How about maintaining some balance?..

[u/Political_LOL_center]

[u/thelunatic]

Isn't like the dept of work and pensions like 40% of the budget?

[u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 → u/thelunatic]

Idk the exact percentage but most of the UK’s social/welfare systems seem like they devote most of their budget on denying you access to them

[u/NomineAbAstris → u/Wonderful_Emu_9610]

Unironically though, means testing is fucking expensive, so at some point you're almost certainly spending more money on weeding out "undeserving" recipients than you're actually saving by preventing it

[u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 → u/NomineAbAstris]

We don’t even do what anyone would reasonably describe as ‘means testing’ our benefits. We just maximise the amount of cruelty and humiliation we can inflict on people to put them off applying.

Social care (elderly, disabled etc.) is at the local authority level not national for some stupid reason and they spend like 3x as much on lawsuits denying care like transport for disabled kids and shit than they do on actually providing it

[u/iwantfutanaricumonme → u/thelunatic]

About 30% depending on the year, while defence spending is like 5% which is just above the previous NATO target(2% of GDP).

[u/urbanmember → u/iwantfutanaricumonme]

% of the budget and % of the GDP are two very different things.

Military in Germany accounts for almost 11% of the budget while just being ~2% of the GDP

[u/Kerhnoton → u/thelunatic]

If you privatize everything, then your pensions will be more and more % of your budget... so you can then be flabbergasted by how much % it costs and cut it.

Thatcher taps her temple

[u/JayManty → u/thelunatic]

This is the case for almost every European country. Turns out social states spend most of their budget of social services, who would've thought!

[u/Lem_Tuoni]

These two things have so much less in common than people think.

Military spending is in most countries (including USA or UK) an order of magnitude smaller than social/healthcare spending.

[u/Little_Viking23 → u/Lem_Tuoni]

This post feels like the typical r*ssian propaganda. “Stop your government from spending on the military!” (while we’re ramping up military production to unprecedented levels)

[u/Lem_Tuoni → u/Little_Viking23]

Not every bad take comes from russia. We are fully capable of being stupid without their help.

[u/Little_Viking23 → u/Lem_Tuoni]

Yes but spending too much on military is not one of those. 3 years into the war and russia still outproduces the whole EU on ammunition and drones.

[u/Egzo18]

this meme fits USA too 100%

[u/UkrainianPixelCamo → u/Egzo18]

Like father like son.

[u/Greedy-Razzmatazz930 → u/Egzo18]

Who cares?

[u/mrtoxicsalt → u/Greedy-Razzmatazz930]

[u/BishoxX → u/Egzo18]

Except both spend over double on healthcare compared to military

[u/Necessary_Weakness42]

R*ssian bot scared of UK military spending.

[u/pheeelco → u/Necessary_Weakness42]

Hahahaha

[u/Darkfrostfall69]

Oh i wish we had a decent MIC, we might be good at designing things but at a rate of production of 1 per 'maybe' we won't be able to field the damn thing

[u/JustAnAveragePirate]

If we're being accurate, both of these images should be the weak one.

[u/to_glory_we_steer → u/JustAnAveragePirate]

Hey, we're 3rd place to the Germans and Savages

[u/studentoo925]

That's what happens when you don't decapitate soviet when you can

[u/Miserygut → u/studentoo925]

There's nothing Soviet about the Capitalist hellscape that is Russia.

[u/Physmatik → u/Miserygut]

It's always funny seeing idiotic takes of tankies.

[u/studentoo925 → u/Miserygut]

But I wasn't talking about ru**ia

[u/Miserygut → u/studentoo925]

The UK doesn't have antagonistic relations with any other ex-Soviet countries.

[u/james_pic → u/Miserygut]

We're not huge fans of Belarus right now either to be honest.

[u/hamatehllama → u/Miserygut]

Russia isn't capitalist. Capitalists are defenestrated on almost a weekly basis by the regime. Their economy have strong elements of kleptocracy and dirigisme. And extrajudicial murders of capitalists critical of the dictatorship.

[u/Miserygut → u/hamatehllama]

Capitalists own the means of production in Russia. None of those points you highlight are in conflict with that. You might say it's Capitalism with Russian characteristics and that might be considered fair although it's not an especially codified system.

[u/gamas → u/Miserygut]

One could argue though that the Soviet regime was just oligarchy under the veneer of socialism.

It's not a coincidence that the current Russian government is made up of former KGB people and that nearly every prominent Russian oligarch today had quite important government roles during the USSR. They effectively used the state apparatus as a tool to enrich themselves.

The same people effectively running Russia now are the same people who were running the USSR just under a capitalist democracy veneer rather than a socialist veneer.

EDIT: Ironically you could argue that in many ways the USSR was really the embodiment of capitalist dystopia. It didn't empower the workers at all - the higher ups controlled everything. The Supreme Soviet was for all intents and purposes a monopolistic mega corporation that happened to control every industry in the USSR - that had none of the accountability that would come from actually being a people's government due to no-one being allowed to vote for anything other than what the supreme leadership (or in corporate speak the board of directors) wanted.

