Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Beto Reveals Unbelievably Convoluted War Tax" video.

  1. The people who vote for the war get to go fight the war.
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  2. A "war tax" is about the most neoliberal thing I've ever heard. Every time someone says Vietnam was a quagmire, Afghanistan was a blunder, Iraq was a mistake, they're doing what Beto is doing. They're thinking about a moral problem as an economic calculation, as a policy that could be a failed effort, but never evil, never wrong, never criminal.  If Beto were really concerned about "the cost of going to war," he'd propose setting aside a fund for the hundreds of thousands—millions—of people killed in the last two decades alone as a result of American imperialism and intervention, thousands of families destroyed, entire regions destabilized. That's the most substantial chunk of the "real cost" of war. That goes for the wars—sorry, "conflicts"—in the Middle East, that goes for the egregious War on Drugs that's caused so much damage in Latin America.
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  3. On the other hand, the conservatives and libertarians will have to swallow their pride and say, "Support our troops! Pay the federal government taxes for social programs!"
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  4. I must've missed it: is the tax always levied or does it only kick in once Congress (or, let's be real, the President) declares war? Because if it's the former, and there's an already existing fund for soldiers' care...how does that give anyone pause about going to war? It's money in the bank. Also, is his idea to deter people from going into war by showing the sticker price? Because either it's a war we do actually need to be in and we wouldn't want people to shrink from a moral responsibility because it costs too damn much, or it's a war we don't need to be in, in which case why would we want to base popular resistance on whether or not some hapless vet gets healthcare?
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