Forum Post: It won't end well.
Posted 3 years ago on Sept. 13, 2021, 10:12 a.m. EST by agkaiser
(2552)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
All rentiers are a parasitic disease of the real economy. Compound interest or profits on non productive financial activity can only concentrate wealth at an exponentially growing rate. This can't end well.
"This is a very important article. It is so easy to become dispirited and confused by what is happening in the world. I now have a much clearer Historical Perspective of where we are and why. It will take a lot of re-reading to fully grasp it all, but I would like to thank Dr. Michael Hudson for expressing complex ideas so clearly, and for creating a bit of hope." (Moelwyn Thomas - from comment thread below article via the link below)
This^ article is fundamental to much of what we discuss here & I'm posting it for #S17/10 years of OWS. Fifty years of "Trickle Down" - has turned mere millionaires into Multi-Billionaires and the Working Class are now the "Working Poor" while the "Middle Class" try to pretend that they're somehow NOT Workers! This shit can't go on and "it won't end well", that's for sure!
respice; adspice; prospice et spero meliora ...
Thanks. Michael Hudson is ever inspiring. He doesn't just point out the dangerous self destruction; he offers alternatives.
"It does not have to be this way, of course. China is defending itself not only by the productive industrial and agricultural economy its socialist government has sponsored, but by a guiding concept of how economies work. China’s economic managers have the classical concepts of value, price and economic rent, that distinguish earned from unearned income, and productive labor and wealth from unproductive and predatory financial and rentier fortunes."
"Understanding the Basics of 21st-Century Democracy, Autocracy, and Capitalism." - by Prof. Richard D. Wolff:
Which ends with ... "If we define capitalism in terms of the employer-employee internal structure of its enterprises - what Marx termed their “social relations of production”, most socialisms to date have not yet accomplished transitions beyond capitalism. To do that .. they would have to change the prevalent internal organization of their enterprises to democratic worker cooperatives.Indeed that's now become the task for 21st-century socialism."
per aspera ad astra ...
"Every House Member Who Aided the January 6 Rioters Must Be Expelled"! ... by John Nichols:
From which, consider that - "“This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses” explained Rolling Stone,in its report on interviews with two of the January 6th protest planners. “While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope.”
And - note "The planners identified Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as one of the members they plotted with, along with Republican representatives & staffers - from the offices of close to a dozen other members. Other House Republicans who engaged in the plotting, personally, or via any assigned staffers, reportedly included: Rep. Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona; Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Mo Brooks of Alabama; Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina; Andy Biggs of Arizona &, Louie Gohmert of Texas.
“The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team - including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence,” according to the report."
fiat lux et fiat justitia - ruat caelum!
"The January 6 hearings showed why it's reasonable to call Trump a Fascist"! Zack Beauchamp
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/6/10/23162442/january-6-committee-hearing-june-10-trump-fascist
&: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104356935/whats-next-in-jan-6-hearings-gun-safety-march-inflation-and-housing-market
& https://www.democracynow.org/2022/6/10/benny_thompson_trump_attempted_coup_january
From the 1st^link: "We now know Trump expressed support for hanging Pence and did little to stop the violence - actions that suggest some very dark historical parallels."
respice, adspice, prospice!
"“Fascists Go Home!” - Philadelphians Reject Far Right “Moms for Liberty”!" - Kate Edwards
"Over 50 local and national organizations joined to counter the harmful messaging from the far right group’s conference."
multum in parvo!
"America's Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy? Prof.R.D.Wolff with Chris Hedges"
Also please note . . . "Global Financial Empire 1" by Professor Michael Hudson:
fiat lux ...
"How Did Private Property Start?" by Matt Bruening:
Note: "Libertarians tend to get flummoxed when confronted with this simple question"!
respice; adspice; prospice ...
Differentiate between property I live and work on and absentee landlords' or corporations' property. The former is fundamental and natural "territorial imperative." The latter is the violation of the liberty of all to satisfy the greed and tyranny by and for the few ... It is tantamount to the "freedom to enslave:" an oxymoron.
"Tens Of Millions of Middle Class Homeowners pay annual taxes on unrealized gains of their homes - but the idea that 700 Billionaires should also pay taxes on the growth of their stock portfolio is now sending folks into a fit of rage! STOP DEFENDING BILLIONAIRES! START TAXING THEM!" (Qasim Rashid)
"As we emerge from this pandemic - substantial tax increases are inevitable. Central to the program should be a tax that limits the hoarding of wealth by the billionaire class."
ad iudicium?
Knowing how widespread "tragedy of the commons" is, I hold that private property has been a reasonably good way to avoid the environmental degradation of the public domain. There are limits to private property rights for sure, in order to serve the common good.
It takes some historical experience for a people to know when to give up some private property rights for the likes of sewerage easement or pedestrian footpath crossing on private property. Communism fails right from its first principle of abolishing private property. All of the self-styled so-called Communists hoarded their private properties. All attempts to realize Communism have already failed in the Dismal Swamp of Socialism with Fascist characteristics. Of course, in Mao's twisted mind, "Socialism with Fascist characteristics" wasn't the "Revisionism" of Khrushchev much despised by Mao himself.
People generally have better impression of owners-occupied properties than absentee owners'. Many corporations have absentee owners of their properties. The boards of directors were often very incestuous in their financial dealings because the members were often personal friends of the CEOs and they set the compensation packages for the executives. It's no wonder that corporate executive compensations have gone up so quickly. Friends in the boards' compensation committees voted to pay corporate executive friends well who pay them well from the corporations by originally putting them on the election slates for the boards of directors -- I call that "incestuous behavior" of cronyism.
In the same way that "libertarians" should never hold political office (they hate government, right?), it is the same thing that libertarians should never hold private property (though they love private property.) This is because private property basically violates the liberties of others.
"...the basic issue that property acquisition violates the liberty of others."
As soon as you declare (so when the first person owning a piece of property declares it as his/hers) a piece of property as owned by you, you have removed the rights of others. This is really very anti-libertarian.
Just goes to show you how screwed up libertarian thought really is.
Consider that "property acquisition violates the liberty of others" especially when that "property", is "others" - and then please take your time in digesting this particularly relevant "Long Read" link below ...
Note: "The creation of the modern, interconnected world is generally credited to European pioneers. But Africa was the wellspring for almost everything they achieved ... and African lives were the terrible cost"!
Btw, what's the RW Libertarian take on Property Rights & Slavery? Or "Wage Slavery" / Chattel Labour? Further note that the very word "Libertarian" - was a European LW Anarchist term .. that was specifically selected & hijacked by Murray Rothbard to appeal to The US 99% & con/co-opt them for the Ruling 1%!
respice; adspice; prospice ...
The injustice of a capitalist system is no better exposed than how PPP loans have been forgiven to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars yet student loan payments will be starting up again in a month's time.
"Out of a total of $791.4 billion in PPP loans made, about $662.2 billion's worth have applied for forgiveness, and the SBA has paid out about $644.6 billion, according to SBA data."
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2021/12/14/ppp-loan-forgiveness-sba-fraud-business-grants.html
So, what you have here, in many instances (not all, of course), are well-off business owners being handed money for free to pay their staff to work and earn profit for them and continue to build their businesses so that they can continue to earn more profit into the future.
vs.
Individual students who struggled to get an education by having to overpay for that education and forced to take out loans to do so because of the sickening rise in the cost of higher education in America. And, then, no, not forgiven, like the debt was for the capitalists, but required to start paying again after 2 years of insecurity and during the rise of another wave of the pandemic.
All that matters in America are the wealthy and corporations. They get all the hand outs. Socialism for them, capitalism for everyone else.
Indeed, sadly "All that matters in America are the wealthy and corporations. They get all the hand outs. Socialism for them, Capitalism for everyone else" & in confirmation, consider:
"The Vermont senator said a company owned by the mega-billionaire's massive holding conglomerate "should not be demanding wage cuts."
ad iudicium!
Bernie for President, 2024! He needs to run third party!
The failures of the Democrats to come together to get anything meaningful done of late has left one more opening for Bernie Sanders to run for President as a third party candidate.
Americans have had it with Democrats and Republicans!
"Sanders Tells DNC to Reject Super PAC Spending Against Progressives in Primaries" - by Chris Walker:
https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-tells-dnc-to-reject-super-pac-spending-against-progressives-in-primaries/
& for the full letter to DNC, see: https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1526556101822402560
Also note -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/13/rallying-summer-lee-sanders-rips-aipac-trying-buy-elections by Jake Johnson
e tenerbris, lux?!
We're joining with "Occupy Waldorf" ( owned by enslaved Red China and freed Russia ) soon in Operation Walled-Off, Astoria ! Note the stark contrast in the video between Park Avenue, Manhattan and Park Avenue, Bronx. In the U.S., a physical barrier such as a river, a park, a railroad track, a wall, or a precipice often marks a racial divide and personal-safety boundary to be observed for goodness' sake. Our Morningside Heights "Academic Acropolis" was set apart from down-there "Black Harlem" as "White Harlem" by Morningside Park and its precipice.
Just imagine Russia taking Ukraine, Red China taking Taiwan, Kim Jong-un taking South Korea, and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz in a simultaneous concerted action. Nice, huh ? Blackstone is in the Kaaba, yeah ??? Life, Liberty, and Property, eh ? ЛЕНИН/龙之传人: 反攻台湾, 解放大陆。
straySTAYalive 7 months ago @Luke gordon yes, I live here since my birth, and if I'll be lucky enough, i will die in another country. Russia is a very rich country, but its people are poor. official corruption is rampant. the state does everything to enrich itself and pretends to take care of its citizens. medical workers and teachers have terrible working conditions and very small salaries. if you want to find out what Russia really is, then come not to Moscow, but to small provincial cities. you can even not go far from Moscow, it is enough to come to the Moscow region and you will immediately see why all the residents of Russia say that Moscow and Russia are different countries. I am sorry, my english is not very good, but at least, i've tried:)
I understand straySTAYalive's sentiment towards Russia, as I also relate to Hong Kong similarly. Voluntary Apartheid is great for peace !
