S5 E05 - Iran Conflict and The Thieves Among Us

War, Welfare, and the Storehouse: Priorities Behind the Iran Spending Debate

A critique of Senator Bernie Sanders’ claim that U.S. strikes involving Iran cost about $22 billion and that the money should have funded healthcare, housing, early childhood programs, and student debt relief, arguing this framing treats security as optional and redistribution as government’s primary purpose. It contends government exists first for collective functions individuals can’t provide alone—national defense, border control, law enforcement, disaster response, and basic stability—and warns that accumulated public resources attract constituencies that see stockpiles as surplus, including many who pay little or no federal income tax. It cites a Minneapolis pandemic-era feeding scandal as an example of redistribution enabling fraud, criticizes Democrats as “fun parents” expanding benefits while lowering expectations, and contrasts finite military actions with an endless “war on poverty,” noting SNAP alone costs roughly $100 billion annually and that most federal spending already goes to social programs.

00:00 War Costs and Priorities

00:57 The Redistribution Impulse

02:13 Sanders and the Iran Bill

03:18 What Government Is For

04:19 Stockpiles and Human Nature

05:47 Modern Storehouse Politics

07:52 Fraud and Clan Loyalty

09:17 The Fun Parent State

10:35 Exit Strategy for Poverty

11:52 Who Pays and Who Votes

13:07 Welfare vs Defense Reality

16:22 Shutdowns and Skewed Urgency

17:59 Survival Before Comfort

18:52 Closing Thanks

#IranWar #SNAP #BernieSanders #GovernmentShutdown #EuropeanUnion #MAGA

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

0:11

A war with Iran costs billions, and Bernie Sanders is listing all the things that money could have bought instead. Why We only worry about waste when missiles are involved today. On the 10th Man War has a way of clarifying priorities. When conflict appears on the horizon, whether overseas or closer to home, societies are forced to decide what government is actually for Defense Stability. Survival or something else. And there's a growing moral claim in modern politics that clouds that decision. It says that whenever wealth accumulates anywhere in the system, someone else has a claim on it. If resources are stored, they must be shared. If funds are collected, they must be redirected. And if the taxpayers criticize this, they are told they lack compassion or the current buzzword, which is empathy. This is not new. Some human beings have always had an instinctive reaction to any accumulated wealth. Some among us see stockpiles and imagine it's unused abundance. They see preparation and assume that it means excess. They convince themselves that their need for that wealth is greater, and that taking a share is not theft, but justice. That mentality becomes especially powerful during times of crisis when the cost of survival becomes visible and the temptation to repurpose that cost can be politicized and leveraged. Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders criticized US military strikes involving Iran saying the operation had already cost roughly$22 billion. And he did not just cite the number, he immediately translated it into alternatives. Alternatives that he approved of. He argued that the money could have been used to fund more healthcare coverage, more public housing, more early childhood programs, more student debt relief. It is an emotionally powerful way to talk about spending, take money from war, give it to people, take money from defense, spend it on daily life. But this kind of framing quietly assumes something. It assumes the primary purpose of government is to provide comfort, and it assumes that security is simply one optional expense among many others. But hold on. Government exists first for the things individuals cannot do alone, like national defense or border control. Safe air travel, law enforcement, responding to floods, fires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, the basic stability that allows ordinary life to function at all. These are not luxuries. They are the foundation. You cannot privately organize a national defense. You can't personally secure trade routes or deter hostile regimes, and that's why societies, groups of people pool their resources. It's not to eliminate every hardship of man, but to ensure that the structure itself survives long enough for ordinary life to continue. But historically. That structure has always been vulnerable, and not only to external enemies, but to internal temptation. From the earliest moments of organized survival, preparation meant gathering resources together. Imagine a frontier settlement where danger was expected but not yet visible. So the settlers cut timber to build a defensive stockade. And on the other side of the battle, the Indians fashion arrows for the attack that they're planning. Two different sides, two different fears, but the same urgency. So wood was stacked on one side and weapons were counted on the other. Supplies were being gathered for the moment when survival