USA has sent 26.7 billion dollars to Israel to carry out genocide

We barely kept from defaulting on disability payments to our own veterans at the beginning of October. But we've got all the money in the world to create more suffering. Including putting our own troops in harm's way.
FFS.
- But if they don't send them to Israel then what will the poor arms manufacturers do? Some still haven't bought a yacht for this month.

For those with a skeptical nature, I hunted down these numbers.
The US has spent ~$18B on direct military aid to Israel since October 7, 2023. They've also spent ~$5B for operations in the region, mostly in the Red Sea and Yemen.
HUD does not provide numbers to "end homelessness", they report on the state of homelessness including an estimated census of the homeless.
Some annalists have taken these numbers and multiplied them by the cost to imprison someone, or the average cost of American housing. These estimates come out to $11-30B.
So the numbers check out. The only fault I could find with this meme's claims is that they are slightly misleading in suggesting $20B could "end homelessness" without the caveat that that's only for one year.
- 20 billion could go a long way to curbing homelessness.
  20 billion invested in high density, low rent housing units could make housing more accessible to millions of people, including the homeless.
  Remember, not all homeless people are completely jobless. Many are couch surfing or sleeping in their cars, have stables jobs, and just can’t afford rent where their job is. An apartment they can afford could do a lot for these people.
  
  You are correct. I like to focus instead on those lacking shelter who've been completely alienated from society and cannot be 're-rehabilitated'. These are the people who are erased when we speak about how lifestyle or work ethic "redeem" those in extreme poverty.
  
  Lack of housing really isn't the root cause of the homeless epidemic. That money would need to go to revamping the mental health services Reagan destroyed to help the chronically homeless.
- Of course the numbers are good.
  My bullshit detector is going off for a different reason. This is an arbitrary short term vs long term comparison. The money that went to Israel wasn't going to HUD either way. As someone correctly pointed out, $20B is a rounding error here.

Biden just wants to see more dead children
- I don't know about all that, but I do believe he has been captured by the MIC/Corporate influence and has no choice or control at all. But, I might just be naive in my thinking, lol.
  
  Biden? No. Here's him in 1982 wanting to kill women and children:
  Begin said he was shocked at how passionately Biden supported Israel’s invasion when Biden “said he would go even further than Israel, adding that he’d forcefully fend off anyone who sought to invade his country, even if that meant killing women or children.”
  https://theintercept.com/2021/04/27/biden-israeli-invasion-lebanon/
- Oil companies and oligarchs provide the funding. The person in office still has to make the decisions and still bears responsibility.

This implies that they care about the homeless issue. 23 billion is a rounding error in the budget. They just don't want to fix it.

By all means, vote independent in state and local elections. We need more choices than a two-party system offers. If the candidate seem qualified, then help new parties establish themselves. Once they build enough followers to make a difference, we can start electing senators. Then the presidency becomes a serious option.
Unfortunately, there aren’t currently any third party candidates with a realistic chance of winning. The only responsible thing we can do for now is choose the lesser of two evils.
- Unfortunately, there aren’t currently any third party candidates with a realistic chance of winning. The only responsible thing we can do for now is choose the lesser of two evils.
  I don’t know anyone who thinks this is about winning. Everyone knows their third party vote isn’t going to result in a win for their candidate, and their candidate also knows this, and they know their candidate knows. When you lecture someone on what they already know, all you do is annoy them. You’re not going to get far with them if you don’t understand what their reasons really are. I can’t tell you; you’ll have to ask them.
  One reason for some, that I think you can easily understand, is that unless you live in a swing state, it costs nothing to vote left of genocide. There is no downside, and it may make the Democratic party sweat enough to move slightly left. The party isn’t going to move left if they know you’ll always vote blue no matter who: all that does is make you a reliable and politically irrelevant punching bag.
  
  Swing states aren’t the only states that matter. Also, states “flip”, surprising even experts.
  Do you understand how incredibly privileged your stance is? You’re willing to let a horrible person take control of the country just so you can make a point.
  
  I wonder if Claudia should rebrand their logo (that they have in the bottom right hand corner of OP) to say something like “*swing state? Vote Harris”
  There’s no way she wants 45 to become 47. So she must have some guilt about marketing herself and Karina where a swing state voter might accidentally help get a bad man elected.
  (I don’t know anything about her but I’m trusting she has her heart in the right place and is alarmed at all the same things the average Lemming is)
- You should be using your voice to pressure Democrats to change their stance on genocide, not shaming voters into becoming complicit in the genocide. This is the one time you have any power and if you back down now, it will not end. You are a coward if you continuously put yourself above the project of ending American empire.
  
  Either candidate who has a real chance of winning endorses genocide. One hates millions of Americans; the other doesn’t. I don’t understand how siding with those millions means I’m putting myself “above” them. The accusation of cowardice is laughable.
- This is not about winning. Putting votes on third parties is a long term investment. It directly shows both evil parties they are missing out on votes.
  Votes they would have had if they changed their agenda.
  Rewarding a "lesser evil" for not appealing to left wing voters will teach them they need to keep doing evil because that is what makes them win.
  
