I like how neoliberal economists just invented this concept of "you shouldn't spend more than 30% of your income on your housing+utilities" and that morphed into "no, you MUST spend 30% on rent+utilities!"

I don't really have much more to add or say other than I wish there was an easy way to just slap 300M people on the back of the head simultaneously and say "that could be 0%!"

Very roughly, so far the US has given $100B to Ukraine and Israel to, effectively, fund those wars. Not all of that was "military" spending, but let's be real here.

A very nice 2 bedroom apartment (for a small family) could cost between 250K-425K. So that $100B (so far! Much more is coming, surely, the US MIC never sleeps) could have built, potentially, 235,000-440,000 individual apartments. The low end is 700sqft estimate, high end 1200sqft estimate.

1200sqft is very adequate for 2 adult w/ 1-2 children families, so I'd probably aim for that mostly and then build some smaller for other arrangements, but whatever, this is just all out of my ass.

Even assuming the 1200sqft family sized apartment number, 440K families having free homes versus Israel blowing up the homes of nearly all the people in Gaza. Or continuing to fund an endless war in Ukraine instead of forcing a peace agreement there (or never provoking Russia to begin with...).

Amazing how if an activist group asked for $100B or $1T or even a mere $100M (literally pennies in this discussion) for totally free public housing they'd be grilled for hours, days, forever after about "but how will the residents pay it back!?!?" and "but won't that effect nearby real estate market?!?!" But we need $100B to kill people and fund endless proxy wars over the span of two years? "Ooo, that's a little bit of a spicy price, buuuuut, alright here you go! 2000lb bombs to level the remaining hospitals on the way! Don't worry, we're working on the next $100B right now!"

Shithole country, truly.

(Reactionary sources for funding to Israel/Ukraine. I expanded back 3 years for Israel ~$4B/yr ($12B) + $14B in (sure to pass) additional for current genocide + $75B to Ukraine since 2022 = ~$100B (rounded DOWN for nice number)

Btw Ukraine is slotted to get another $60B, Israel $14B (added above because I KNOW that will 1000% pass, Ukraine likely will too but is more volatile), and Taiwan $8B for what? To laugh at the US, presumably. I can't blame them I guess. I'd rip off the US too in their situation. So that's an additional total $68B for military related shit which COULD be added to any consideration of housing domestically. I left out the $9.2B for Gaza aid because that's the only legitimate part of the bill, in my view, although I have no doubt that most of that is in some way filtered through Israel who steals it or wastes it in some way.

2022-2024 UA so far: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts

Israel spending breakdown: https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Foreign "aid" bill: https://apnews.com/article/senate-military-aid-ukraine-israel-gaza-0b9c866308cc4c8c13c3f54494371f0b