https://rooshvforum.org/ Thu, 07 May 2026 11:42:29 +0000 MyBB https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4469 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:17:31 +0000 whitemike]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4469
Corporate Tax Cuts: Who Really Benefits?
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a move that was promoted as a way to boost investment, raise wages, and create jobs. The rationale was that with lower tax burdens, companies would reinvest their savings into expansion, innovation, and their workforce. But in reality, much of the tax savings went elsewhere.
Corporations used the extra cash primarily for stock buybacks—an artificial method of inflating share prices, benefiting executives and wealthy shareholders. In the third quarter of 2018 alone, S&P 500 companies repurchased nearly $200 billion worth of their own stock. By the end of the year, total stock buybacks across the economy were projected to exceed $1 trillion, shattering records.

While Republicans championed the tax cuts as a way to boost worker wages, the results told a different story. Some companies did hand out modest one-time bonuses, but these amounted to a fraction of the estimated $200 billion corporations saved in federal taxes. Wages did see a slight uptick, but the increases fell far short of what was promised. Meanwhile, corporate profits surged at an annualized rate of 6.5%, and financial giants like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup reported double-digit earnings growth.

Wage Stagnation: The Broken Promise
Despite decades of tax cuts, wages for American workers have remained largely stagnant when adjusted for inflation. In 1973, the median full-time male worker earned $53,294 (adjusted for inflation). By 2014, that figure had dropped to $50,383—meaning today’s workers are earning less in real terms than their counterparts over four decades ago.

Even though corporate profits have soared since the Great Recession ended in 2009, growing at an annualized rate of 6.5%, those gains have not translated into higher wages for most workers. Instead, any wage increases have disproportionately benefited the highest-paid tier of employees, widening the gap between the wealthy and the working class.

The Waning Effect on Economic Growth
Initially, the TCJA spurred a brief surge in capital investment at the start of 2018. However, that momentum quickly faded, with investment growth slowing sharply by the third quarter. Many economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, cut their growth forecasts for 2019, citing the diminishing impact of the tax cuts.

This trend is not unique to the TCJA. Historically, large-scale tax cuts have failed to generate sustained economic growth. The idea that reducing taxes for corporations and the wealthy will “trickle down” to benefit the broader economy has been repeatedly debunked by real-world data. The Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s, and now the Trump tax cuts have all followed a similar pattern: corporations and high earners reap massive financial benefits, but little of that wealth makes its way to the middle class or working poor.

A Better Approach to Economic Growth
If tax cuts for corporations don’t work as advertised, what does? Research suggests that economic growth is more effectively driven by policies that increase consumer demand, strengthen worker bargaining power, and invest in public infrastructure and education.

Key alternatives to ineffective corporate tax cuts include:

• Raising the minimum wage: Higher wages increase consumer spending, driving demand for goods and services.
  
• Strengthening labor protections: Unions and worker protections help ensure fair wages and working conditions.
  
• Investing in public infrastructure: Improvements in transportation, broadband access, and clean energy create jobs and stimulate long-term economic growth.
  
• Expanding access to education and job training: A well-educated and highly skilled workforce is essential for maintaining economic competitiveness.
  

Conclusion: The Myth of Trickle-Down Economics
The evidence is clear: corporate tax cuts do not lead to widespread economic benefits. Instead, they disproportionately benefit wealthy shareholders while leaving worker wages stagnant. The short-term boost in stock buybacks may enrich investors, but it does little to create long-term economic stability or opportunity for the average American.

If policymakers truly want to create a stronger economy, they should focus on investments that support workers, consumers, and public infrastructure—rather than handing out tax breaks to corporations that continue to prioritize profits over people.]]>
Corporate Tax Cuts: Who Really Benefits?
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a move that was promoted as a way to boost investment, raise wages, and create jobs. The rationale was that with lower tax burdens, companies would reinvest their savings into expansion, innovation, and their workforce. But in reality, much of the tax savings went elsewhere.
Corporations used the extra cash primarily for stock buybacks—an artificial method of inflating share prices, benefiting executives and wealthy shareholders. In the third quarter of 2018 alone, S&P 500 companies repurchased nearly $200 billion worth of their own stock. By the end of the year, total stock buybacks across the economy were projected to exceed $1 trillion, shattering records.

While Republicans championed the tax cuts as a way to boost worker wages, the results told a different story. Some companies did hand out modest one-time bonuses, but these amounted to a fraction of the estimated $200 billion corporations saved in federal taxes. Wages did see a slight uptick, but the increases fell far short of what was promised. Meanwhile, corporate profits surged at an annualized rate of 6.5%, and financial giants like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup reported double-digit earnings growth.

Wage Stagnation: The Broken Promise
Despite decades of tax cuts, wages for American workers have remained largely stagnant when adjusted for inflation. In 1973, the median full-time male worker earned $53,294 (adjusted for inflation). By 2014, that figure had dropped to $50,383—meaning today’s workers are earning less in real terms than their counterparts over four decades ago.

Even though corporate profits have soared since the Great Recession ended in 2009, growing at an annualized rate of 6.5%, those gains have not translated into higher wages for most workers. Instead, any wage increases have disproportionately benefited the highest-paid tier of employees, widening the gap between the wealthy and the working class.

The Waning Effect on Economic Growth
Initially, the TCJA spurred a brief surge in capital investment at the start of 2018. However, that momentum quickly faded, with investment growth slowing sharply by the third quarter. Many economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, cut their growth forecasts for 2019, citing the diminishing impact of the tax cuts.

This trend is not unique to the TCJA. Historically, large-scale tax cuts have failed to generate sustained economic growth. The idea that reducing taxes for corporations and the wealthy will “trickle down” to benefit the broader economy has been repeatedly debunked by real-world data. The Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s, and now the Trump tax cuts have all followed a similar pattern: corporations and high earners reap massive financial benefits, but little of that wealth makes its way to the middle class or working poor.

A Better Approach to Economic Growth
If tax cuts for corporations don’t work as advertised, what does? Research suggests that economic growth is more effectively driven by policies that increase consumer demand, strengthen worker bargaining power, and invest in public infrastructure and education.

Key alternatives to ineffective corporate tax cuts include:

• Raising the minimum wage: Higher wages increase consumer spending, driving demand for goods and services.
  
• Strengthening labor protections: Unions and worker protections help ensure fair wages and working conditions.
  
• Investing in public infrastructure: Improvements in transportation, broadband access, and clean energy create jobs and stimulate long-term economic growth.
  
• Expanding access to education and job training: A well-educated and highly skilled workforce is essential for maintaining economic competitiveness.
  

Conclusion: The Myth of Trickle-Down Economics
The evidence is clear: corporate tax cuts do not lead to widespread economic benefits. Instead, they disproportionately benefit wealthy shareholders while leaving worker wages stagnant. The short-term boost in stock buybacks may enrich investors, but it does little to create long-term economic stability or opportunity for the average American.

If policymakers truly want to create a stronger economy, they should focus on investments that support workers, consumers, and public infrastructure—rather than handing out tax breaks to corporations that continue to prioritize profits over people.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4467 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 05:09:13 +0000 Doosh]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4467
]]>
]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4466 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 05:07:09 +0000 Doosh]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4466
]]>
]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4464 Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:41:18 +0000 pitbull510]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4464
The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.

While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war with a post on X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated.

Elon Musk condemned a segment of the MAGA movement as "contemptible fools" who should be purged from the Republican Party in a social media post Friday. 