  Real human beings could suffer because of your decision, but apparently that’s fine, as long as YOU are heard. That’s the kind of selfish hypocrisy we’re supposed to be fighting.
- The responsible thing is to fully endorse genocide?
  
  The responsible thing to do is to mitigate the damage.
  Genocide is inevitable regardless of which candidate wins. I’m not happy about that, but that’s the situation we’re in. The less awful thing to do is pick the candidate who will protect women and immigrants. I am not willing to sacrifice their well being in order to make a political statement.
- I understand your confusion. The campaign names at the bottom are what set me off. Candidates are taking advantage of people’s anger over the genocide in Palestine and using it to siphon votes. It irritated me, so that’s what I responded to.

American democracy in action.
- Homelessness isn't a bug in the system, its a feature. Employers need the threat of homelessness to push wages down and artificially inflate the labor supply. They need high rents to segregate portions of the community into "worthy" and "unworthy". They need car-culture to keep people isolated from one another in between work and home. They need student debt to trap people into corporate jobs, rather than setting out on their own as entrepreneurs, co-operative partners, and social workers. They need mass media to keep people more afraid of "crime" and welcoming of the "police" than they are welcoming of neighbors-in-need and hostile to state surveillance and harassment of dissidents.
  The $26.7B we're sending to Israel is money towards an experiment in regional social controls and ethnic domination. If the Israelis can do it over there, the plutocrats back home can do it over here.

Need poors so that the middle class can think they will become the billionaire class and continue to support their needs
- Classes aren't income divisions, but social relations to production. The US, since WWII, has always been thoroughly dominated by the Imperialist Bourgeoisie.

http://costofwar.com
The site design could be better though. Human brains don't understand how insanely large those numbers are without a visualization.
- Secure connection failed. Lemmy hug of death?
  
  Lemmy not big enough for that, at least not yet.

Why would you end homelessness though when you can simply criminalise it and send them to prison to work as slaves?

- Depends on what class is in control, this is true for dictatorships of the bourgeoisie.

If there are no homeless, how will the corporations scare the middle class into wage-slave labor?

Imagine giving the DoD $800 billions in yearly budget while still has billions of surplus equipments.

If you're in a poorly made boat that has a hole in it with two other people...
And you are all actively sinking in that faulty boat, about to die in the middle of the ocean...
And one of the people states they will make more holes so you all drown....
And the other wants to work to keep the boat floating enough to get to shore, but not to your ideal...
Who do you help in that moment, or do you fold your hands and sink on principle? And you understand that sinking is not a moral victory here, because you've effectively supported the person who wanted to make more holes and sink the boat.
If you don't get to shore, you won't live to attempt to sue that horrible boat company to hold them accountable and keep others from using their faulty boats. And if you don't help the person bailing out water, the person making more holes will kill you all with less effort.
The "people" above are to represent general philosophies of the two "sides" in this discussion, not insightful candidates. There is no option to truly stay neutral here, direct action or willful inaction, both have impacts that you are responsible for.
What do you do?
- And you are all actively sinking in that faulty boat, about to die in the middle of the ocean...
  And who does this represent in your scenario?
  
  This post, at this time, is very obviously pointed at influencing the US election. This analogy represents the entirety of the US population eligible to vote in that election and the two dominant political parties in the US as a country with two party politics - a flawed degradation of the system originally designed to be sure, which is a separate conversation you can have, but there is an objective truth that one of two parties will win this election. Period.
  That objective truth acknowledged, there is no neutral or third option here, regardless of how hard some may try to convince themselves otherwise. You have no moral high ground in the middle or to the side, you'll either vote for assured destruction or you'll vote for a chance at stopping it. You missed your chance to fundamentally shift our political structure the 4 years, and 200+ years, prior. So now we come to the table as adults, get Harris in as the better option, and then as soon as she's sworn in and has the power to do so, we fill the streets in protest and demand the immediate end to this.
  trump and his people have literally talked out loud about how great the "beachfront property" will be for Israel once they annihilate Gaza and the Palestinian people. There is no maturity in the false vitriol and attempts to solicit votes for trump/stein/no vote (which are all the same enthusiast vote for trump and for the assured destruction of every last Palestinian person.

Most of the aid is in the form of weapons, not raw dollars. Something tells me that a homeless person wouldn’t have much use for a THAAD air defense system
- Huh? The money is going into the monopolies manufacturing the weapons at a 500% price for the government to send them. If you send them away you have to spend to make more of them (101 war profiteering basics).
  
  Exactly. Just one minor nuance, Much of these weapons were developed and stockpiled years ago, sometimes a decade or more before any current conflict. The twisted logic becomes: since the weapons are already made, they must be used to justify the expense, or it’s seen as waste. What’s even messier is the possibility that these crises and wars are sometimes invented or escalated just to 'spend' the stockpile. It’s really disturbing to me, lol.
- So you want to give them a home, but not the means to defend it?
- ISIS might.
  The weapons are there, a soldier dies, his gun is found and sold, off to the cause it goes.
  You should know. You paid for it.
- Most of the aid is for defense like missiles for their air defense systems, to shoot down rocket and drone attacks. But believe what you want.