkeeper is forced to pay for a new one.<\/p>\n

When the American people are forced to pay for weapons and equipment to replace those sent to Ukraine, they lose out on all the economic activity that they would have preferred to partake in, just like the shopkeeper.<\/p>\n

And although, like the glazier, the\u00a0five prime<\/a>\u00a0defense contractors benefit from the influx of tax dollars, the American people as a whole can only be made worse off. There is no growth, only a forced transfer of wealth to the weapons companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have so far been forced to pay for over $44 billion worth of\u00a0weaponry<\/a>\u00a0for Ukraine and $3.3 billion per year in\u00a0military aid<\/a>\u00a0to Israel. Now another $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Israel have been proposed. This spending would increase the burden that has already been forced on the American people. If Biden, McConnell, and their supporters think Americans have an obligation to shoulder that cost, they should at least have the decency not to pretend it\u2019s making us more prosperous.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 11\/04\/2023 – 20:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/dont-fall-bidens-latest-talking-point<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t Fall For Biden’s Latest Talking Point Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute, As the long-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia stalls and a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1437024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}