I was just wondering how the US (or any country really) can pull out 100 billion on a given occasion ? Is the treasury just “printing” more money, or are taxes raised? (let’s say 200million Americans are active, that’s still $500 per person) . Or is it just debt passed on to future generations? It goes without saying that I am not fluent in finance

  • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org
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    6 months ago

    For pretty much all big spending projects it’s a bit of all of the above. Also how the money is actually spent is usually the far more interesting part.

    For example, while I haven’t looked at the latest aid package for Ukraine, if it follows the same pattern as the previous ones, most the the money doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. What actually happens with most of it is that the US military is told to give Ukraine some of their old kit, the US military then uses the money from the aid package to replace what they shipped off with new kit. The money stays in the US and effectively doesn’t get spent as it winds up back in Uncle Sam’s pocket one way or another.

    At the scale of governments, especially governments that control their own currency, the money isn’t what’s truly important. It’s the resources that matter. Manpower, materials and energy.