So basically there’s a huge racial divide between Indians and White Americans right now and it’s about H1-B visas. White Trumpers are throwing out Indian slurs and saying they can’t get tech jobs, while Indians are saying American culture is cooked because they value football, jocks, video games, and musicians over inventors and coders. It’s Silicon Valley MAGAs vs Redneck MAGAs. 

Ramaswamy can’t say unfettered, skilled immigration is good for multinational corporations and the gross domestic product—which it is—so he falls back on great power competition with China as the justification for precisely the exact policies the globalist fat cats want.

And I think it’s hilarious that the MAGA nationalists immediately recognized the sales pitch for what it is. American culture is literally the reason all of those immigrants want to come here, because those immigrants understand better than native Americans that Americans are willing to pay for excellence. Ramawamy’s definition of excellence is deliberately narrow and tailored to the kind of workers his master thinks are essential.  But the Haitian workers in Springfield, Ohio, are just as dedicated to professional excellence. Yet the Silicon Valley bros were okay with calling them cat-eaters because they can’t use warehouse or auto parts laborers. Heck, some of them would be happy to automate those jobs out of existence.

MAGA vs. Musk: Right-wing critics allege censorship, loss of X badges

A handful of conservative critics of Elon Musk are alleging censorship and claiming they were stripped of their verification badges on X after challenging his views on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers. Conservatives have long blamed "shadow bans" for censoring them on social media even when there hasn't been explicit proof. However, Musk's X has often been hailed by conservatives as a bastion of free speech.

Trump's conspiracy-minded ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer all said their verification badges disappeared after they criticized Musk's support for H-1B visas, railed against Indian culture and attacked Ramaswamy, Musk's DOGE co-chair.

The schism may force Trump to ultimately take sides between the largely white, working-class supporters who first made MAGA succeed, and the techno-libertarian billionaires like Musk who are at the center of his new administration.

What made poor working class people believe billionaires cared about them. He told them I don’t care about you I just want your vote what more is there to say to the people who voted for him.

He can probably finesse his way out of this particular “MAGA Civil War.” And this isn’t necessarily the most important fault line—it’s just the first of many. To govern is to choose. When campaigning you can promise everything and anything to everybody. But when you’re setting policy, one group wins and another loses. And it’s going to be particularly popcorn-worthy watching Vice President-elect J.D. Vance try to stay the Golden Boy for both the winners and the losers while never disagreeing with Trump (or Musk). 

The fact that some of Trump’s hardcore base literally believes him to be a prophet of God is constantly being overlooked. It DOESN’T MATTER to them what he does, good or bad for us in this life, because they think the end times are imminent, and he’s an instrument of God sent to bring about the second coming of Jesus. Nevermind their disregard for the teachings of Jesus. It will never make sense.

From where I sit, this is just another chapter in the long story of people convincing themselves that Trump is wholly. His promises served their intended purpose: getting him in the White House. The joke is on the people who believed him. on their side only to discover he’s not and never will be. Since these aren’t my monkeys and this is not my circus, I’m happy to watch them all duke it out.






]]>
The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.

While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war with a post on X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated.

Elon Musk condemned a segment of the MAGA movement as "contemptible fools" who should be purged from the Republican Party in a social media post Friday. 

So basically there’s a huge racial divide between Indians and White Americans right now and it’s about H1-B visas. White Trumpers are throwing out Indian slurs and saying they can’t get tech jobs, while Indians are saying American culture is cooked because they value football, jocks, video games, and musicians over inventors and coders. It’s Silicon Valley MAGAs vs Redneck MAGAs. 

Ramaswamy can’t say unfettered, skilled immigration is good for multinational corporations and the gross domestic product—which it is—so he falls back on great power competition with China as the justification for precisely the exact policies the globalist fat cats want.

And I think it’s hilarious that the MAGA nationalists immediately recognized the sales pitch for what it is. American culture is literally the reason all of those immigrants want to come here, because those immigrants understand better than native Americans that Americans are willing to pay for excellence. Ramawamy’s definition of excellence is deliberately narrow and tailored to the kind of workers his master thinks are essential.  But the Haitian workers in Springfield, Ohio, are just as dedicated to professional excellence. Yet the Silicon Valley bros were okay with calling them cat-eaters because they can’t use warehouse or auto parts laborers. Heck, some of them would be happy to automate those jobs out of existence.

MAGA vs. Musk: Right-wing critics allege censorship, loss of X badges

A handful of conservative critics of Elon Musk are alleging censorship and claiming they were stripped of their verification badges on X after challenging his views on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers. Conservatives have long blamed "shadow bans" for censoring them on social media even when there hasn't been explicit proof. However, Musk's X has often been hailed by conservatives as a bastion of free speech.

Trump's conspiracy-minded ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer all said their verification badges disappeared after they criticized Musk's support for H-1B visas, railed against Indian culture and attacked Ramaswamy, Musk's DOGE co-chair.

The schism may force Trump to ultimately take sides between the largely white, working-class supporters who first made MAGA succeed, and the techno-libertarian billionaires like Musk who are at the center of his new administration.

What made poor working class people believe billionaires cared about them. He told them I don’t care about you I just want your vote what more is there to say to the people who voted for him.

He can probably finesse his way out of this particular “MAGA Civil War.” And this isn’t necessarily the most important fault line—it’s just the first of many. To govern is to choose. When campaigning you can promise everything and anything to everybody. But when you’re setting policy, one group wins and another loses. And it’s going to be particularly popcorn-worthy watching Vice President-elect J.D. Vance try to stay the Golden Boy for both the winners and the losers while never disagreeing with Trump (or Musk). 

The fact that some of Trump’s hardcore base literally believes him to be a prophet of God is constantly being overlooked. It DOESN’T MATTER to them what he does, good or bad for us in this life, because they think the end times are imminent, and he’s an instrument of God sent to bring about the second coming of Jesus. Nevermind their disregard for the teachings of Jesus. It will never make sense.

From where I sit, this is just another chapter in the long story of people convincing themselves that Trump is wholly. His promises served their intended purpose: getting him in the White House. The joke is on the people who believed him. on their side only to discover he’s not and never will be. Since these aren’t my monkeys and this is not my circus, I’m happy to watch them all duke it out.






]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4363 Mon, 23 Dec 2024 01:59:17 +0000 pitbull510]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4363
]]>
]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4343 Sat, 23 Nov 2024 03:17:21 +0000 whitemike]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4343
Trump positions himself as a disruptive force and a formidable leader. What people were expecting from Obama. People would have done whatever Obama wanted but he didn’t have any serious ideologies. Like most Democrats, he was a centralist. Trump capitalized on the fact that for the past 30 years, the government hasn’t done much for so-called working people because wealth/tech has pushed down incomes and bargaining positions for mediocre people. If you wanna make a ton of money, better get smart.


Donald Trump's policies during his prior government were a catastrophic disaster. During his trade conflict with China, he had to use US taxpayer money to bail out farmers who got fucked. His large tax cut actually raises taxes in blue states while lowering them in red states by only 2.4%. Corporations benefited the most, receiving a 14% tax cut. So, basically, he intends to demolish the most productive US states and give them to the red states and companies that support him. 