[u/Miserygut → u/gamas]

The Soviet regime definitely veered into State Capitalism for significant parts of its existence. The KGB's play post-collapse is a replay of the post-revolution appointment of the tsarist officials who were not really supportive of the Bolsheviks but necessary in maintaining a functioning international state. I'd be interested to know how many of the descendants of those tsarist officials became KGB and still hold sway in Putin's court.

Ironically you could argue that in many ways the USSR was really the embodiment of capitalist dystopia. It didn't empower the workers at all - the higher ups controlled everything.

Not really. Private Capital didn't play much of a role in the USSR for most of it's history. You could argue it was highly authoritarian and I would agree with that. The higher ups did control a great deal but the divorce between reality and what was reported to them was already a significant economic issue as early as the later years of Stalin's leadership.

As a whole they went from a dirt poor, rolling around in pig shit, feudal autocratic societies to something resembling a developed, relatively egalitarian country in the space of a few decades. There has been no period of greater or faster increase in living standards in human history, with China a close second. The irony that

The early consolidation of power under Stalin did a lot of damage to the resilience of the nascent USSR and it's ability to reform itself that it never really recovered from. The harsh initial conditions for restricting counter-revolutionary activity made it necessary but those quickly fell away as living standards improved. The rest was just very nasty politics.

[u/gamas → u/Miserygut]

Not really. Private Capital didn't play much of a role in the USSR for most of it's history. You could argue it was highly authoritarian and I would agree with that. The higher ups did control a great deal but the divorce between reality and what was reported to them was already a significant economic issue as early as the later years of Stalin's leadership.

I think I was speaking of it more from the perspective of being a worker in the Soviet Union. If you think of a lot of future dystopian concepts of capitalism (particularly cyberpunk) - you often have this idea of corporations effectively owning people, where they live and what they purchase and consume in a kind of neo-feudalist hierarchy - and in some cases including the idea that the worker isn't paid in money but in the form of corporate credit (like Amazon vouchers). And from that perspective, how much different is that from the life of the average worker under the Soviet Union?

[u/Miserygut → u/gamas]

You're making the case that the USSR was closer to State Capitalism than Socialism and I agree with you, not to mention the USSR's handling of the countryside peasantry vs. how the CPC did it. The Chinese had the benefit of hindsight and did more to unleash the revolutionary potential of the countryside peasantry.

This drove a large part of the wedge between the USSR and Chinese ideas of Socialism (Sino-Soviet split), hence Socialism with Chinese characteristics became defined as similar but distinct in ideology.

Even under the USSR's State Capitalism the levels of freedom were significantly higher and the quality of life immeasurably better than under Tsarist rule for both urban and rural workers. There are lots of very reasonable criticisms of the USSR, the repression and authoritarianism was one of them although not unusual compared to other western liberal democracies it turns out.

[u/gamas → u/Miserygut]

Oh yeah it was absolutely an improvement over Tsarist - I just think its never properly introspected that the Soviets never completely threw away some of the feudalistic tendencies.

[u/Miserygut → u/gamas]

At some point the historical social and cultural characteristics of the people involved will come into play but it doesn't mean they shouldn't try to be as egalitarian as possible.

[u/thisislieven]

It is just such a shame that centrist and centre-left governments happily contribute to the slashing of social services and other support structures in recent years. Not why they were elected!

All in the hope of gaining some votes on the right, which will never happen, but it does cause tremendous harm on both a individual and societal scale.

[u/Gudgebert]

Blatant propaganda slop

[u/Kajafreur]

They could've used the money to build new high density social housing and upgrade metropolitan public transport, but no, they have to waste it on whatever ts is.

[u/MajorDeficiency]

absolutely useless, most missiles are bigger than a tennis ball

[u/Hel_Bitterbal → u/MajorDeficiency]

Stealth features make them look smaller on radar

[u/Foxvale]

I can also hit that, probably won’t but I can do it

[u/Blakut]

I woldn't show the UK milind complex as being that buffed. They do live on an island

[u/Meihem76]

TBF Mickey's just using synthoil. We'll probably only make like 4 of these, and maybe buy a dozen missiles for them.

[u/mirh]

Civil rights don't even have anything to do with money

[u/yahluc]

What is r*ssian propaganda doing here? Like, what does military spending have to do with civil rights? Why is it shown as some sort of opposite?

[u/Tenchi_Muyo1]

Defence from his people*

[u/Bee-baba-badabo]

You've exposed our only weakness! Objects smaller than tennis balls will now rain down upon helpless Britain!

[u/Savage-September]

You’ll find that it’s actually the total opposite

[u/de_Mike_333]

They can’t even detect people sized vandals destroying their airplanes on an air base …

[u/Icarsix]

Why are we having to turn into a mini-USA TwT

[u/AutoModerator → u/Icarsix]

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