I won't go back to Red China to reclaim ancestral properties as I've been told by elders and relatives that my (国家：有国先有家。) paternal Grandma made her decision to build "the New China" with the primarily landed wealth, to fight the Imperial Japanese invaders of China under the United Front spanning both the Nationalist Army and the fighting-behind-enemy-lines Communist guerillas ( my Mom ran supplies to them and she was once quite shaken by a nearby explosion that she described to me decades later; this was happening while my Dad might be consorting in Imperial-Japanese-Army-occupied territory with a Japanese woman { my Mom was suspicious of a sexual relationship existing between my Dad and the Japanese woman but there was no proof either way; at least my Dad got through unscathed the ordeal, right under the nose of the Japanese military-occupation force } whom her boss had tasked with assisting and protecting my Dad after his imprisonment due to his being sunk and rescued/captured by a German U-boat while running American Appalachian coal to England during the beginning early days of the Battle of the Atlantic and again for his trying to watch a movie from the vacant having better-perspective "White" section of a cinema in Apartheid Cape Town; Mom waxed philosophically { as 无奈何, 国家大事, 别无他法, 无奈何。} about all of these topsy-turvy crazy things such as my Mom's years of living apart from my Dad arising from war, politics, and baseless murky accusations; I had a very hard time believing that my Dad was a so-called "spy" as he was accused of by the ¿paranoid? people; I think that spies have to possess at least minimal literacy qualifications { in order to produce a report } -- aside from knowing Chinese New Year's fat chickens' causal linkage to the toads and frogs of rice paddies, he wasn't even semi-literate ! ), all being Chinese compatriots. Our familial lineage put in both wealth and lives so it shall stand.
"Most Young Americans Say US Democracy Is 'In Trouble' or 'Failed' Poll Finds"! .. by S. Zhang:
https://truthout.org/articles/poll-finds-most-young-americans-say-us-democracy-is-in-trouble-or-failed/
based upon & embedded with ... https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/fall-2021-harvard-youth-poll
From which ... "Only 27% of respondents, described American democracy as “somewhat functioning,” while a mere 7 percent said that U.S. democracy is “healthy.”
IF U can't write sense on the subject of the forum-post, stayTF off my posts gripes! U've been told b4!
multum in parvo?
Young Americans weren't politically engaged with influence so what can we really say about their gripes? Not much. Biden was a triangulational choice. Still recall that word from the 1990s when the "Contract with America" broke much with the collaboration of the Demonkrapts? It's not hot. It's not cold. It's just lukewarm, Fruit of the Boom in halved-flap style. Kabul International Airport's bombing was as good as it had got so far. People were running and hanging on to a U.S. transport plane taking off. Wow ! We the Americans even found human remains from that iconic takeoff. At least one person literally dropped dead. That was what it meant for one to try to hold on to a piece of America till death.
I knew that I got the brunt of the big fat butts of the Baby Boomers ( everything was expensive to me but I shut up and ate all of that shit up, ) but worked out from down under by my own effort. Although I myself am classified by others as a very late Baby Boomer, I felt keenly the pain arising from the big fat asses of the Baby Boomers.
Polls are only opinions, not actions.
I say though that I had benefited from the earlier Baby Boomers' struggles against the Vietnam War. I had neither been conscripted nor registered for a military draft. Conscription makes countries' rulers take wars lightly by their ability to field much cannon fodder. When I came of military-service age, the U.S. military became a volunteer force. Of course, there were plenty of terrible and crazy happenings during my years growing up as a teenager in NYC in the 1970s: Watergate, very high inflation, long gas-station lines, NYC bankrupting, thousand ( hohum and blasé ) bombings in the U.S. in a year, opened fire hydrants gushing and flooding streets at times making them impassable, etc.
If we're still talking about "democracy," this is the end, on this path to nowhere.
Who are you? I am no one. "I don't believe it." "Yes, that's why you failed."
When one wished upon a piece of mosquito-infested Flori-duh swamp land and worked upon it over decades, it turned into the most tourist-visited destination with Betelgeuse in the U.S.A. near the new town, Celebration. It shows Art's power to transform via fantasies and imagineering. Having experienced redneckhood's "culture" by living next to our Red States' boundaries, I had little desire to visit the U.S. South in order to preserve Voluntary Apartheid. However, the artists' draw made the Deep-South Flori-duh an exception to my rule so I've been to Celebration multiple times.
Personal space was often nonexistent on Kowloon and Hong Kong buses I took as a young child so I wasn't on guard at all about other people's getting "too close" to me or my being "too close" to them. However, violating personal space was apparently a big offense to "rednecks" so I do give them a wide berth, with no Red States for me being the norm. Some online comments implicated that the sensitivity about personal space might have arisen from the prevalence of incest in the U.S. South. Wow, that had never even flashed once across my mind ! Rednecks deserve sympathy and understanding of why they need their personal space. They might have been abused and traumatized by family members so they suffer from PTSD.
I suspect that Russia's Pootin similarly still suffers from Nazi-German-induced trauma. I have no personal recollections of WWII, the Great Patriotic War, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Second Sino-Japanese War, or in my Mom's preferred words: "Eight Years of Resistance" but I could gather that something terrible and momentous had happened before my birth. We should pay respect to and sympathize with the ones who still remember.
Pootin may well be totally wrong about how threateningly scary Germany is to Russia. German youth just don't see Russia as an enemy state anymore. I'm far more concerned that they don't rise to the occasion if NATO must respond to Russian aggression should Pootin miscalculate again. Russia is quintessentially a European country ( as Peter the Great had held as truth; Russia's vast Asian land holding may actually be causing a psychological problem of misconception; Asian Russia is mostly extremely sparsely populated and cold with much freshwater in rivers and trees in impassable forests; it's huge geographically but its sheer scale can make one feel hopelessly confined despite one's actually being coddled by the literally big sky { Manhattan has "small" sky due to its having many buildings blocking the sky } ) despite its being obviously of a higher rank than many other European countries so it needs to learn how to live with its European neighbors in mutual peace and prosperity. NATO was formed to counter Soviet Union's aggression ( the Finns knew Soviet aggression firsthand and they bloodied the U.S.S.R. very badly in the Winter War of 1939-1940 in which the U.S.S.R. won a very costly Pyrrhic victory ) so NATO is a rather benign defense alliance if Russia doesn't miscalculate and transgress NATO's mandate.
I once saw a British tank as a young child but it didn't alarm me in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong because it was undoubtedly under British control and the very first national anthem I had heard was the British one at the raising of the Union Jack at a governmental sporting event. It's probably true that the British had ground up human bones from Sicilian cemeteries for fertilizer to "make [their] bread." Such was population pressure, as in "Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum; I smell the blood of an Englishman; Be he alive or be he dead; I'll grind his bones to make my bread." If Russia had joined NATO, Russians wouldn't feel fear at the sight of a NATO tank in their neighborhood, either. Since Russians generally regard Moscow as a different country from Russia, NATO's spear thrust directly at Moscow to stop its aggression ( as Russia considers Belarus and Ukraine as safety buffer states; NATO's smaller states also consider what Russia does to Ukraine as their potential fate so NATO needs to do preemptive strike at Russia to thwart potential aggression by Russia; I'm of the opinion that Pootin's previous adventures in Georgia, Crimea, and East Ukraine proved that Moscow had to learn peaceful living sooner or later via a war by NATO -- externality follows Pootin's internality and if he doesn't change his internality, NATO changing his externality will be required and sooner is better than later as the Winter War had shown how to achieve a long-lasting peace on the Finnish-Russian border after a very bloody conflict in which the U.S.S.R. got its big Stalin's ass handed back to it in many broken pieces and achieved a Pyrrhic victory { this reminds me of my Big Brother's "victory" calling me the thief of a shimmering rainbow-colored plastic slipper }; for Liberty, we lived; for Liberty we might well die but that's acceptable, even to the matriarch of an ancient warrior clan which is really not strange at all because most living human beings have descended from warriors and/or shadowy flighty ones of olden times ) needs not concern all neutral non-Moscow-living Russians. It will be no different from the time of the Russian Revolution: lay down arms, move out of the way to Moscow, and become neutral. No harm but the liberation from Moscow's rule shall come to the "peasants." Russian "royalties" shall have their "Rendézvous with Destiny [of their own creation]."
"The New China" doesn't practice so-called Communism, a bankrupt ideology masquerading as being "scientific", proven to yield such failures again and again, thus proven as being unscientific. Most failed attempts turned states into Fascist Oligarchies or Monarchies, in which people suffer greatly in terms of their relative (though not absolute) freedom of choice and prosperity ( relative to the peoples outside or even just next-door ). Hence, information blackout/brownout but with much untrue and unreal propaganda is imposed upon the detained slaves.
For example, those farming folk in South Korea started out making less than those industrial folk in North Korea because the Japanese occupiers had developed North Korea due to its abundant natural resources such as coal relative to rural South Korea. Nowadays decades after the Korean Conflict, the South Koreans on average make nearly twenty times ( I don't even care whether it's actually five or eighty -- what matters is the multiple being high demonstrating the gross disparity ) the money of the North Koreans. Wow, mentioning being left behind...for real... while having started out with the same language, same people, and same culture.