would depend on collective effort. And in both camps, the same quiet calculation appeared. Someone would look at the growing pile and think they've gathered plenty, they won't need it all, and my needs are greater. And so timber that was collected by all the settlers disappeared into one man's pig pen. While arrows crafted by all of the Indians became hunting ammunition for the one thief among them. That selfish instinct didn't disappear as societies became wealthier or more organized. Today, it appears just in a slightly different form, workers earn and taxes are collected. The government stockpiles resources in the name of collective needs defense, security, emergency response, and almost immediately. A political constituency emerges that sees those accumulated resources, not as preparation, but as opportunity. And this is the audience Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to when he conversed the cost of confronting Iran into promises of housing subsidies and debt relief. These are not thieves in the criminal sense. They're something more modern. Voters who have been taught to see every storehouse as surplus, every tax dollar as available, and their every demand as morally urgent. But unlike the pioneers slipping timber from a pile, they themselves help build together. This modern redistribution coalition is not necessarily part of the group that's even paying in to the treasury. In fact, many within the group pay little or no federal income tax at all, yet remain fully empowered to decide how that accumulated revenue should be spent. There's plenty. They won't need it all. Our needs are greater, and this is an unjust war. The language changes a little, but the instinct does not. Once redistribution becomes central to politics, the next development is almost inevitable. The storehouse of goods and capital grows larger, and the distance between the taxpayer and the tax recipient widens, and somewhere in that gap, people begin to reach into the pile. We saw this vividly in the massive pandemic era feeding scandal in Minneapolis, where Somali run organizations were caught siphoning tens of millions of dollars meant for hungry children. And this was not merely bureaucratic failure. It exposed what happens when a modern redistribution system intersects with imported tribal cultures that do not share the same assumptions about civic responsibility or property, or universal obligation. American society shaped heavily by Christian moral inheritance teaches a broad idea of neighbor. You owe fairness and honesty, not just to your clan, but to strangers and to the world. These clan based systems operate differently. Loyalty is much narrower and obligation is something that's immediate. Accumulated resources are negotiable. So when a vast government storehouse appears funded by people they never meet, the temptation becomes powerful. The redistribution state does not just attract need, it attracts raiders. And unfortunately, this dynamic is not just accidental. It's actually encouraged. You see, modern Democrats increasingly position themselves as something like the fun parent. They promise food relief, medical subsidies, debt forgiveness, benefits that make daily life easier. And the fun parent is also the indulgent parent. The parent who avoids discipline. The parent who lowers expectations. Don't criticize the fat people who are on food stamps. Don't blame the Somali culture for having false daycare centers. You're a racist. You see, if you're expecting responsible behavior, you're gonna be accused of prejudice. If you demand accountability, you'll be told that you're unfair. So redistribution expands while the expectations shrink, and it's actually the fun parent who has no respect for the poor, only condescension, And the fun parent does know that there have to be restrictions on bad behavior. But the fun parent relies on the good parent to create rules and enforce rules while criticizing that parent, while calling them cruel, uncaring, and racist for doing what has to be done. Now critics of the Iran conflict are often asking the same questions. What's the plan? What's the exit strategy? Those are fair questions, but the same questions are rarely asked about the other war, the war on poverty. That effort has continued for decades. Isn't it a little odd? Trump achieved a tactical victory in just two weeks, and everyone agrees that eliminating the Iran threat was important. And that has been done to the extent possible, has it not. But in the war on poverty, there has been no victory, no exit strategy. No plan to make progress at all. Just expansion. And this has gone on for half a century. There's your true forever war and speaking of war, what about wars of independence? We're mindful of the independence of nations like Iran and Ukraine. If nations deserve independence, don't human beings as well. But our poverty programs are designed to create dependence. And now look at who pays the taxes. Forget that old"tax the rich" slogan. It doesn't work. The United States is the only nation who does tax the rich. Under America's progressive tax system, the