Anyway, I think in contrast with Donald trump, Pamela Harris was very boring and inauthentic. When she spoke, she seemed to be reciting something from memory rather than speaking authentically. I believe people want more authenticity and a fighter in a leader. They are tired of the artificial, polished, politically acceptable speak. You're not supposed to talk about how gorgeous or obese people are anymore. So people are looking for authenticity. I believe Google even changed their algorithm early this year to include more user generated content from shitholes like Reddit as well as blogs. A lot of people want to know what you actually think without all the filters. They are tired of all the plastic corporate speech that you see everywhere. I'm sure this is one of the reasons Fox News still exists and the rise of YouTube influencers. Trump lies plainly, and people know it, but he doesn't hide it. He's a racist, and he doesn't try to conceal it. He worships money and is a fascist, but he doesn't try to conceal it. Biden called Trump supporters garbage (which they are) and received a lot of backlash from the mainstream media. The Democrat should have simply run with that. Democrats believe many of the same things republicans do, but they try to mask it and use politically acceptable language. I believe if Kamala Harris had revealed half of the nasty bi2ixh we all know she is, the outcome would have been quite different.

Real Kamala Harris: I recently come from a white trash village where I believe everyone has five teeth. I received the craziest question from this lard ass wearing an Andrew Tate T-shirt. He looked a little like Wig wearing Trump. Probably can’t even see his own dick. 

Harris seems like a Hilary Clinton clone, too corporate, no real empathy or emotion like… I have seen better emotions out of a B class Hollywood actor, even Dune had more real emotion in it To most people, she didn’t feel real or like someone they would hangout with, which is why in the primaries, when she ran for president, she fizzled out. In 2024, you got a let it hang all out. Sure, there was some sexism. Latinos tend to vote for male candidates (trump got 45% of their vote), and I believe Trump garnered support from white voters over a racially diverse opponent. But I ultimately blame the democrats for pushing a corporate female candidate twice against Trump. Trump only has beaten women as a presidential candidate, stupid democrats. 

Conclusion:

The Country wants more authentic bullshitters and definitely wasn’t ready for a robotic female president, add the color and idiot democrats pushed the wrong unelectable candidate again, as they didn’t learn from pushing mrs Clinton and now the US is screwed, basically a Russian puppet president, German gay guy’s puppet for vice president, and the judicial takeover continues orchestrated by the coal and oil industries rich idiots… stripping the people of protection and giving it to the wealthy is the name of their game. Federalist Society judges all the way to the supreme court have been siding with the reading of the Constitution as protecting wealth over protecting the masses, and they are all Catholic on top of that, so basically religious nutcases.

Sad for the future of the US and yeah Ukraine gets screwed over … we’re gonna see some interesting shit, maybe even WWIII. Vaccines being banned as RFK jr runs the health department lol]]>
Trump positions himself as a disruptive force and a formidable leader. What people were expecting from Obama. People would have done whatever Obama wanted but he didn’t have any serious ideologies. Like most Democrats, he was a centralist. Trump capitalized on the fact that for the past 30 years, the government hasn’t done much for so-called working people because wealth/tech has pushed down incomes and bargaining positions for mediocre people. If you wanna make a ton of money, better get smart.


Donald Trump's policies during his prior government were a catastrophic disaster. During his trade conflict with China, he had to use US taxpayer money to bail out farmers who got fucked. His large tax cut actually raises taxes in blue states while lowering them in red states by only 2.4%. Corporations benefited the most, receiving a 14% tax cut. So, basically, he intends to demolish the most productive US states and give them to the red states and companies that support him. 

Anyway, I think in contrast with Donald trump, Pamela Harris was very boring and inauthentic. When she spoke, she seemed to be reciting something from memory rather than speaking authentically. I believe people want more authenticity and a fighter in a leader. They are tired of the artificial, polished, politically acceptable speak. You're not supposed to talk about how gorgeous or obese people are anymore. So people are looking for authenticity. I believe Google even changed their algorithm early this year to include more user generated content from shitholes like Reddit as well as blogs. A lot of people want to know what you actually think without all the filters. They are tired of all the plastic corporate speech that you see everywhere. I'm sure this is one of the reasons Fox News still exists and the rise of YouTube influencers. Trump lies plainly, and people know it, but he doesn't hide it. He's a racist, and he doesn't try to conceal it. He worships money and is a fascist, but he doesn't try to conceal it. Biden called Trump supporters garbage (which they are) and received a lot of backlash from the mainstream media. The Democrat should have simply run with that. Democrats believe many of the same things republicans do, but they try to mask it and use politically acceptable language. I believe if Kamala Harris had revealed half of the nasty bi2ixh we all know she is, the outcome would have been quite different.

Real Kamala Harris: I recently come from a white trash village where I believe everyone has five teeth. I received the craziest question from this lard ass wearing an Andrew Tate T-shirt. He looked a little like Wig wearing Trump. Probably can’t even see his own dick. 

Harris seems like a Hilary Clinton clone, too corporate, no real empathy or emotion like… I have seen better emotions out of a B class Hollywood actor, even Dune had more real emotion in it To most people, she didn’t feel real or like someone they would hangout with, which is why in the primaries, when she ran for president, she fizzled out. In 2024, you got a let it hang all out. Sure, there was some sexism. Latinos tend to vote for male candidates (trump got 45% of their vote), and I believe Trump garnered support from white voters over a racially diverse opponent. But I ultimately blame the democrats for pushing a corporate female candidate twice against Trump. Trump only has beaten women as a presidential candidate, stupid democrats. 

Conclusion:

The Country wants more authentic bullshitters and definitely wasn’t ready for a robotic female president, add the color and idiot democrats pushed the wrong unelectable candidate again, as they didn’t learn from pushing mrs Clinton and now the US is screwed, basically a Russian puppet president, German gay guy’s puppet for vice president, and the judicial takeover continues orchestrated by the coal and oil industries rich idiots… stripping the people of protection and giving it to the wealthy is the name of their game. Federalist Society judges all the way to the supreme court have been siding with the reading of the Constitution as protecting wealth over protecting the masses, and they are all Catholic on top of that, so basically religious nutcases.

Sad for the future of the US and yeah Ukraine gets screwed over … we’re gonna see some interesting shit, maybe even WWIII. Vaccines being banned as RFK jr runs the health department lol]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4342 Sat, 23 Nov 2024 03:00:02 +0000 pitbull510]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=4342
Overall, the United States will be led by a group of retards. When they start mucking things up attempting to bring jobs back to America with a workforce that doesn't want to do any physical labor, inflation will skyrocket. When employment losses begin, they will seek to scapegoat some minority group. I think Asians should be concerned. The Chinese have already copied the SpaceX rocket recovery method. If China can recover from its financial burden and connect with the European market while the United States abandons them, it may become the world's leading power. People in Europe are becoming poorer with aging population, thus they will require cheaper products. You can expect a significant shift in manufacturing to Southeast Asia, or possibly Russia or Turkey. Russia is likely to recover somewhat and then gobble up the rest of Ukraine. However, many of these places' populations are declining and aging. So perhaps India will become the dominant dog in that zone. The US will probably just stay the top dog across the Americas. A Donald Trump presidency generates numerous new scenarios. I could picture myself conducting numerous YouTube interviews with prominent experts while advocating a happier life abroad in one of our resorts or exclusive communities built around an investment fund.

