As someone new to Lemmy, thanks for asking this. I just joined lemm.ee from a Reddit link, and I don’t know all the different flavors of the different domains.

NGL, I’m pretty sad to lose this handle.

If you’re making minimum wage, what do you really have to lose by improving your marketable skills?

I mean, I don’t see how it’s possible if you’re only going to have entry level skills… You’re not really building up a wealth of marketable skills if you quit all the jobs after a year.

I think the problem might be how quickly you quit to do it. It takes a good year to train a new person to be productive. If they only get about a year of productivity from you after training you for a year (and a junior level amount of productivity at that), then it’s not worth their time and effort to invest in you. If you did it every 5-7 years instead, it would probably go over better. That’s long enough to see whole projects through to completion and then just take a break in between.

There’s also the issue of how long you take off. If you take off 6 months to a year, it’s less likely that new technology comes in and changes everything than if you take off 2 years. Ex: 2 years from today you can expect huge swaths of industries to adopt using AI tools in day-to-day tasks. Another ex: I’m an engineer, not a CS person. I’ve helped design computer systems, but sophisticated coding isn’t the main part of my job. In the last 3ish years I’ve seen every system I’ve encountered switch to containerization.

I’m not here to defend every action of Western militaries or which regional conflicts they paid attention to and which they ignore.

I have a hard time buying your claim that because Putin would invade Crimea some 20 years later, that he should have registered as a threat to the West in the 90s. Even if that were true, then you would simply be finding error in the risk analysis I am asserting is done in defining a military budget, not disproving that it’s done.

Again, the relative value of the bombs to the homes being bombed is still a stupid means of illustrating your point. And everyone in this thread agrees with you that terror bombings of civilians doesn’t work (and is cruel/ inhumane), but they disagree that is the intent of the West/ Ukraine here. So go make that point on YouTube video comments with computer jockeys nutting themselves over drone strikes in Afghanistan.

Yes I think the NATO build up is justified. Russia has proven its willingness to invade its neighbors, so the likelihood portion of the risk analysis is high. Additionally, at least for the US, China’s substantial military build-up portends conflict in the South China Sea and the broader South Pacific. There’s a reason Australia is our new military BFF. None of that means waste/ war-crimes/ Boeing are justified, obviously. But you are trolling, so I think I’m done here.

Lastly, not sure how you are suggesting the West is responsible for or should have prevented the chaos that followed the Soviet collapse or Russia turning into an aggressor state, but it’s all irrelevant to your original point that I took issue with.

Growth of GDP is irrelevant. The article you linked doesn’t say that they are increasing spending targets by 5%. The article said they are increasing spending targets from 2% of GDP to 5% of GDP. They are increasing spending targets by 150%.

Look, defense spending isn’t a monotonic relationship with GDP. It’s a risk assessment taking into account the value of your assets and activities as well as the size of the threat faced. In the 90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was basically no large threat to the international US-led order. The US still had to maintain a base level of funding to squash upstarts (pirates, …Iraq), but the safety of high value assets and activity could be insured with much less funding.

Your initial argument was that spending on defense ought to be on par with the value of the threat faced, which makes no sense. Spending on defense is insurance to protect what makes you money. You don’t price flood insurance for your home on the cost of that many gallons of water. You price it based on the value of your home and the likelihood of it flooding.

As someone in defense, Boeing sucks.

Regardless, my point was just that spending targets were indeed pegged to GDP.

The US has pressured Europe for decades to spend 2% of their GDP on defense.

The world war is already here, it’s just not all-out yet. This policy change isn’t going to be the instigator of it.

Regardless of Trump, the US is not the preeminent military or economic power in the world anymore. Further, the global climate is changing. As such, a global reshuffling of resources and alliances is inevitable.

Military budgets are placed based on the value of what they’re protecting (physical assets, economic activity, etc), not based on the wealth of the people who could destroy your assets/activities.

This is wishful thinking. Democrats are still unwilling to change many of their policies that got them into this mess. People voted against the status quo in 2024, and Democrats are still trying to offer people a return to pre-Trump.

It’s possible that Trump will turn people off enough that they vote for someone else, but if the US survives this term I feel like Americans will just view it with the same unreality with which they apparently regarded January 6th. Trump is weirdly slippery and none of his outrageous, glaring faults hurt him. He will have to utterly destroy things for people to decide he’s a problem at this point.

I mean, I did see that the source was the BBC, but they should really quit using that as a crutch at this point.

Or a kerb, for that matter (wtf is that spelling?!)

I was trying to present his concerns as being relatable; I don’t think he’s unreasonable.

Marriage is pretty good. He’s a good partner, a very moral person, and a great, involved father.

I think I’d rather die in a concentration camp than break up my family… At least, if I knew my kids would be okay. I don’t think it’s likely I’d be able to take my kids overseas with me if I left him over it anyway.

I am trying to talk my husband into moving. I can probably land the job in the EU I am interviewing for, but he does NOT want to move. He doesn’t want to leave the small amount of community we have. He doesn’t want to overreact in fear to this administration. He doesn’t want to give up our home and our lifestyle (the EU pays substantially less across many industries). Our parents are getting older and sicker; it’s hard to move abroad when you know there’s probably only a handful of years left with them, especially when you have children.

I think the Internet discounts how difficult it can be to uproot.

You mean Russian asset Edward Snowden?

I am kind of disappointing this is actually from 2023 though! It needs to cum again.