bulk of federal income tax is paid by higher earning workers and professionals, business owners and investors. That productive constituency, that builds wealth and it finances government itself. And at the same time, the people Bernie Sanders is talking to, they fall in the lower half of the income scale, where federal income tax liability is virtually non-existent, the approximately half of all Americans who pay no federal income tax. There's two kinds of Democrat voters. There are the ones who pay no taxes to the government and those who work for the government. Both of these are dependent on the government, at least to some degree, and neither one produces any goods. They're not financing the storehouse, they're just voting on how it gets divided. With all of the complaining about defense spending, you'd think that it was a huge amount, but military spending represents a relatively small share of federal spending. Everybody thinks that Capitalist America doesn't have social programs, but in fact, our government is mainly a social program. Most of our taxes, most of our government spending goes to social programs. And here's another big secret. We're told America is stingy because we spend a smaller share of our economy on welfare, smaller than say the eu. Well first it's false because we have so much private giving in America. In other countries, they simply pay their taxes and sit back, fold their arms and say, there, I've done my bit. The government will take care of everybody. Americans, on the other hand, are huge contributors to charities. But not only that, back to this percent deal. Our economy is so large that in real dollars, we spend as much per capita or more on social programs than almost any country in the world. But everybody wants to talk about percent, but even percentage wise, just our spending based on GDP, it matches the Swiss and the Dutch at around 10%. But the thing is, people on welfare, you can't spend a percent, you spend dollars and the people of America get as many dollars from their government as any country in the world. So then comparing defense to charity and welfare. When Bernie Sanders criticized the cost of confronting Iran, he said that 22 billion could have funded social programs. Don't make me laugh. The Federal Food Assistance Program alone, SNAP. Food stamps costs roughly a hundred billion dollars each year. Each year, each and every year. This one social program could pay for five Iran conflicts, and it never ends. It goes on forever. The Iran conflict is a mere pittance compared to all of our welfare programs. In the end, policies reveal themselves, not in speeches, but in the actual incentives because the universe is capitalist. I like to say modern progressive leadership increasingly plays the role of the fun parent, the one who promises relief, expands benefits, lowers expectations, and keeps the peace in the moment. The indulgent parent who would rather distribute comfort than demand independence, and they can afford that posture because they assume someone else will take responsibility for survival. That someone else will insist on funding defense, enforcing laws, maintaining borders, and preserving the conditions that make all the promises possible in the first place. They are so confident of this dynamic that the government is periodically allowed to shut down while they hold the entire system hostage, believing the other side will ultimately cave to the need to restore essential government services. Ironically, in these moments, the primary political concern is whether the welfare benefits such as SNAP food stamps will continue. While there is no urgency about the fact that truly vital government functions like TSA operations or the Coast Guard go unfunded. You've seen the security lines at the airports. People who do pay taxes are waiting in line because the people they pay taxes for the TSA workers who also pay taxes are not getting a paycheck, but at least the SNAP benefits are going out. There may be lines at the airports, but there's no lines at the church, food banks, and that's a failure to prioritize what's important. Imagine if productive citizens could say these priorities are unacceptable until they change. I'm gonna stop my tax payments. The Democrats shut off essential services. Imagine if the people who build and finance the system had the same leverage. But unfortunately taxation flows one direction and it's unstoppable up to Washington and down to welfare. And this is just not sustainable. You can try to prioritize social programs over the basic work of keeping a nation secure and intact. You can treat survival as secondary and redistribution as urgent. But without a country that functions that can defend itself and enforce its own rules and it remains intact, there will be no programs left to fund, no benefits left to distribute, and no storehouse left to argue over. That's the unescapable fact that defines our true priorities. Stability for all is more important than the comfort of a few. Promises depend on power and survival is the one expense you cannot pay too much for. Thank you for listening.