The U.S.A. has already been eviscerated of much industry so our young people should move to India or Vietnam, etc. for jobs. Why India? They know English as an official language there so language barrier is nonexistent. India also has a caste system for favoring "White-light-skinned" Brahmins. Besides, we have incubated so much of the delta strain in the U.S. ( 99+% of the new CoViD cases here in the U.S. are now of the delta strain ) that even by becoming a major exporter, we won't suffer any domestic shortfall. India manufactures CoViD-19 vaccines so its complacency allowed million-strong delta-proliferation parties. As for Vietnam, I heard that working in Vietnam pays about 50 U.S. cents an hour so the goods there must be ridiculously cheap for great living of U.S. expatriates there. In the U.S., business folk who had eviscerated the U.S. said the same thing about cheap Red Chinese goods in Walmart while the potential U.S. customer got no money to buy anything, however Red-Chinese cheap it might be, because they had their job disappeared to Red China. Crooks !
Re. China, The Emperors and Dynasties have come and gone but the sense of Communal Collectivism Cradled by Confucianism - runs very deep and clearly much deeper - than U can even fathom, as is the deep strength of the many, many centuries old - Meritocratic Matriculation to the Mandarin Main Stream Civil Service. China's Politburo is now the de facto Emperor & the Chinese Communist Party is the New Mandarin Class! Go figure! But this thread is NOT about China, is it, U fkn shit spewing idiot?! So much more in keeping with the core theme of this forum-post, consider:
https://truthout.org/articles/ocasio-cortez-says-assault-accusations-should-bar-kavanaugh-from-abortion-ruling/ by Sharon Zhang and then also consider:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/03/global-empire-us-christian-right-dark-money-fuels-attacks-abortion-rights-worldwide by Jake Johnson
et spero meliora!
Red China promotes Confucianism to take advantage of its "be obedient to the authorities." Who are the authorities? The so-called Communist Party members who have "Little Emperors," "Little Empresses", "Princelings," stashed abroad with gobs of miraculously large amounts of money.
Show me which university is teaching the Chinese classics to their students as quintessential Chinese values. For that, I recommend people going to Taiwan, despite its having already been dyed by Red China's proximity. I even say that the Japanese Occupation of Taiwan had retained more traditionally Chinese values there than what still exist on the Chinese Mainland. You talked about meritocratic civil service of China. That hasn't been practiced for at least a century already.
Red China's behavior on the international stage proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it has a Chinese-Culture moral vacuum. China became great and diverse because it could hold people together with its culture of tolerance and accommodation. I'm pretty sure that my ancestors wanted to become Chinese despite their most likely not being originally 100% Chinese. Hundreds of years or even more of assimilation culturally and genetically via intermarriage made my parents "Chinese." Some research suggested that my ancestors were likely illegals ( my guess is that they were: the so-called-by-China "pirates" from Japan or the other Pacific Ocean off-China's-shore islands, and the horse-rearing-and-riding steppe "nomads" from Central Asia, southeastern Europe's Balkans, and the Great Hungarian Plain; i.e. they were mobile over the millennia since the end of the last Ice Age { a major earthquake in North China had likely precipitated a migration to now-China's coast to assume a commission to rebuild a toppled monument } -- they weren't sedentary farmers initially because that required an agricultural discovery { grasses sprouting as climate warmed up as ice and snow receded north allowed horse-based migration to occur over Central Asian steppe, much like how "the golden horde" from East Asia would pass through the same horse-trekkable grassy corridor in the opposite direction to attack Moscow; sun-powered population pressure fueled migration and conquests; the British Empire's expansive span was likely due to the population pressure having increased greatly in the aftermath of Watt's breakthrough discovery of coal-fired steam power in a traditionally "pirate" seafaring culture of islands } but were most likely fishermen, warriors, and/or their assistants such as stablemasters, chariots/weaponry designers/engineers, and palace/monument artists/butlers/architects ) at some juncture in China Proper which was rather small originally { due to the highlands and cold dry deserts in the rain shadow cast by the mighty "Third Pole" Himalaya, very few people from the West without determination or having heard of legendary tales could find their way on land through the formidable bleak terrain they had to trek through to get to the Yellow River, therefrom Chinese culture's uniqueness emanated -- China's Mainland was mostly a secure subcontinent-size "island" until the seafaring invasions of the Europeans, aside from the "pesky" though few-in-number "sea-of-grass or sea-of-fish" peoples nearby }, so of course, China's being huge now is because it had expanded quite a lot to include many peoples nearby (i.e. within a radius of several thousand miles of China Proper centering at the bends of the Yellow River).
China had a big and wide bosom to take in many foreigners ( where would you go if you're being persecuted for your ethnicity or hunted down after a coup d'état in your own homeland ? China -- at least in the olden days, it was so ). China was the dominant culture in East Asia for many centuries, if not millennia -- it was the place to be.
The fact is "Red China" doesn't need to "promote Confucianism", as it is very deeply ingrained in China's Collectivist Culture! The rest of your Sinophobic Crap remains unread by myself at least! Meanwhile ...
"Prof Wolff takes a look at where the United States and China are competing .. and how they are influencing the rest of the world. Only time will tell what strategies will determine the future of this relationship."
respice; adspice; prospice ...
Middle class squeezed there and here. What can we do for the future kids? https://www.businessinsider.com/china-middle-class-starting-to-look-like-americas-2021-12 even in china
To below. Yes, makes good sense https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/business/global-wealth-income-gap/ and
https://www.propublica.org/article/these-real-estate-and-oil-tycoons-used-paper-losses-to-avoid-paying-taxes-for-years
Yes, we could easily afford a basic, tiny home as birthright, with small carrying costs.
Consumption via Debt is Unsustainable, just like in the U$A and everywhere else ... BUT as The Peoples Bank of China is NOT a Club of Private Bankers and so is Publicly Owned by The Chinese State, any unsustainable debt that threatens to spiral out of control can also be checked & handled because they are NOT Slaves to Compound Interest ... Payable To Psychopathic Private Parasites who'll Put Private Profit Over People, as in US/UK/EU etc.& this is a Fundamental Deep Strength!!!
So, altho' "China's Middle Class is starting to look a lot like America's" .. their Central Bank is NOT!!
Actually ALL China's Banks are underwritten by The PBC, which itself is NOT beholden to ANYONE, given that China issues its own fiat currency - based NOT on Reserves & Fractional Reserve Loans - but based on the Full Faith & Integrity of China's History, Resources & The Industry of its People as essentially China Can NOT Go Bankrupt, as it's NOT beholden to Parasitic Private Money Lenders!
ad iudicium?
Emperor's seeking for Peace in the smog with Chinese characteristics and sustainability via coal-powered "zero-emission" electric vehicles.
Who's rumoring that Red China can go broke, huh ? ImNotMe ? It's Ever-Gone investments alright ( under capital control -- you can see it grow and grow but you can't have it unless you go under the shadow of that "jewis"dicktion...) Stagflation is coming. In the midst of this suffering, do recall that the Emperor of the World had planned it so. 烤麸, 烤麸。Ahem. To the rescue: 发烤麸 人民志愿军。Little Emperor went for grub of North Korea and never came back.
One just needs to ask those Taiwanese businessmen who had lost control of their "forever" investments in Red China. Their investments were growing really well without them under "professional" get-rich-quick-at-any-costs management. Red China didn't break its words about these business folks' high-growth investments being as good as "forever..." Gone.
Despite Hong Kong's being under British rule in 1941, Chiang Kai-shek didn't want it to fall to the marauding Imperial Japanese Army. The British needed China's seamen's service and support in its global war with the Axis Powers ( China was on the winning side in both world wars, why ? It was because of Chinese labor supplying war materiel ! The soldiers at war are just the tip of the iceberg; the iceberg's main body is the seamen, miners, shipyard and factory workers; in war, it's not just "location, location, location;" it's also "supplies, supplies, supplies;" for this reason, the U.S. became a logistical superpower -- all one needs to observe is how quickly the U.S. had pulled out of Afghanistan despite obvious disorganization arising from a so-called surprise ) and it seems likely that the Americans had already broken Imperial Japan's diplomatic code by the time of London's requesting Canadian troops to shore up Hong Kong, already abandoned as "being indefensible." The Canadians were likely offered up to be overrun for the British political expedient to curry favor with the Nationalist Chinese.
The stinky fart of a predatory carnivorous panda is actually a new no-shit fragrance with Chinese characteristics.
Lithuania and New Zealand were indeed the earliest and gutsy nations to respond to Red China's warning to the U.S. about a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. However, New Zealand does have a significant amount of trade with Red China so spoiling that relationship inadvertently can be irresponsible. New Zealand is indeed a very environmentally conscious or even the most conscious nation in the world regarding the environment despite its geographical isolation ( it might have been one extremely rare safe place least affected by the radioactive-fallout aftermath of a global thermonuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere which was almost started not more than a dozen of times; it's truly survival of the luckiest ones { the probability is 1.0 that humanity will pull the trigger to destroy its own existence in geological time scale of millions of years; a regional nuclear war is much likelier, probably happening before I become eligible to collect social security payments so isn't that great for U.S. Government's finance ? high inflation 《 but probably not for a decade, once purchasing power has been neutralized and demand collapses to make stagnation dominate the economy due to Baby Boomers being in reduced-demand retirement and their so-called assets having evaporated; assets need buyers to prod up their prices; there's no cohort with money to buy them from by-then sick, dying, fire-selling-to-pay-medical-bills, or dead Baby Boomers, who had accumulated more wealth at comparable age than their successors despite Paradise-like low interest rates 》is coming as the four-horsemen cavalry to rescue all debtors, foremost among which is the U.S. Government } -- I've never carried any potable municipal water in two buckets on my shoulder with a yoke home or to fill Grandma's cistern; my Big Brother took me to see the tap and wait in the line/queue of the people waiting for, paying for, and then filling up their water vessels, telling me that it would become my chore when I grew up to take the yoke and buckets from him in one of the coming days -- but since running potable municipal water came to our now-private kitchen through a tap, there was no yoke for me, ever ! ). Red China's massive growth in using coal is terrible, I agree. Red China's also unlikely to halt that anytime soon so we'll all be roasted in one way or another ( with the help of Australian and North Korean coal for sure ).