Biden should have withdrawn from the race sooner to facilitate a primary and allow for the emergence of a compelling leader. People just didn’t give a shit about Kamala Harris or did not want to vote for a woman of mixed race.]]>
Overall, the United States will be led by a group of retards. When they start mucking things up attempting to bring jobs back to America with a workforce that doesn't want to do any physical labor, inflation will skyrocket. When employment losses begin, they will seek to scapegoat some minority group. I think Asians should be concerned. The Chinese have already copied the SpaceX rocket recovery method. If China can recover from its financial burden and connect with the European market while the United States abandons them, it may become the world's leading power. People in Europe are becoming poorer with aging population, thus they will require cheaper products. You can expect a significant shift in manufacturing to Southeast Asia, or possibly Russia or Turkey. Russia is likely to recover somewhat and then gobble up the rest of Ukraine. However, many of these places' populations are declining and aging. So perhaps India will become the dominant dog in that zone. The US will probably just stay the top dog across the Americas. A Donald Trump presidency generates numerous new scenarios. I could picture myself conducting numerous YouTube interviews with prominent experts while advocating a happier life abroad in one of our resorts or exclusive communities built around an investment fund.

Biden should have withdrawn from the race sooner to facilitate a primary and allow for the emergence of a compelling leader. People just didn’t give a shit about Kamala Harris or did not want to vote for a woman of mixed race.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=1876 Mon, 04 Nov 2024 06:30:07 +0000 PAG]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=1876
The turnout will be the deciding factor in this election. The disparity in the ground game is one of the most intriguing parts for me. The Harris team has 50 coordination offices and roughly 3000 volunteers and staff personnel stationed in each battleground state. They average 2000 doorknocks every minute. According to a Trump aide, the ex-president has only two dozen offices and relies primarily on social media and Elon Musk to rally voters.

The most important voting demographic in this election is white women, and it looks like they are breaking for Harris 55-45 over issues like a woman's right to choose.

---

]]>
The turnout will be the deciding factor in this election. The disparity in the ground game is one of the most intriguing parts for me. The Harris team has 50 coordination offices and roughly 3000 volunteers and staff personnel stationed in each battleground state. They average 2000 doorknocks every minute. According to a Trump aide, the ex-president has only two dozen offices and relies primarily on social media and Elon Musk to rally voters.

The most important voting demographic in this election is white women, and it looks like they are breaking for Harris 55-45 over issues like a woman's right to choose.

---

]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=144 Sat, 22 Jun 2024 23:13:35 +0000 pitbull510]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=144
Libertarians often discuss how small countries, such as the US before 1913 and Hong Kong before the 1990s, became into economic powerhouses with high living standards. via tiny government. However, most libertarians are unaware of the extent to which consumer protections have benefited them. Without government controls, most people would have no idea who owns a corporation or what it does. If consumers were not required by law to know where a product was created, what it is made of, or how it was made, they would have no idea what they were purchasing, even if they wished to support American manufacturing. How would you fight back against corporations in the absence of laws and a justice system that limit what a corporation can and cannot do?

I don't mind having a social safety net, even if it raises my taxes; it means that I can basically do whatever the fuck I want (leave a job to start a business, move, etc.) and know that even if shit hits the fan, I'll be alright. Probably would require a dramatic reduction of lifestyle qualification, but nothing that couldn't be recovered from.]]>
Libertarians often discuss how small countries, such as the US before 1913 and Hong Kong before the 1990s, became into economic powerhouses with high living standards. via tiny government. However, most libertarians are unaware of the extent to which consumer protections have benefited them. Without government controls, most people would have no idea who owns a corporation or what it does. If consumers were not required by law to know where a product was created, what it is made of, or how it was made, they would have no idea what they were purchasing, even if they wished to support American manufacturing. How would you fight back against corporations in the absence of laws and a justice system that limit what a corporation can and cannot do?

I don't mind having a social safety net, even if it raises my taxes; it means that I can basically do whatever the fuck I want (leave a job to start a business, move, etc.) and know that even if shit hits the fan, I'll be alright. Probably would require a dramatic reduction of lifestyle qualification, but nothing that couldn't be recovered from.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=90 Thu, 14 Mar 2024 22:17:49 +0000 AirWaves]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=90
Despite having zero power or influence over real life politics, these sub-Nazi deadbeats have a significant online presence ready to thumb down YouTube videos on important topics such as female Ghostbusters and Mexican Spider-Man. This is their natural habitat, along with Twitter, where they can be found protesting against multiculturalism while masturbating to Japanese anime waifus in their avatars and expressing the opinion that immigration to the United States should have ended the second after their pasty ancestors arrived to ethnically cleanse the natives. It is sometimes said that the salt-right is the endpoint of the Republican party- its purest manifest form.

They have achieved absolutely nothing of value, have no discernible skills or merit as human beings, and therefore put pride in their race above all other things (sound familiar). Their whiteness is the one thing that can never be taken away from them, yet also is the one thing that took no effort whatsoever to possess, thus giving them a completely undeserved sense of superiority over ethnic minority individuals, many of whom have accomplished far more than they ever will

I realize that people gravitate to political ideologies that give them advantages in the sexual market place. ‘Traditionalist’ types favour monogamy within their group because it gives those with low sexual market value access to a mate. In a free sexual market they will be left without a chance of reproducing. ‘Tradition’ as they advocate is nothing more then sexual communism where 1 man will be allocated 1 women of their group.]]>
Despite having zero power or influence over real life politics, these sub-Nazi deadbeats have a significant online presence ready to thumb down YouTube videos on important topics such as female Ghostbusters and Mexican Spider-Man. This is their natural habitat, along with Twitter, where they can be found protesting against multiculturalism while masturbating to Japanese anime waifus in their avatars and expressing the opinion that immigration to the United States should have ended the second after their pasty ancestors arrived to ethnically cleanse the natives. It is sometimes said that the salt-right is the endpoint of the Republican party- its purest manifest form.

They have achieved absolutely nothing of value, have no discernible skills or merit as human beings, and therefore put pride in their race above all other things (sound familiar). Their whiteness is the one thing that can never be taken away from them, yet also is the one thing that took no effort whatsoever to possess, thus giving them a completely undeserved sense of superiority over ethnic minority individuals, many of whom have accomplished far more than they ever will

I realize that people gravitate to political ideologies that give them advantages in the sexual market place. ‘Traditionalist’ types favour monogamy within their group because it gives those with low sexual market value access to a mate. In a free sexual market they will be left without a chance of reproducing. ‘Tradition’ as they advocate is nothing more then sexual communism where 1 man will be allocated 1 women of their group.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=89 Thu, 14 Mar 2024 22:10:31 +0000 AirWaves]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=89
I don't know how Japanese athletes are prepared, but I believe the Chinese are the most extreme in the world. It would be interesting to see how Chinese athletes do when their competitive careers have ended. Probably they will spend the rest of their lives instructing.

The Chinese government supports all of this. I doubt any other government in the world provides financial assistance to athletes from the age of four until they die of old age. With that kind of lifetime support, it must be really difficult to compete with them.


During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Romania also did this. After a medal drought, Russia and Romania are reinvesting in their sports programs in an effort to reclaim their former grandeur, particularly in Russia.

Everyone should get used to China winning gold in almost every Olympic sport. Because their athletes are completely supported by the government, they may spend every day getting paid to perform rather than wasting time attempting to find financial assistance for training. According to an interview with a female Chinese gymnast, the government provided them with a home, food, and financial assistance for their entire family. If she didn't do well, she risked losing everything for her family. That's a terrific incentive, but it's also a little unfair to those who have to fight their way to the Olympics.

That is precisely why our excessively overpaid millionaires are on our basketball team. Because the Olympics are just for amateurs, we have consistently ranked low in basketball. However, somewhere back (was it the 1980s? When was the Dream Team?) the USOC successfully contended that the other countries' Olympic teams were the equivalent of our professional teams in the sense that they were paid to play basketball, making them ipso facto professional. This allowed our professional players to join the team, and we began to exhibit

It wasn't that long ago that if an American athlete earned a cent in a sport, his or her amateur status was terminated and eligibility for Olympic competition was lost.

They work hard because they are honored to have been chosen by the government to train and compete on behalf of China. They do not want to shame themselves or their families by failing to compete successfully.]]>
I don't know how Japanese athletes are prepared, but I believe the Chinese are the most extreme in the world. It would be interesting to see how Chinese athletes do when their competitive careers have ended. Probably they will spend the rest of their lives instructing.

The Chinese government supports all of this. I doubt any other government in the world provides financial assistance to athletes from the age of four until they die of old age. With that kind of lifetime support, it must be really difficult to compete with them.


During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Romania also did this. After a medal drought, Russia and Romania are reinvesting in their sports programs in an effort to reclaim their former grandeur, particularly in Russia.

Everyone should get used to China winning gold in almost every Olympic sport. Because their athletes are completely supported by the government, they may spend every day getting paid to perform rather than wasting time attempting to find financial assistance for training. According to an interview with a female Chinese gymnast, the government provided them with a home, food, and financial assistance for their entire family. If she didn't do well, she risked losing everything for her family. That's a terrific incentive, but it's also a little unfair to those who have to fight their way to the Olympics.

That is precisely why our excessively overpaid millionaires are on our basketball team. Because the Olympics are just for amateurs, we have consistently ranked low in basketball. However, somewhere back (was it the 1980s? When was the Dream Team?) the USOC successfully contended that the other countries' Olympic teams were the equivalent of our professional teams in the sense that they were paid to play basketball, making them ipso facto professional. This allowed our professional players to join the team, and we began to exhibit

It wasn't that long ago that if an American athlete earned a cent in a sport, his or her amateur status was terminated and eligibility for Olympic competition was lost.

They work hard because they are honored to have been chosen by the government to train and compete on behalf of China. They do not want to shame themselves or their families by failing to compete successfully.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=86 Thu, 14 Mar 2024 18:49:51 +0000 whitemike]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=86 financial war decisively. Russia's financial situation is in a state of catastrophic collapse, with less than 10 years of stability projected. President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 bet everything on one card. If he conquered Ukraine, he would stop the country’s Westernization and absorb it into a new confederation with Belarus and the Russian Federation. However, with the failure of Russia’s military to take Kyiv scuttled this federation expending project, dashing any illusions of welding Ukraine into a common state organism with Russia and imperiling President Putin’s own legitimacy to rule in Moscow.

The situation has now devolved into a proxy war, with Ukraine vying for territory and Putin attempting to maintain a public image. The Russian state will enter a phase of slow decay. In this variant, nothing happens immediately. There will be no rapid military or political change as Russia’s empire simply enters the next phase of its disintegration. This became particularly evident during the recent mutiny of Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, which marked the first serious rebellion in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and one of many new developments in Russia’s internal situation that could acquire significance as stages in a long-term “disintegration” scenario.

The mutiny of Wagner group it exposed the weakness of the Russian president and the authoritarian system he built, revealing hidden fractures in the highest circle of power. In Russian history, waves of change have traditionally been triggered when people perceive the ruler as failing to lead or showing fear – thereby stripping him of his “holy” status. Mr Putin decided to rebuild a third Russian empire under his personal control, using the Soviet inheritance as a model. The polity he created evolved from an authoritarian into a semi-totalitarian state. In the ideological sense, it bundled elements of Tsarist Russian and Soviet tradition. Economically, it depended on exporting natural resources (mainly hydrocarbons) with income streams controlled by a political-military oligarchy largely composed of former members of the security services. That is completely over now. Mr. Putin’s third incarnation of the Russian empire rested on the political and economic domination of nations that had historically been exploited by Moscow. This was the message behind Russia’s military aggression against Georgia and Ukraine.




Turbulence ahead

An old hallmark of Soviet decline – technological backwardness – is also making a comeback. The reimposition of Western sanctions has revealed Russia’s dependence on the outside world and its inability to make do without imported Western technologies. Like the Soviet Union, Russia can make money from oil and gas but finds itself helpless to produce microprocessors. A growing sense of vulnerability creates friction in the ruling camp and encourages infighting among rival interest groups fearful for the empire’s future. Russia’s rulers’ traditional response to such tensions has traditionally been small wars on the imperial borderlands to show that autocratic control remains essential.

There might be efforts in certain areas to emancipate themselves from Kremlin oversight and function independently from the central government's authority, or at least with significantly more autonomy. Under these circumstances, there is a high probability that centrifugal and separatist inclinations may resurface. The South Caucasus is a very vulnerable region that has a substantial risk of falling apart.]]> financial war decisively. Russia's financial situation is in a state of catastrophic collapse, with less than 10 years of stability projected. President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 bet everything on one card. If he conquered Ukraine, he would stop the country’s Westernization and absorb it into a new confederation with Belarus and the Russian Federation. However, with the failure of Russia’s military to take Kyiv scuttled this federation expending project, dashing any illusions of welding Ukraine into a common state organism with Russia and imperiling President Putin’s own legitimacy to rule in Moscow.

The situation has now devolved into a proxy war, with Ukraine vying for territory and Putin attempting to maintain a public image. The Russian state will enter a phase of slow decay. In this variant, nothing happens immediately. There will be no rapid military or political change as Russia’s empire simply enters the next phase of its disintegration. This became particularly evident during the recent mutiny of Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, which marked the first serious rebellion in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and one of many new developments in Russia’s internal situation that could acquire significance as stages in a long-term “disintegration” scenario.

The mutiny of Wagner group it exposed the weakness of the Russian president and the authoritarian system he built, revealing hidden fractures in the highest circle of power. In Russian history, waves of change have traditionally been triggered when people perceive the ruler as failing to lead or showing fear – thereby stripping him of his “holy” status. Mr Putin decided to rebuild a third Russian empire under his personal control, using the Soviet inheritance as a model. The polity he created evolved from an authoritarian into a semi-totalitarian state. In the ideological sense, it bundled elements of Tsarist Russian and Soviet tradition. Economically, it depended on exporting natural resources (mainly hydrocarbons) with income streams controlled by a political-military oligarchy largely composed of former members of the security services. That is completely over now. Mr. Putin’s third incarnation of the Russian empire rested on the political and economic domination of nations that had historically been exploited by Moscow. This was the message behind Russia’s military aggression against Georgia and Ukraine.




Turbulence ahead

An old hallmark of Soviet decline – technological backwardness – is also making a comeback. The reimposition of Western sanctions has revealed Russia’s dependence on the outside world and its inability to make do without imported Western technologies. Like the Soviet Union, Russia can make money from oil and gas but finds itself helpless to produce microprocessors. A growing sense of vulnerability creates friction in the ruling camp and encourages infighting among rival interest groups fearful for the empire’s future. Russia’s rulers’ traditional response to such tensions has traditionally been small wars on the imperial borderlands to show that autocratic control remains essential.