Australia on the other hand has already got onto the Black List of Red China for what I would call innocuous matters such as calling for an impartial independent investigation into the origin of the SARS_CoV-2 virus. Any caring-for-humanity's-best-interest and gutsy nation should have called for that ( even if it had started in Washington D.C., I would still call for such an investigation without reservation; global health is more important than national politics ). Letting Australia take on more flak if any is reasonable because it's truly next on the line being quashed, not just economically, but by Australian coal, Australian iron ore, made into the Red Chinese Naval guns, to kill the Australians in their coastal cities. Recall, "Business is good with Red China."
"The Capitalists will sell us the ropes we'll hang them with." Or coal to roast them with ( as Mao once boasted of the power of Red China that it could send a powerful earthquake to destroy America if Chinese people should simultaneously at his command jump down from a height of several feet. Wow ! Very powerful indeed. What will happen to Red China first before this powerful earthquake reaches America to destroy it ? Red China will be destroyed even more completely than America. Such is the quality of the poetic intellect of a so-called Communist. Mew-2 is the mutant most "powerful" pokémon newly cloned in Mao's image. Bah-Boom, Bah-Boom ! CoViD-19 got to America alright, killing many Americans but a global stagflation will surely wound Red China greatly, too. )
My guess about Lithuania's gutsiness is that it has long lived under the shadow of Big Bad Russia ( which though a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council doesn't respect territorial integrity of its neighbors, which is a foundational principle for the establishment of the brotherhood of nations; we should contemplate kicking Russia's but out of the U.N. to clean house; New Yorker "volunteers" are in a unique position to give Russia a but but cloud ) so it has grown a certain rebelliousness against authoritarian bullies. If that's the case, I understand it well as I have also long lived under the shadow of a Big [Bad or Good, depending upon what I make of it afterwards] Brother. He obviously didn't fear what physical blows I could fling at him but he certainly had concern regarding what I after returning home could or would say to my Mom ( who had set out rules to be obeyed by us carrying "the license/licence to roam" or else... Pants/Trousers off... Bam ! Wham ! Thank you, Ma'am ! -- this was the Baby Boomers' life even before "the Summer of Love;" every generation gets its own troubles and fixes: for me, 9%+ unemployment, "cheap" 13.9% car loan financing which rate Mom was praising as what a great break it was for me because I would otherwise have to pay over 16% rate of interest, "prepaid-interest-reduced great-bargain" 11.39% home mortgage; Wow ! what a Paradise the current generation has found itself being in ! Of course, in the 1960s to the Kent State Massacre and the chaotic 1970s, we didn't have CoViD-19 but we certainly had atmospheric nuclear testings' radioactive fallouts, Geiger-counter detectable radioactive bananas, the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, assassination of JFK, Red Chinese nuclear bomb, Vietnam War, the drafts to die or be wounded in the ¿wot's-that-place-again? rice paddies, cannabis, birth control pills { therefrom free sex; we didn't partake in sex games as far as I could determine, despite being solicited/offered }, psychedelic mushrooms, LSD, and so on and on. )
Even a powerful elephant can become fearful of the unpleasant consequences of barging into a killer-bee beehive. I once experienced the stinging attacks of at most two or three flying bugs/insects which followed me for at least one to two miles after my barging inadvertently into their area on an exploratory adventure ★ill-advised -- yeah, I certainly had a bit of a problem with my curiosity, considering that my Big Brother had somehow talked me into going with him to the public toilet to clean out our filled-up chamber-pot -- he worked multiple times in his life as a salesman so he had talent, besides Mom's lie about my ξ origin. I learnt 》Naturwissenschaft { Liebe, Liebe über alles,\\Über alles in der Welt ! }《 : how his love for his golden-green-wolf-spider pets transcended public toilet's stink because yummy flies were there: "μ location, ν location, μ2=ξ location, π Ο ! "★ Their relentless stinging attacks were very annoying & unpleasant. I eventually got rid of them by going indoors to hide where I could. They probably got bored & gave up. There was finally peace via Voluntary Apartheid between bugs and Man ( I got it why there were animals, pigs in mud, to feed the bugs, though not pigs' farmer ).
Gift them ( it wasn't, strictly speaking, a gift in Kowloon to us since my parental family didn't have full ownership rights such as selling the apartment/flat to any buyers whom we could choose but it was good enough for our purposes of having convenient, affordable, and decent-quality living -- we were basically indefinitely long-term low-cost renters, similar to so-called owners of mortgaged homes who could not pay off their mortgages ) a debt-free all-already-paid-for single-family-house ( in the U.S. ) with only reasonably affordable < 20%-of-income carrying charges to live in. That was essentially what my parental family got from the Colonial British Hong Kong Government so yeah...
it certainly induced loyalty towards Hong Kong ( { turning from being occasional youthful ¿laissez-faire "no-capitalist"? troublemakers to official [¿socialist?] troubleshooters -- we agreed with the government's aspirations for Hong Kong to become a modern well-developed sanitary highrise city -- it wasn't incidental that I was present at one or more governmental sporting events, exhibitions, or functions } and we loved Peace as our place had been given up by the British Military retreating away, likely after Red China had promised not to invade Hong Kong, from guarding the overrun-by-population-growth boundary/border of Kowloon with the nonexistent-for-many-decades defunct Qing Dynasty with which the British had the treaties ) despite our residence being much smaller and not quite the same as the U.S. single-family-home standard ( in Kowloon's densely populated urban area, single family houses just didn't make much sense at all ). It was convenient though ( recall, "location, location, location" for real estate ? ) -- I could even see my Mom's freshly washed clothes hung out to be dried in the wind and sunshine just by looking out of the huge windows of my elementary/primary school classroom while I was learning Chinese. I'm also grateful to Red China's supplying water and food at reasonable prices to Hong Kong at least since the 1960s.
Red China's hold on water and food was why my parental family had always assumed that Hong Kong would undoubtedly return to Red China as "it held all of the great cards of the power game." U.K. being so far away on the other side of the world just couldn't sustain Hong Kong's multi-million population if Red China should at any time put on a water and food squeeze upon it, send in millions of troops, or simply let migrants cross freely into it. We became scared of having no [Chinese] rice around the time of the chaos of the Chinese Mainland's Cultural Devolution so we bought an extra huge sac of rice to hedge against starvation. We couldn't eat it quickly enough and it got blue-green moldy/mouldy. My Big Brother and I resolutely refused to pick through that rice and eat its still-good parts. My Mom was the only one who did that to save money. Her comment was, "If we were to go through this scare again, I would buy no extra rice at all -- I myself would rather elect to starve to death ! " Such was the sway of Red China gone crazy.
Hong Kong did have Colonial British "Big Brothers" such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ( and India but the first-officers-to-run-away-from-the-battles-they-had-called-for-defending British suffer bad reputation with the [de facto abandoned troops of] Indians so British influence for sending in Indian troops is extremely limited ) over which the U.K. had some sway but even these are still fairly far away, with Australia being the closest to Hong Kong and Canada the most populous to be able to field the most troops but it's on the far side of the greatest ocean in the world. At the request of Great Britain, Canada had sent a contingent of troops to defend Hong Kong ( to no avail, but the sacrifice we [the Hong Kongers or the honorary "at-heart" ones worldwide] still remember and revere ) when Imperial Japanese Army invaded ( and eventually overran Hong Kong ) at six hours after Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
In Hong Kong, being "colonized" by the retreating British was better off for us in housing than being "sovereign-free" in Massachusetts which had fought off the British in the American Revolution. Well, Massachusetts wasn't as Red-assed as Texass or as Brown-shi-ed with ¿homeless? humans' feces as San Francisco so it isn't as bad as redneckhood or brownneckhood may suggest ( bw didn't gripe of the even lower minimum wage rate of $7.25 an hour in Red ["right-to-work"] states such as Texass where workers have the freedumb to bargain individually to get a job at federal minimum wage rate -- workers have the right to work at cheap wage rates to keep themselves holy because money is the root of all evils such as enabling a worker to afford high-grade alcohol to get drunken or hire a prostitute to fuck with, thus if that leaked out, causing marital discord or societal disintegration; { I don't categorically condemn sexual acts between consenting adults that don't have deleterious societal complications such as causing marital discord, jealous murders, or abandoned/insufficiently cared-for offspring, etc.《U.S. used Aid to Families with Dependent Children law for taking care of the illegitimate children but it had the undesirable side effect of keeping the female-headed households from having a male-providing-for-and-reining-in-running-amok-youngsters role model; some Whites still don't get it and blame minority families' inadequate socialization of their predatory wolf-cub illegitimate offspring on the lack of a male role model; I know the power and authority of fatherly males in a family -- it doesn't even have to be a male to impose rectitude so a moral female authority with monetary and physical-violence policing power suffices as long as she isn't already overloaded by a high number of offspring; in families assisted by the Aid-to-Families-with-Dependent-Children law, the U.S. Government de facto drove the male out of his family by its stopping assistance if there were a male head-of-household in the family; this fitted in well with White supremacists' narratives about the inferiority of "minority" families 》 UAE decriminalized cohabitation of unmarried couples and shortened work week to 4.5 days a week, the first nation in the world to lower it below 5 a week } Texass is thus "highly moral" taking care of the workers by allowing them not to have "too much evil money" which impedes one from getting into the Kingdom of God as Jesus had said, "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God;" Texass is a bulwark state holding the line against wage inflation and keeping American workers competitively priced against some foreign Red country's prison-camp labor; it's why patriotic workers flock to Texass to work at their rightful jobs ).
San Francisco has milder ( balmy so for deep-thinking tech, find freezingly cold places like Massachusetts or the "if you don't think and plan ahead, you'll freeze and/or starve to death in the long winters" places such as in Russia with strictly winter-enforced indoor "leisure" for doing literature, mathematics, arts, sciences, and other human-cultural endeavors ) climate than Massachusetts so it attracts the homeless, for better or for worse: "no-shit," factually, from billionaires' superficial businesses, and ubiquitously in "the [actual] City of Bums," shit, shit, shit, real humans' shit !
The freezing-one's-nose-off places such as in or next to Russia or the Third Pole probably have very few homeless aliens even though they are equipped with huge light-gathering eyes adapted to seeing in darkness and a snub nose for breathing in extreme coldness ( the space aliens' native homeland in outerspace is both cold and dark, like/as that of Yakutian Laika on the heart-studded Kuiper-belt object Pluto { which is still haunted by the spirit of overheated-to-death Laika } ), in the same way that Iran has no homosexuals. "Climate" executes.
Since the U.S. abolished conscription in early 1970s, only well-armed U.S. 发烤麸 volunteers have intervened in worldwide affairs. 烤麸, 烤麸, ahem, 烤麸。Kanga & Roo believe in flower power to dislodge Winnie the Pooh from Rabbit's house exit. Rabbit did try to decorate Pooh's yellow ass ( got to love those Red-assed cheap prices of Walmart, proprietary Apple, Nike, and Amazon ) because it really didn't have the Fruit-of-the-Boom problem by not wearing any underpants. My Mom who had run supplies to the Red Chinese guerillas fighting the Imperial Japanese Army behind the enemies' frontlines would condone tying a firecracker ( for explosive sound action to dislodge overly fatty Herr T-Steiß, as in a Chinese New Year celebration ) to decorate the yellow ass and "light it up" for Liberty. Taiwan needs to take back Red China to liberate it from its moral vacuum.
"The Wealthiest 1% of Americans . . . dodge $163 billion in taxes every year - Treasury says"!
radix omnium malorum ... est cupiditas!
Occupy made $ and class consciousness a thing in America again.
"How Occupy Wall Street spawned a decade of protest, politics, and social media. Though brief and messy, the Occupy movement of 2011 helped recast the political story in the U.S. and fostered more-enduring movements to come."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90675586/occupy-wall-street-tenth-anniversary
"Occupy introduced a different kind of protest to the U.S., by creating space and time for anyone who wanted to discuss a plethora of grievances—most of them about money. While covering the movement, I heard talk about campaign finance, banking regulations, tax policy, student loan debt, bank bailouts, and the federal budget. The overriding theme: Regular people were getting screwed while an elite group—roughly the richest 1%—was making a killing.
This created a new political vocabulary by establishing “one percent” as a universal moniker for an elite class that runs the game. And it created a sense of common cause among the 99% who felt left behind. “Occupy [put] inequality in class back in the discussion,” says Doug Singsen, an art history professor and union activist who was on Occupy’s labor outreach committee in New York City. “There had been virtually no discussion of class in mainstream U.S. politics for, really, decades, which was also a time of rapidly increasing inequality.”
And, let's face it, 10 years is nothing in historical perspective. Occupy did quite a lot in this short span of a decade if you are willing to think long term. Patience is a virtue.
"More Than Half of US’s 100 Richest People Dodge Estate Taxes Via Special Trusts"! . . . by Jeff Ernsthausen, James Bandler, Justin Elliott and Patricia Callahan:
"Secret IRS records show billionaires use trusts that let them pass fortunes to their heirs without paying estate tax. Will Congress end a tax shelter that has cost the Treasury untold billions?"
And re. your "And, let's face it, 10 years is nothing in historical perspective. Occupy did quite a lot in this short span of a decade if you are willing to think long term. Patience is a virtue." Mfatik Ditto & solidarity!
tempus fugit ergo fiat justitia ...
Meanwhile, people need to earn $33/hour to pay a market rent in the state of Massachusetts! With minimum wage at $13.50/hour! People are really suffering across this country with housing costs way out of line with wages.
All while these rich creeps avoid taxes. Really infuriating.
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2019/06/on-average-massachusetts-residents-need-to-make-3381-an-hour-to-afford-fair-market-rent-report-says.html
The Pandora Papers" by "4 Corners":
Short article & very revealing 42m Australian documentary!
Recommending your link .. to any and all readers here too!
radix omnium malorum est cupiditas!
While most struggle to pay for basic necessities such as housing, healthcare, transportation and education and many live on the edge of their paychecks week to week and even in growing debt,
"The wealthy are able to use offshore territories to set up companies and take advantage of laws that make it easy to conceal their identity as owners of these companies, which means that they can evade taxes of those assets in their own countries and also take advantage of lower tax laws available in these offshore territories."
From: The Pandora Papers by 4 Corners, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56828.htm
So "While most struggle to pay for basic necessities such as housing, healthcare, transportation and education and many live on the edge of their paychecks week to week and - even in growing debt ...
still .. "The wealthy are able to use offshore territories to set up companies and take advantage of laws that make it easy to conceal their identity as owners of these companies, which means that they can evade taxes of those assets in their own countries and also take advantage of lower tax laws available in these offshore territories" - because it so totally bears repeating! Meanwhile, this ...
https://truthout.org/articles/with-no-change-in-votes-gop-would-win-through-gerrymandering/ by Chris Walker
Also, please urgently note: https://youtu.be/_dqeTEAdwHU an essential 5m video w/R.D.Wolff
fiat lux ...
The only debt the gov must pay is to the Social Security Trust Fund. The interest and principal owed to banks and billionaires should have been taken in taxation in the first place.
The future is but the past in its shadow ( 未來不過是陰影中的過去 ). All physical laws are time invariant. Information is conserved.
Oligarchs and politicians wanted "hit-the-ground-running" (i.e. making maximal profit by MBA-saving the cost of providing a parachute on a skydiving mission { Warren Buffet's Fruit of the Boom MBAs shaved off a flap of fabric on an underwear to save costs so Boom, my "eggplant" kept on popping out to the delight of the lecherous ones with wandering eyes } ) solutions to major problems such as carbon dioxide emission so we all got "hit-the-ground-dying" environment now and in the foreseeable "Beijing" "future." We'll then adopt Mao's post-"eggplant" fig-leaf solution to his errant and deadliest policy of collectivization in all human history by calling it 三年"自然"灾害 ( the three years of "NATURAL" disaster ). Mao greatly outdid Stalin in mass murders and yet Mao's portrait is still on the Renminbi currency. I wonder whether West Germany, in order to behave sickly, should have printed the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" upon every deutsche Mark.
Germany couldn't solve its carbon emission problem so nobody can ( German efficiency is to import French nuclear electricity and Russian natural gas {Nordstream 2}; before this, it was buying carbon emission offset credits from less developed countries; "See those trees; we saved the Earth because we had paid those poor peasants not to cut them down for firewood.") Red China was the smartest to go whole hog to coal and prosper meanwhile -- let the Earthlings be damned. Yeah, it was exactly the same breakthrough attitude that had unleashed COVID-19 and proliferated it onto the entire world. Let the international flights go ahead while banning all domestic flights during the greatest annual human migration for celebrating Chinese New Year. World Bang Development ! What colors are your retirement funds ? Due to my insufficient drinking of holy water, I sat upon my White porcelain throne and exploded my atheistic hemorrhoids but that did pay off -- I got five yellow nuts ( the first one is expectedly much bigger and drier than the other four due to the water-absorbing passage in the colon and rectum ) to decorate the splash of blood. I'm not quite up to the urgent task of slipping out Black Pebbles yet so don't tell, don't ask...
Even the Imperial Japanese Army occupying China had the sense not to scale up and deploy on the whole of China its bioweapons developed by its Unit 731 after experimenting upon the Chinese in Zhejiang province ( as many Japanese and their allied { primarily Korean as Korea was a Japanese colony for 50 years; in fact, many ethnically modern Chinese have some Korean-ancestry genes from the rampant occupying army rapes } soldiers fell ill from their [own] bioweapons.) Bioweapons weren't easily controlled ( with the possible exception of anthrax.) Of course, Red China also sourced fentanyl for profits. It powered the opiod epidemic in the U.S.
The U.S. is in the midst of a severe COVID-19 denier human cleansing. Our COVID-19 number will inexorably exceed the death count of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic set a century ago, despite having the "Biden-Harris breakthrough vaccine." What a world we live in, with Red China jet-delivered and Indian religious zeal amplifying and mutating the virus en masse ! ( No. 1 and No. 2 most populous countries combined "efforts" to defeat No. 3 most populous country in this COVID-19 insurgency; they will certainly "win" again in the climate chaos arena, effectively rendering the U.S. and every other country as being irrelevant. )
I think the CA recall vote map juxtaposed with the current CA Covid infection map tells the whole story of self destructive stupidity that threatens the survival of the human race in the 2020s.
I was also a bit surprised that suddenly the U.S. map of COVID deaths by states changed colors. Then I discovered that the map had switched to tracking U.S. vaccination rates.
It didn't matter much what "spin" could accomplish on the map. The same boundaries remained. It seems to be truly a test of [political] Faith ! It's sad... ( Following to high grounds the village "fool" who went every morning to check whether our ancestral stone lion had bled blood during the night saved the believers from a devastating foretold-in-a-dream flood; a stone lion could bleed out of its eyes and see red ! For me being a descendant of the remnant, it's actually a matter of the survival of the luckiest ["fools"].)