There might be efforts in certain areas to emancipate themselves from Kremlin oversight and function independently from the central government's authority, or at least with significantly more autonomy. Under these circumstances, there is a high probability that centrifugal and separatist inclinations may resurface. The South Caucasus is a very vulnerable region that has a substantial risk of falling apart.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=42 Thu, 15 Feb 2024 05:41:22 +0000 PAG]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=42

English girl for sale

The Bank of England recently warned that UK households are now facing the “biggest fall in living standards since comparable records began”. To experience two consecutive ‘lost decades’ in a row is unprecedented in modern history.

This stagnant wage growth has been compounded by the steady erosion of the welfare state. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, real incomes for the lowest-income households were no higher than in 2001–02, thanks to years of sustained welfare cuts.

The squeeze on living standards has been exacerbated by an intensifying housing crisis, which has been actively fueled by successive Conservative governments. House prices across the UK have soared by 167% since 2010 – far outstripping wage growth and pushing home ownership ever further out of reach for millions.

Rents in the private rented sector, meanwhile, have increased by 126%. Perhaps the cruelest aspect of the escalating housing crisis has been the surge in rough sleeping, which nearly trebled in England during the Conservatives’ first seven years in power.

At the same time, public services have been steadily eroded. NHS waiting lists have recently reached record highs, while education budgets have been slashed by 10%. Countless libraries, public parks, sports facilities, museums, youth clubs and children's centers have been shut down. For every £100 that went on public services in 2010, only £86 in real terms was spent in 2020.

The period of Conservative reign has been particularly grueling for young people. Following the tripling of English tuition fees in 2012, the average amount of student debt has soared by nearly 3,000%. In 2012, the average student in England graduated with £17,000 of debt; today, the figure is £45,000.

Recent increases in national insurance mean that graduates paying the basic rate of income tax face a marginal tax rate of 50%, meaning that half of any pay increases will be deducted in tax and student loan payments.


Mail order English girl

If Britain is to keep up with the Polish juggernaut, it needs to reform and go for growth. But that would involve all those things that this government seems incapable of, or unwilling to provide, such as skills training programmes, easier planning regulations, more spending on infrastructure, and above all a new technology strategy. But even if it had all those things, it would still be outside the EU, which is the deal breaker.

Just try to see it from the perspective of a foreign firm looking for somewhere in Europe to invest. You can place your factory on an island off the coast of Europe, with red tape and barriers to trade at every border, with poor infrastructure, low skills, and no industrial policy. Or you can go to Poland.

So far, British leadership have engaged in a race to the bottom on tax cuts, instead of presenting a serious plan for fixing the UK’s broken economy. This blind faith in tax cuts as a route to prosperity has no empirical basis in reality, and will almost certainly make the UK's economic woes worse, not better. In reality, these pledges are a naked attempt to court the 200,000 Tory members – who are overwhelmingly old, white, wealthy men living in the south of England.]]>

English girl for sale

The Bank of England recently warned that UK households are now facing the “biggest fall in living standards since comparable records began”. To experience two consecutive ‘lost decades’ in a row is unprecedented in modern history.

This stagnant wage growth has been compounded by the steady erosion of the welfare state. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, real incomes for the lowest-income households were no higher than in 2001–02, thanks to years of sustained welfare cuts.

The squeeze on living standards has been exacerbated by an intensifying housing crisis, which has been actively fueled by successive Conservative governments. House prices across the UK have soared by 167% since 2010 – far outstripping wage growth and pushing home ownership ever further out of reach for millions.

Rents in the private rented sector, meanwhile, have increased by 126%. Perhaps the cruelest aspect of the escalating housing crisis has been the surge in rough sleeping, which nearly trebled in England during the Conservatives’ first seven years in power.

At the same time, public services have been steadily eroded. NHS waiting lists have recently reached record highs, while education budgets have been slashed by 10%. Countless libraries, public parks, sports facilities, museums, youth clubs and children's centers have been shut down. For every £100 that went on public services in 2010, only £86 in real terms was spent in 2020.

The period of Conservative reign has been particularly grueling for young people. Following the tripling of English tuition fees in 2012, the average amount of student debt has soared by nearly 3,000%. In 2012, the average student in England graduated with £17,000 of debt; today, the figure is £45,000.

Recent increases in national insurance mean that graduates paying the basic rate of income tax face a marginal tax rate of 50%, meaning that half of any pay increases will be deducted in tax and student loan payments.


Mail order English girl

If Britain is to keep up with the Polish juggernaut, it needs to reform and go for growth. But that would involve all those things that this government seems incapable of, or unwilling to provide, such as skills training programmes, easier planning regulations, more spending on infrastructure, and above all a new technology strategy. But even if it had all those things, it would still be outside the EU, which is the deal breaker.

Just try to see it from the perspective of a foreign firm looking for somewhere in Europe to invest. You can place your factory on an island off the coast of Europe, with red tape and barriers to trade at every border, with poor infrastructure, low skills, and no industrial policy. Or you can go to Poland.

So far, British leadership have engaged in a race to the bottom on tax cuts, instead of presenting a serious plan for fixing the UK’s broken economy. This blind faith in tax cuts as a route to prosperity has no empirical basis in reality, and will almost certainly make the UK's economic woes worse, not better. In reality, these pledges are a naked attempt to court the 200,000 Tory members – who are overwhelmingly old, white, wealthy men living in the south of England.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=18 Sun, 11 Feb 2024 16:48:01 +0000 PAG]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=18
They will deprive China of being able to rely on Russia to defend themselves against the West. Divide and conquer, China has been increasing military spending for a decade and it shows… military weapons, size of the Navy… but they are still in the 20th century thinking… Russia has been trying to outthink the 20th century to get ahead but they don’t have enough insight to think about the world that exists today and how to win in it…

China will happily bleed them of raw resources for their billion-plus people. Sad these leaders fail to see the present or future problems… oligarchs are a dying breed, mostly due to the competition they face, this only gets worse with every new technological development cycle… more people compete and more technology is available for competition to outcompete the old dogs who just use manual labor.

If you read the “great reset” you understand how insane it’ll be in another two decades with robotic manufacturing and material processing… Russia falls apart as the world passes it by with Russia going after the resources, it’ll be a bloodbath until Russia is banned from the ability to party in the West…

The West has wanted the small parts of the world to fully go western that hadn’t, like Cypress and Monaco. Now those places will become desolate and dangerous even for the few Russians who make it there because the oligarchs will mostly be stuck in Russia and no other Russians will be able to afford traveling. 

Putin could have engaged Ukraine as their western Allie and become European through Ukraine but Putin and his oligarchs didn’t want to give up their fake little empires of Russian resources. I spent most of yesterday reading through too many articles on Ukraine's war with Russia...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/202...sia-suffer

Russian generals keep making the same mistakes over and over again, Putin is trying to switch to a long haul war but they keep supplying Ukraine with tanks and armored vehicles every time the Russians retreat... Now about half Ukraine's armies tanks are Russian, over 400 of them... over 600 armored vehicles. Polish Krab tanks have 3x the precision of the Soviet tanks and just got added to Ukraine's army frontlines, upgrading the distance 2x and precision 3x of their attacks to outcompete anything Russians have...

Quoting the above article: “Nato is a $40tn economic bloc while Russia is a $1.7tn economy,” he says. “Nato is spending 2% of its income on the military, which means whatever Russia spends, Putin doesn’t stand a chance.” as the whole article points out the scale of Russia's failure to think long term and failure to capitalize on the last two decades to grow its economy and manufacturing potential, failing to comprehend that Russia's largest asset, energy in gas and oil, was the single largest vulnerability to the viability of the Russian state... Putin went all into a fight that he thought Ukraine's politicians were holding an empty hand in, NATO/US backing the Ukrainian hand means Russia sent their troops into a hell hole of a trap, prepped by 8yrs of training exercises in the East of Ukraine that effectively resulted in the blockage of Russia's flash invasion, and the three-day invasion didn't quite go according to plan.