I was certainly dejected when my Big Brother refused to continue his "never-ending" made-up-fresh epic every evening when we laid to rest to sleep upon the wooden board supported by two yokes set atop sturdy wooden chairs. "Never-ending" tale ended. He also got tired of reading to me a children's magazine later on in our new home. After some first grade's education, I learnt to read the magazine all by myself without his assistance ( it's best to gain the ability to do whatever one wants and just do it to one's heart's content, not at all, or any happy median; when I started having the vision problem of myopia, Mom tried to scare me out of "excessive" reading with the old moms' tale of "monsters" wearing fogged-up eyeglasses entering from a cold outside environment but wearing spectacles was actually a small sacrifice for knowledge; it's really no worse than observing the Jewish custom of requiring their children to read of two books every day -- it's no wonder that Jews as a group have higher IQ than the U.S. average and are amongst/usually the wealthiest/highest-income ethnicities/ethnicity in the U.S.) I also went on to a lot of other reading materials after he'd helped me get my own library card. Enroute to the huge library and on school days to my school, I crossed the largely exclusive White neighborhood. A White boy slapped me on my cheek on the third ( when library reopened; things happened on the third because the first two days of the Chinese New Year were holidays: we also moved into our new home at the former British military fuel and munitions depot on the third day of the Chinese New Year when home-movers returned to work to move us ) day of the 1968 Chinese New Year around the backdrop of the 1967-1968 riots. The White boy, ( likely a pupil attending the King George V school because all of the attackers had come out of the direction of that school, ) ran up to assault me at the traffic circle on Dunbar Road from behind and yelled 恭喜發財 { wishing me to gain wealth by first getting a reddish bag of prosperity "money" stamped onto my cheek }, a traditional Chinese happy new year greeting, as he slapped me on my cheek. I also got pebbles thrown at me while going to Queen Elisabeth School in the early 1970s but I was never hit as those White boys weren't reacting fast enough ( as I walked fast on the straight portion of the road { but not the curved traffic circle with uneven terrain, the walkdown steps from the hill called 鬼仔山, and parked cars so I was caught offguard by that White boy's ambush from behind } orthogonal to their pebbles' trajectories; the 細蚊仔(saimānjáí) { a 白鬼仔(White child or "white 白 ghost 鬼 diminutive 仔" literally, per character); Cantonese [in Hong Kong] Chinese call foreigners 番鬼佬 "ghost 鬼", probably because [only my guess] in traditional Chinese legends, ghosts often had reddish eyes and green hair so some foreigners having red hair and greenish eyes also made the grade of being "ghost 鬼" as in 《伊麗莎白中學有個鬼佬校長。佢嘅仔係個學生喺嗰度讀書。 》} had probably spotted me walking down the long flight of steps down 鬼仔山 hill so that he had enough early warning to catch up with me near where the traffic circle linked to the straight portion of Dunbar Road ). My Big Brother said that he had been the target there before so it was why he could warn me to be wary of all of those little White boys (白鬼仔) in that neighborhood.
The U.S. had a good reason to push for ending European Colonialism, which had culminated in the Great War, to substitute its global commerce postwar order underpinned by having the U.S. Navy fighting piracy worldwide. Both Japan and Germany grew very prosperous and calmed down their ferocious natures quite a bit ( or maybe even a bit too much because both still have powerful traditionally grudge-holding neighbors ) -- and now Mewtwo wants to become Meowone by tearing the postwar prosperity worldwide order apart without substituting a viable better world order. We'll see what happens when trans-Pacific trade grinds to a halt. Red China grew rich on that and is trying to build Mewtwo's techno-city-hub close to Beijing to assert economic independence from the U.S. so we'll all see.
The Chinese will still have the factories and infrastructure, "when trans-Pacific trade grinds to a halt." The real failure will occur when Wall St crashes again ... maybe for the last time. Of course capitalist morons will never figure out that money is not wealth!
In Detroit, the U.S. said of the same thing: the Americans will still have the factories and infrastructure, "when customers don't buy Detroit-made American cars." Where did Detroit end up going ?
It's not just the capitalist morons who haven't figured out that currency isn't wealth, neither is being rich the same as being wealthy. There are still many who cast an envious eye upon the inequality of the riches of the flamboyant rich folk subpoenaed to testify under oath before U.S. Congress or a court of justice.
The U.S. suffers from an overabundance of overly well-paid specialists and the so-called experts who prescribed "take two aspirins and visit me two months later [if I haven't retired to the Cayman Islands' tax haven yet]." By and large, more and more regulations are churned out by these so-called experts. Of course, they know the arcane regulations best. Do you still recall "don't wear masks to prevent getting COVID because it spreads through surface contact, not through airborne droplets" ? I still have a whole gallon of unused bleach left over to disinfect surfaces ! It's more efficacious to be a "Rode Scholar" and neither inhale weed in England nor have sex with that woman of the X-U State In America - Jew Jerk Group ( it IS higher quantum physics to ponder and caress the smooth sensuous curvature of that twice differentiable, continuous, and contiuous-first-derivative, wavefunction which is still virginal and hasn't experienced the collapse of the Carlsberg-beer-induced Copenhagen Interpretation.)
Now we are getting from the experts: if you don't wear masks, you can't come in; if you haven't been vaccinated, you can't work ( i.e. you are fired ! ) The problem wasn't the title of "expert." The problem was the title of "expert" being crowned upon someone who could be so very wrong by willingly becoming the complicit Führer bison carrying between its horns Redfuckgina's oozing hemorrhoidal discharge to lead the herd in a stampede off of the buffalo-kill cliff to the ravine below.
There was a saying about the farter in an elevator who loudly swore at the releaser of the extremely stinky fart while staring in turns at each of the unfortunate passengers in the same elevator: "the farter who tried to dispel suspicions the earliest and hardest was the actual farter." Guess who was doing "the political manipulation" about COVID in Q1 2020, stymied investigation for over a year, and retaliated in trade against Australia which was calling for an independent investigation.
As far as backstabbing is concerned, the U.S. has a system in place but with different people in charge at different times, things can indeed change abruptly with a new administration or a new political appointee. Of course, with competition being a permanent fixture of life in Capitalism, backstabbing is often a well-honed skill for nearly all of the survivors. Cooperation as needed again can usually be reestablished by "paying up." Do first to hog the share ownership and pay up later any court awards, if any, to the plaintives. Pay enough ( mighty $, isn't it what Capitalism is all about ? ) to the ones who can legally collect as blessed by the F.B.I. ( which had blessed suspected seedy Russian money going towards Trump Taj Mahal, long before Trump got into politics; the Saudis and Russians helped get Trump start up in his real estate business; it's why Israeli-Arab-Palestinian peace might have got a chance with Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has much oil money at his disposal and is "under the gun" to move Saudi Arabia's economy at least partially away from the oil business because oil ISN'T a renewable resource and anthropogenic climate chaos is already manifest, so much of the reserves of oil, gas, and the especially egregious coal must remain underground or it'll be much much hotter on some days; Saudi Arabia may take advantage of the vast desert temperature difference between daytime and nighttime to make water from nearby sea's moisture for the extremely water-efficient agriculture 2.0; groundwater in the desert is unsustainable at the high rate that it's being used in agriculture 1.0's spraying it into the desert air to irrigate crops due to the very high water-evaporation rate in the dry desert air; restricting somewhat the crop irrigation to the periods when relative humidity is high, usually around 4 a.m. UTC daily, can reduce water evaporation; good measurement of how much water the crops need is important, too, before upgrading to customized drip/fertilize irrigation; the very high resource usage efficiency achieved by the technological upgrades put in before the pandemic hit has allowed some businesses to survive the pandemic's severe blows), apologize ( as the Big Enchiladas such as the young turk the-first-rule-is-to-break-all-rules captains of industry e.g. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, neolibertarian venture capitalists e.g. Peter Thiel, or Israel, the staunchest ally of the U.S. which attacked U.S.S. Liberty to sink it, did ), and new cooperation can start as things rise up from the dead as surely as the Messiah did. Liquor stores and abortion clinics provided essential services in the pandemic, as did the gunshops. The Taliban can learn a thing or two from these regarding the proper societal role of the He-males: shoot guns, drink the holy blood of the One who had risen from the dead, and fuck off: babies away. Terrorists should avoid Texass which has the new anti-abortion law so the Taliban baby initiators' receptacles looking for a quick solution may be sued by Texass citizens in court. I was once asked how big Texass was. The proper answer should have been: a behind humongous enough to cast a Moon-sized shadow over the entire U.S.A. It's the humongous A.S.S. ( amerikanische Staatssicherheit ) pretending to be the sissy baby-loving freedumb-erozone Tex, with not just monkey wrenches but also monkeys to throw them.
Until the newcomers must be stabbed in their backs for one's own competitive advantages, Americans are friendly to them ( who represent new possibilities for gains: market is the number-one item for Capitalism's insatiable expansion needed to assuage the high compound interest rates of real [i.e. inflation-adjusted] capital; most countries owe mountains of debts so rebalancing must eventually come via the massive destruction of debts; Redfuckgina has already shot through the traditional Chinese but-captive-to-the-state-due-to-CAPITAL-FLOW-CONTROL thrift capital accumulated by the parents and grandparents; once Hitler had taken power, Nazi Germany also had quite an economic boom period funded via massive spending and borrowing to rearm itself until the incurred debts needed to be discharged by the most terrible war.)
Don't end up being left behind in the places where the political control has worsened for the U.S. and allies ( such as in the new earthly paradise of Afghanistan.) Taiwanese investors in Red China regretted having invested there. They made renminbi alright but they couldn't get their investment back out due to capital flow control so yeah, just go to live in Red China to enjoy the great renminbi living there. Bernie MadeOff gave his investors great profits on paper and they eventually became just paper profits, non-convertible forever investments.
On February 11th, 2020 since catching some airborne germ on the 8th and having a cough and sore throat on the 10th, I experienced nausea and nearly vomited. I drank the leftover overnight tea ( mildly antiseptic poison due to tannic acid having formed from the oxidation of the tea's tannin ) with orange rind in it to soothe my sore throat and ate an entire orange including rind ( citric acid of the flesh of the orange blocks blood from clotting and might have caused gastric bleeding leading to a near shock but SARS-CoViD-2 wreaks havoc with its blood clotting ability leading to various symptoms ) to relieve my breathing difficulty. Amid the intense abdominal pain, I drank three cups of water to "flush it all out" and lay down to increase my blood pressure so I wouldn't faint. I had to go to discharge the subsequent diarrhea but it worked well -- all sickness symptoms except for the lingering coughs and shortness of breath on exertion disappeared. Months afterwards, even these lingering symptoms were gone.