The fact that the Kremlin still thinks this is a winnable war speaks of how mentally limited they are in seeing the larger picture of what they lost when they started the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine... Much like the invasions of Ukraine/Crimea centuries ago https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...de...180949969/ it always has been and will be a fight between what are "Russian Nobility" who think they own the peasants and the peasants who realize their only chance for freedom is to fight back... This time NATO is backing the peasants who are fighting for their land.

Fascinating history going on and repeating... This time the numbers of "peasants" seem to be too great for the nobility to suppress once more, so the democratic process proceeds towards the less corrupt forms of governance -- Commercism lol, so corrupt it should be stopped too but that requires so many more laws and regulations and pollution detection and responsibilities, etc. all the things that take time and technology to uphold... almost the exact opposite of what China and Russia are using technology for, so it basically seeds the self-destruction of pollution into the future that was the downfall of the Aztecs (mercury poisoning), Romans (lead pollution), and modern day (plastic pollution everywhere, individual countries like Russia and China have exceedingly high pollution in other realms...)... All seems like a shitshow now that I can use my brain again to think about all of it!

Russia has now put themselves back to before the collapse of USSR in terms of relations with Europe and sped up the retreat from fossil fuels by two full decades by the Europeans… this will give Russia (I mean Moscow’s idiots selling out the raw resources from the whole of Russia to the rest of the world) a life line for another few decades as they were set to run out of their oil and gas anyway by selling it to Europe, now they will have their own oil for a few more decades if they don’t solve their logistics problem of sending it across the entire country to Asian countries on the east coast.

I’d argue Putin is literally just reacting to the western powers excluding his direct involvement in the world economy — because his economy was failing and he only had a decade of energy resources to sell, as his country wasn’t moving outside of its backwardness and embedded corruption. So, leave the idiots too their idiocy and you often get wars

So, they’ll still be exporting wheat and gold to anyone who will take it to keep their economy going… likely falling to around the GDP of Mexico, so barely hanging on to a top G20 economy spot but they could slip beyond that with enough countries banning their products due to tainted war “funding”… maybe cut their annual import/exports in half, might fall below Turkey for economic size… have to wait and see.

The EU won’t ever rely on Russia for oil/gas again, they’re too busy trying to switch to solar/wind etc and alternative oil/gas energy sources too… and most of Russia’s oil and gas wells are connected to pipelines going to EU or in that direction… meaning Russia is going to have about half its energy income cut off minimum, by the time they could figure out how to transport the oil elsewhere, the wells will be offline and it’ll cost too much to restart them (especially without western oil and gas companies telling them how to do it or without the turbines and pumps etc).

Remember, the US started pumping oil when Russia went after Georgia and that crushed the Russian economy by killing the price of oil. So this isn’t the first time Russia basically got spanked for invading another country.

About 1/3 of their exports of energy products go to China, India will likely take up some of the available oil and gas… so I guess about half their ~$160B in energy exports will likely dry up.

No more western hydraulic turbines, airplane parts, CPUs, high tech services, auditing services, etc means lots of the Russian companies will implode thanks to lack of professionalism and lack of anyone checking the books to keep them investment-worthy, they’re already corrupt and willing to take whatever when they think they can get away with it, not to mention there’s no other way to get ahead. With a decent number of their citizens already leaving to find professional work elsewhere, the brain drain will be bad for a few decades until Putin and his Moscow hoard are either dead (two decades for that to maximum or less if Putin is already cancer and dying as reported by reports on his health by the CIA people who didn’t want to be named lol) or otherwise gone from politics, minimum of about 2 decades for the majority of the USSR people to die off but more likely 3-4 decades to really get rid of that mindset the USSR enforced on purpose to deprive people of their own will-to-power, assuming they got enough taste of it before this Russia being cut off from the West that is happening… where you could buy anything to where you are lucky to be able to buy something you want that might be modern… nothing wrong with second, secondhand stuff.

Their trade deficit will likely go to neutral vs making money off of energy exports, they were making about $110B more per year off of energy exports than imports… likely most of that was going directly to oligarchs, so not much to drive the economy forward or make improvements to education or healthcare, etc.

This means they don’t have any direct way to make a import/export profit and will be crippled for the foreseeable future… basically a dependent of China.

Russia is just a Mafia state

In some capacity, this type of system is necessary in developing countries. The majority of people are simply too ignorant to make good decisions, and there is no "deep state" to right the ship. In Book Six of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates trying to get Adeimantus to see the flaws in democracy by comparing a society to a ship. Socrates asks: if you were heading out on a journey by sea, who would you ideally want to decide who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring? The latter, of course, says Adeimantus, so why then, responds Socrates, do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to judge who should be a ruler of a country?

Socrates’s point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. And like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm.

Ancient Athens had painful experience of demagogues. For example, the louche figure of Alcibiades, a rich, charismatic, smooth-talking wealthy man who eroded basic freedoms and helped to push Athens to its disastrous military adventures in Sicily. Socrates knew how easily people seeking office could exploit our desire for easy answers. He asked us to imagine an election debate between two candidates, one who was like a doctor and the other who was like a sweet shop owner. The sweet shop owner would say of his rival: Look, this person here has worked many evils on you. He hurts you, gives you bitter potions, and tells you not to eat and drink whatever you like. He’ll never serve you feasts of many and varied pleasant things like I will.

Socrates asks us to consider the audience response:  Do you think the doctor would be able to reply effectively? The true answer — "I cause you trouble, and go against your desires in order to help you" — would cause an uproar among the voters, don’t you think?

We have forgotten all about Socrates’s salient warnings against democracy. We have preferred to think of democracy as an unambiguous good – rather than a process that is only ever as effective as the education system that surrounds it. As a result, we have elected many sweet shop owners and very few doctors.

Approximately 100 years are required for democracy to become functioning. Systematic corruption is pervasive. Twenty years were spent by the United States to rebuild Afghanistan's military into a robust and autonomous fighting force. But the Afghan military collapse began far before President Biden's September 11 declaration that the United States would withdraw. Commanders inflated the number of soldiers in order to siphon off resources, and men on the battlefield frequently lacked ammunition, supplies, and even food. Individual outposts in rural locations where army and police units were besieged by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left their equipment behind gradually ceded control of routes and eventually entire districts to the rebels.

Many of these former Russian republics are currently mafia states. Read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Bere...sinessman) In 2000, he made the mistake of openly challenging Vladimir Putin, someone Berezovsky had played a big role in helping to get elected president. When Putin threw down the hammer, Berezovsky was forced to flee Russia. In Russia, after shock therapy, First it was the mafia, then the police, then the federal government, and then the competition for market share began between gangsters, police, and the Agency. As the police and the federal government became more competitive, gangs were forced out of the market. In many instances, though, rivalry gave way to cooperation, and the services themselves became gangsters. Once a crime lord attains sufficient wealth, they become oligarchs. The oligarchs' economic power buttresses the political power of the Russian president, and the president's power buttresses the economic power of the oligarchs — like a medieval king getting tribute from his aristocracy in exchange for his protection. It's an arrangement that the West is now fighting to disrupt.