Nausea is a presenting symptom of SARS-CoV-2 attacking gastrointestinal tract's epithelial tissue. I suspected that I got CoViD-19.
Red China's medical community did alert the U.S. regarding CoViD-19 but its leadership decided to unleash it as a [de facto] bioweapon on the world after having considered Red China's preparedness to deal with it by having near-monopoly hold on PPEs which export was banned, its early lead in testing, and its authoritarian population control ( welding door shut to social-isolate people and using physical force to restrain & move people to test them ) via facial recognition, identity & social credit tracking, AI? emotions-monitoring system already in place ( to precog via deep learning, Xinjiang terrorists.) Chinese New Year holidays dispersed CoViD-19 to the world via non-halted international flights despite halting all domestic flights. Northern Italy got it early from their design-brandname-items-buying Red Chinese [customers] escaping from the impending lockdown of Wuhan because of easy border entry into Italy for Red Chinese [customers]. CoViD-19 Marco Polo.
We must learn to distinguish between productive and non productive economic activity.
We must reward productive activity, in other words, income earned through work. And, we must tax non-productive economic activity, such as earnings on stocks, rental income and inheritance.
That is how you reduce inequality and make for a happier society like those in Iceland, Norway, and Denmark.
And then catch up with Moses and declare debt Jubilees.
David Graeber, RIP, who came up with the term "We are the 99 Percent" wrote the book on debt and jubilees, "Debt: the First 5000 Years."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
Throughout history governments have shown benevolence to their people when their debts became so high (inevitably this always happens over time) that the regular folks could no longer function and live decent lives, by giving them jubilees, forgiving them of said debt.
They could do this then and could do this now because money is a human creation. It's not something that can't be controlled though we're made to think that is the case.
How money and economic systems are handled is a choice!
I myself, am waiting for Joe Biden to provide the student debt jubilee that he promised in his campaign. I'd like to see it all forgiven but he did promise to forgive at least $10,000 per student. Waiting....
Compound interest is, according to Einstein, the most powerful force in the universe. That's because it creates money and concentrates wealth at an exponential rate. Inevitably, debt must grow to the point where it can't be paid. When that ultimate bubble bursts the economy collapses.
Exactly, and in America, astronomical interest rates are legal!
This is because we live in a society that is rigged for the rich and corporations. As you say, the debt grows so huge that it can't be paid!
The actual definition of usury is when interest rates charged are illegally high but I think 25% compounded interest on credit cards is immorally high. I also think that morals should be above the law and all law should be moral! But not in America!
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/usury.asp
You've got it right. Write On! Usury, when the concept was dealt with in the time of Moses, was any interest or rents. Only in the past few hundred years has it been redefined as first exorbitant and then illegal rates.
Before Nixon liberated the financial class of parasites, 10% interest was often illegal. (in Ohio, where I grew up.)
"As late as the end of the 1970s, 8 to 10 percent usury ceilings were common. Since that time, however, lenders have been successful in getting the ceilings lifted much higher or eliminated altogether in a number of states." -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1980/05/11/usury-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/378a2c48-5d20-469f-aa84-b5aa67ffcafb/
U.S. has 2nd highest household debt in the world. Yes, to all you say. See:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/738695/household-debt-gdp-globally-by-country/
Americans are drowning in their debt and the "usury" interest rates put upon them.
They need debt to go to school, to get healthcare, to pay for their homes, their cars, just about everything.
An indebted and strangled society is an unhappy society. Americans are all walking around with the albatross of debt on their backs. Sad.
High time Biden at least does something about Student Debt which he promised to do in his campaign.
"Student Loan Debt: 2021 Statistics and Outlook. The numbers are staggering—and still on the rise"
https://www.investopedia.com/student-loan-debt-2019-statistics-and-outlook-4772007
Long-term real productivity growth rate is about 1% a year so the long-term interest-rate cap should have its mean set at 1% above the inflation rate. Our persistently low interest rate environment set by the Jews-dominated monetary authorities effectively steals the life savings of our elderly folks to bail out the financial greedy scumbags of Wall Street who work 70+ hours in a week in order to create the next widespread U.S. and thus global financial catastrophe. I generally respect capital but it mustn't become a toxic algal bloom. "Economy" and "ecology" seem more intricately tied than just "eco" derived from Greek "oikos" meaning "house" so we need house rangers who are always in our house watching out for and killing any poachers.
If the usury interest rate cap isn't enforced, we'll build up long-term pressure to precipitate a financial breakdown to unwind the [artificial] excesses in the economy. Financial panics, breakdowns, inefficiencies, recessions, depressions, mass unemployment, murders, rapes, domestic violence, prostitution, larcenies, cheatings, bankruptcies, mayhems, burglaries, riots, regime changes, revolutions, etc. all grow from this scheme of getting something for nothing and selling fish eyeballs as real pearls ( which are being crushed to make politicized chalk dust to demonstrate the power of Mewtwo: it's great for multinational corporate collaboration to help Red China carry out the brilliant, glorious, and revolutionary contribution of Kim Il-sung to World Thought, 주체, in order to achieve true Socialism, as "Red China [and more] is for the [Red] Chinese" ). Historically to these were attached Jewish faces because Jews had been a discriminated minority ethnicity for a very long time due to their smug attitudes ( being the Chosen People ) so doing these tasks became their necessity for livelihood.
For greater happiness of our U.S. populace, we should gradually move towards a 5-hour work day within 25 years with the same [inflation-adjusted] real worker pays { it's best to rig into our system a built-in mechanism for worker revolution }. The Germans have hard-set limit on work day's ending so workers who so desire can hold more than one job ( { thereby diversifying their source of livelihood; employers often don't care about hiring and firing because they have multiple employees to pitch in; in order to even the field, workers having multiple jobs should be put into the position 《with social welfare for retraining and career transitioning as needed, as is practiced in the Nordic "socialist"/happiest countries 》that they can fire their employers without concern about their livelihoods because they have multiple jobs to pitch in } or have that time off as leisure to pursue whatever passion they may have ( sitting in a long traffic jam on a scenic route was cited as a weekend [High] German passion by the teacher of my German language class ). The German model is far superior to the Japanese model in which the workers die of exhaustion on the job and Japanese productivity eventually stalled. Pre-WWII, a number of American chemists went to work for and with German university researchers so apprentice-type shoulder-to-shoulder was great for teaching craftsmanship of which China at the time of my paternal Grandpa also availed of in having the Germans implement intricate Chinese window designs { this might have been a connection to my Dad's becoming an apprentice at a fairly young age in a glass factory }.
The U.S. workers are often over-educated for the jobs they perform because the U.S. educational establishment's solution to social problems was to "send everyone to college." Not everyone is cut out for college, though, especially if they've come from a less-advantaged educational and social background. However, intense coaching may very well help for some heading towards college education and joining the working world with a marketable skill for the others. Here's where my Dad touted "apprenticeship" and the German model for transitioning youngsters to the working world which he had gone through in his prominent family's attempt to get him back on life's track after they had eaten the fat chickens he fed with the frogs and toads he had caught during the school days from the rice paddies. I asked my Dad specifically what he did with his time after he had escaped from schooling [with its scary bodily punishment]. He said [with beaming satisfaction], "Fat and tasty chickens at Chinese New Year time." He said that at my speed of eating a meal, I would starve in an apprenticeship in which all the apprentices in his glass factory ate together sharing the common never-sufficient-for-everyone food. "Devil takes the hindmost."
The slow-eating ones starve { but the ruminating slow-eating Seventh-Day-Adventist "cows" who chew 28 times before swallowing any mouthful of food stay healthy due to the high efficiency of their digestive and nutrient-absorbing process; chewing profusely increases the surface area of the chewed food to allow digestive juices adequate passages to dissociate nutrients from the food; this is a great health-enhancing measure almost everyone with good teeth can adopt easily and attain good health; the Hindus did get their worship of holy cows right in a certain sense although I wouldn't use their urine mixed with milk to cure or ward off CoViD-19 as there doesn't seem to be any proven physical linkage; always remember that the "purpose of life" is to produce great quantity of good-quality poop according to the Bristol scale; we, of course, aren't really aiming at shit but great health instead so poop and urine being readily observables can greatly help our quest for superb health if we get over our childhood-ingrained revulsion for them with our great interest in them; quantum physics says that everything is all about "the observables" so yeah, I practice quantum [high] physics when I stare at my poop and urine in my "people's temple" for health signs, much better than me getting needle-jabbed to draw out daily blood samples; I do often manage to beat the Muslims' five times a day to worship in my own temple.}
Of course, I had never really "starved" although things got lean at times in college during my late-night studying ( I held a job after my last afternoon college classes so late-night studying was my norm ) during which most food sources had been shut down.
I felt that my college education wasn't as enjoyable as what I had envisaged when I was cutting through on balmy days the college crowd ( the walruses, the seals and pups, the terns, the seagulls, the crows, the penguins, the manta ray, the blimp, the large fishes and small fries, the crabs, the shrimp, all lounging and sunning themselves on the rocky outcropping of the "beach"; in all of my college years, I'd never even spent a single afternoon doing that collegiate serotonin-releasing pasttime in the sun; how a place feels depends greatly on one's state of mind as I'd visited my college campus multiple times in different mental states: as a future student longing for becoming a member of the academic mecca and sunning on the "beach"-side resort, as a crunch-time late-night Twinkies(R)-chowing White Rabbit scurrying down the rabbit hole of motivational meltdown, as an alumnus with family members taking photographs as tourists and bumping into my old professor by chance, and escorting as a member of Squadron 62; it was the same old campus but it'd never felt the same due to my different inner mental states ). Money makes a difference in educational quality ( I had only gone to one or two { actually four but very few, for sure } study-group sessions in my entire college education because I had no time for them due to my multiple jobs ). Here's why I think that parents' contributions can help with "the gift of do-as-one-wishes leisure," which is ultimately what most people mean by freedom. My parents' improving incomes made my college education much tougher because I had to work far more in order to make up for their slated-for parental contributions as college financial aid was being withdrawn.
I experienced the private/public school educational difference myself firsthand because my school friend and academic nemesis had come from a private school so I "fell behind" him in sheer reading and comprehension speed, despite my certainly belonging to the academic élite.
Resources definitely help in some areas ( but there are dependencies to observe, such as a low blood sugar level reduces a genius to a ravenous "monster" so abundant corn/maize production in the U.S. helps with the docility of our people and advancement of much else; drinking contaminated water without a sanitary procedure such as my Mom's boiling a kettle of water every morning to make our drinking water will stick one to the chamber pot; without nighttime lighting, forget about studying at night, etc. ): many private schools give their students much heavy-duty assigned reading on a student-professional level of intensity but I as a public school student did more extracurricular reading than just the school assignments on an as-interested amateur level.
U.S. Math Olympiad training secret is: "Instead of sending six people to the IMO, we bring the IMO to 60 people." ( In the Cold War years around Deténte, the U.S.S.R. dominated with "Russian Math" but the U.S. knew how to "import" that and eventually did one better. Without the partly [rather ¡heavy!] stainless steel Mig-25, there might have never been the titanium SR-71 Blackbird.)
I agree with "all law should be moral" but "moral" according to whom? My Mom certainly considered spanking my Big Brother for his school grade altering shenanigan "moral" but it's considered as "criminal" here in the U.S.
Exceptionally high interest rates are "moral" in the U.S. according to the "Establushment." I recalled that I was wondering decades ago why Chase Manhattan Bank had put their credit card payment center in North Dakota. It's likely due to North Dakota's not having any state law restricting the highest interest rates which credit card companies could charge customers. Other states have usury laws so they don't get the business of Chase Manhattan. North Dakota probably didn't care much about regulating private banks because it is unique in the U.S. for having a state bank.
My Mom would have been held up in Bible-believing areas as a paragon of motherly moral rectitude. Spanking worked on my Big Brother -- there wasn't any more school grade enhancement via grade report alterations. Yes, indeed, spanking was written in the Holy Bible ( in the Old Testament. ) The U.S. doesn't follow the Bible, despite its well proclaimed [by Conservatives] "moral" roots in Christianity. There was no "spanking" of the Wall Street fraudsters who had created the 2007-2013 Great Trust Recession.
I think the key idea which we all need to understand, observe, and take to heart is the idea of jurisdiction. My Mom didn't commit a crime in the U.S. because she wasn't in the U.S. at the time. The confusion of jurisdiction and/or boundaries is the source of most of the conflicts in this world. For example, "Thou shalt not covet" is a commandment still to be learnt by the orthodox "Christians" coveting neighboring Ukraine.
As a U.S. citizen, I adhere to observing and practicing the U.S. Constitution and all laws derived from it. I, for example, wouldn't go into a McDonald's and murder people there for eating beef because my culture didn't eat much beef so it did have a strange taste to me as a child ( well, in the U.S. schools, I wolved down beef stronganoff alright { to "cure" a toothache before a grueling final examination, yeah ! it worked far better than two weeks of yogurt diet; I had never eaten yogurt before then but it hurt my aching tooth much less than other foods; by taking care of oral health assiduously, I've since overcome my childhood tooth problem -- goodies from my Big Brother such as ice-cream cones, chewing gums, strawberry ice-cream set atop Schweppes(R) cream soda, etc. weren't good for tooth health; I don't believe in tooth fairies but I believe in carbohydrates, bacteria, organic acids, fluoride toothpastes, toothbrushes, hydrogen peroxide, and holy, holy, holy, life-sustaining dihydrogen monoxide; one can maintain or improve one's health far better than the non-automobile human bodyshops because of the 24/7 surveillance and interventions possible guided by one's own feelings } so there was only a little bit of residual childhood resistance which vaporized quickly ).
I found that by and large, most U.S. people are tolerant of cultural differences. That's the fundamental reason why the U.S. overall "worked" pretty well, despite pockets of war zones here and there ( the U.S. mainland is continental-scale in size so a mass shooting a thousand miles away usually affects me little { the targeted assaults on Asian ethnicity are more concerning to me so I do want to know and become more circumspect as I had been attacked before in the U.S. hinterland -- as a consequence of that, I became bi-coastal, skipping over "the flyover country" spoken of by Hillary Clinton } ). Be aware of this fact of the U.S. being humongous and sparsely populated when evaluating or traveling in the U.S. You may not even have mobile phone service coverage in some areas or there could be dozens of people shot, injured, and/or killed in a city over a rambunctious night. We still have the "Wild, Wild West" in some places ( it's important to know what these places are.)
One can contribute to peace and stability by avoiding setting foot in these places unless absolutely necessary. Voluntary apartheid is what my Mom would be very proud of me practicing. She used to say in essence, "One cymbal doesn't clang: it takes two." (Cymbals weren't her favorite musical instrument.) (She referred to my Big Brother figuratively being one cymbal, fighting with me being the other cymbal, but our fighting was extremely rare, due to our huge age and strength difference. I learnt the Art of Silence early on as words had power, even the unspoken ones.)
Note that the "Wild, Wild West" wasn't always in the U.S. West or Midwest. During my driving in an eastern state, I experienced a pipe bomb detonating under an expressway overpass near its border with a Red state from which the bomber's vehicle had come. Sometimes, there are spillovers because the U.S. states have largely open borders to the other U.S. states. Distance and physical barriers matter but they aren't impermeable ( in the way that the Sep-11-2001 attacks having been planned from Germany and CoViD-19 being spread by the mass repatriation of tens of thousands of U.S. expats from Europe without quarantine proved that the Atlantic Ocean's 3000 miles girth was inadequate to halt rogue invasions from the Old World, primarily from Europe due to the many U.S. socioeconomic and cultural ties with Europe -- the lack of early CoViD-19 testing and contact tracing and the Trumpery for-Euro-bias did New York in. Taiwan only had 12 deaths in the first year of CoViD-19 despite its proximity to Red China and its many ties. )
It does help to know of the physical barriers, both space, time, and procedural. U.S. states can have disparate laws just across a state border. It's similar to how North Dakota having its own state bank could allow the National Association (N.A.) bank ( i.e. licensed to create money out of thin air and steal purchasing power from any and all U.S. dollar holders and forgive the debtors { the biggest of all was the U.S. Federal Goverment } by their paying back debts with the cheapened U.S. currency; with the systemic incentive favoring the people contracting debts, eventually debts spiral "out of control" from compound interest rates exceeding productivity gains if the debtors don't have access to "funny money" -- hence it's been de facto "funny money" quantitative easing of the constipation of accrued debts ever since 2008 via near-zero and real negative interest rates, especially important because they have funded the extraction of fracked carbonaceous fuels the lack of which has begun to hit Europe in force and North America soon as cold weather arrives which will be much worse for northern Europe should the Gulf Stream stop due to Anthropogenic Climate Chaos melting Greenland's ice cap reducing Gibbs' Free Energy to drive the Gulf Stream to reach northern Europe; Germany can't be self-sufficient with renewable energy and it can't even frack so it must become a Russian colony again or a French one should Germany choose nuclear fission generated electricity from France, Sweden, or Finland instead ) such as JP Morgan Chase to charge interest rates deemed usurious and illicit by other states.
Red China : CoViD-19 = North Dakota : JP Morgan Chase N.A.'s usury's bleedover.
Red China in recent years caught on to the money-printing out-of-thin-air ( i.e. credit creation ) trick and sought to displace the U.S. reserve currency status ( in order to gain the most power to steal as needed -- 2008 Great Recession started Red China on a binge of credit creation so yeah, "the chickens are coming home to roost," now powered by its own idiotic CoViD-19 international flight dispersal of disease policy cratering the world economy. Buddy, here's a hint: it takes far more than just huffing and puffing to lead in semiconductor and vaccine technology. There's a breadth/depth of many industries needed for leadership. In principle, any country could have made extraordinary semiconductors and vaccines but in reality few did, why ? Where was the venture capital spent on developing coronavirus vaccines for SARS-CoV, MERS, etc. in Red China, Iran, or DPRK ? Oh, yeah... the venture capital was spent upon developing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them from afar ! I guess "nuking" CoViD-19 in these countries' populations might just work as well as an excellent vaccine might, for halting CoViD-19 spread in these countries. )
Decades ago, my Big Brother ( and me being in tow as usual, my being his "license to roam" ) talked with a young man who had just served his country on the frontline on the Taiwan Strait. He said that the bombardment during his military service there was fierce. My Big Brother then asked him why we hadn't heard of any casualties coming from the decades of bombardment to "liberate Taiwan, counterattack the mainland" ( 解放台湾, 反攻大陸 ). He replied, "We followed a schedule of sheltering ourselves in bomb shelters and the enemies did the same." There was a really fierce hot war going on there for decades already but no one was hurt once the mutual bombardment had settled into a schedule observed by both sides to achieve maintaining the status quo ( 维持现状, 維持現狀 ). Girls, that's "the boys' racket" protecting you from those enemies.
The really fierce hot war with Chinese characteristics of no casualties and no spillover ( we lived in nearby Hong Kong, Euro-part of "two shores, three lands" ( 两岸三地, 兩岸三地 ) so my Big Brother was surprised to learn of the fierce bombardment; it's probably much like my shantytown poor boy's noonday boom which reminded me to come home for lunch from my garbage dump anthropological pursuits -- reliably punctual on schedule ) is far more preferable than what's starting to happen in Afghanistan.