Democracy is a complete failure without the Republic understanding that the rules and laws must be there to prevent evils and abuses and corruption and pervasive of intents… I wish more people understood Socrates and philosophy!!! Should be like all types of tests questions concerning socrates and democracies in histories… if you fail too many of the questions, your vote doesn’t count! Lol intelligence matters! Probably the most important piece of information to look at right now is well the Russian people are doing?

Corruption is widespread

One of Russia's greatest impediments to quicker economic growth is the fact that businesspeople lack confidence in the courts and that property rights remain inadequate. The result is that successful businesspeople are extremely reluctant to spend and instead take a defensive stance to safeguard their present enterprises rather than expansionist stances to increase their businesses. This mentality operates as a growth inhibitor, and once a business reaches a scale where the owner can make a comfortable living, it ceases to expand

Enterprises cannot rely on the rule of law to protect their transactions or prevent attempts to extort/bribery from corrupt officials. The news that Vladimir Putin, the Russian tsar of recent days, plans to endlessly hold on to power is not surprising. However, this is very worrying for Putin’s sacrifice - mainly the Russian people and Western democracies. The average nominal monthly wages fell below $450 per month in 2016, and tax on the income of individuals is payable at the rate of 13% on most incomes. Approximately 19.2 million Russians live below the national poverty line. This all-embracing Russian poverty is everywhere: in people’s houses, clothes, the cars they drive, the food they eat, and the entertainment they have.

Preliminary Rosstat figures show Russian gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first three months of 2019 was just 0.5 percent year-on-year, a figure well below even the most cautious forecasts. This has been attributed to to three factors — weak consumption as consumers had to absorb the pension age increase and a higher VAT rate, as well as much more unpredictable warmer winters that lower utilities output, a big contributor to the GDP number, as well as slower growth of state military orders.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has fallen to next to nothing, and if the money reinvested by foreign companies already working in Russia (which counts as FDI) is discounted, then actually FDI is negative as some smaller foreign investors have left Russia as the economy becomes increasingly moribund. The VAT hike also hit wages as the increase in nominal wages of just 5.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter was almost entirely eaten up by the similar increase in inflation.

Putin’s supposedly transformative national spending projects worth an eye-watering $390bn have largely failed to materialize. His promises of economic modernization and raised living standards must be set against a consecutive five-year fall in real wages and cuts to state pensions. Putin is already feeling the squeeze after state pollster VTsIOM reported that trust in the president fell to its lowest level in almost two decades, to 31 percent in May whereas it used to be over 70 percent ten years ago.

The slow pace of progress in the implementation of the national projects led Putin to chew out deputies on live TV and has fuelled tension between the various branches of government. The Kremlin has put a lot of store in the national projects which is the state's leading investment programme, but critics say not enough attention has been paid to improving the business environment and state-led investment by itself will not be enough to spur growth to get to the 3 percent GDP growth target by 2021. At most, the programme may increase Russia’s economic potential by 0.5 percent, the International Monetary Fund said.

Russian proverb: “Ne podmazhesh — ne poedesh”. Means “if you don’t grease the wheels, the cart won’t go”. And boy, do you need the grease when living in this country…

A gift to a doctor is not just a gratitude, it’s the assurance that (s)he will pay enough attention to your health issues. Same with nurses, if you want them to change bed and clean urinals after your severely ill relative — you need to be extra “grateful” to them. The fact that all these people must do that for free because that is their direct job and they are getting paid for it is totally ignored. Same applies to universities and colleges — you can buy your spot there and\or keep paying teachers to pass exams. Same applies to the army — parents pay enormous buybacks to allow their kids to dodge the humiliating service in Russian army.

As BNE IntelliNews recently argued, corruption is the system in Russia, but it is a little more sophisticated than that. Putin is increasingly leaving the apolitical parts of the economy to the state apparatus to run, where market forces and the rule of law are supposed to apply, but he keeps control over those parts of the economy where the state makes and spends the most money, and where only his personal rules of the game apply. His state capitalism alternative is probably founded in a belief that the rule of law is insufficient to stop corruption in Russia – or at least it can’t be put in place fast enough for him to use it as a way of transforming the country.

Conclusion

The total “pay-to-win” culture in Russia leaves no question why the most powerful people in the country steal billions of budget money and people are somewhat okay with that: they do the same everyone else does, only on a bigger scale. Russia will likely not be a major player in the future if they do not invest in its people. However, the fact that the world is closing in on them may provide some motivation. Additionally, they only have a decade's worth of energy resources to sell.

The embedded corruption is a huge problem in Russia that not even Putin can fix. The slow pace of progress in the implementation of the national projects led Putin to chew out deputies on live TV and has fueled tension between the various branches of government. The Kremlin has put a lot of stock in the national projects, which is the state's leading investment program, but critics say not enough attention has been paid to improving the business environment, and state-led investment by itself will not be enough to spur growth. The program may increase Russia’s economic potential by 0.5 percent, the International Monetary Fund said. As I have said before, Putin is increasingly leaving the apolitical parts of the economy to the state apparatus to run, where market forces and the rule of law are supposed to apply, but he keeps control over those parts of the economy where the state makes and spends the most money, and where only his personal rules of the game apply. His state capitalism alternative is probably founded on a belief that the rule of law is insufficient to stop corruption in Russia – or at least it can’t be put in place fast enough for him to use it as a way of transforming the country.

Yeah, it’s pretty humorous to me to see Russians complain about foreign banks seizing their reserves and about sanctions seizing their properties/yachts when that pretty much happened by default mode against every single owner of a company that didn’t fully support Putin for the last three decades! Now we have billionaire oligarchs in Russia “murdering” their families and committing suicide by guns or knives, and business people don’t seem to have any faith in the justice system there, hmm! It seems like Putin’s Russia is his playpen of supporters and dead people who didn’t get the memo to only support the guy, aka don’t try to coup d’etat because the secret police have your cellphones bugged, idiots. Lol

American CIA operatives and the spies for centuries before them, acted mostly just like the Russians-Kremlin still does, with killings of foreign presidents and up & coming politicians before they get to power… so the only question in my mind is how long can Putin/Kremlin get away with it before the shitshow shows up on their own door in response to their shitshow in some other places, based on ******* on Ukraine and what I see happening — they have about 10yrs before the Kremlin basically implodes unless they get access to a lot more natural resources to sell off from the Russian motherland, you just can’t sustain bribery when your import/exports are negative for the whole country.

Arguably that is the plan that the exploitative West (aka bankers and rich elites who don’t care about the future and just want to rake in the wealth, not the average human that is) hatched long ago and they love Russia for its raw resources, nobody can stand up and say this is polluting our future, stop it… in Russia, you do that and you don’t wake up from a drinking party with “friends”, oh that guy who showed up that almost nobody knew might not have been a friend… another alcoholic stat, such a sorry state of humanity the newspaper reads. In Soviet Russia, you try to kill alcohol before alcohol kills you, never knowing how is a friend and who is a spy sent to kill you if you don’t play the party line. In modern Russia, well they’re bringing back the Soviet red flag to support the war, so it’s the same.

The Donbas region was all Putin really wanted for the Crimea land bridge, since it was useless without the river-diverted water channel to it. Crimea being a sorta resort in waiting for the rich Oligarchs lol. Of course that was cover for oil and gas resources being taken since when was there a war without oil/gas being a direct driver for the reason/justification for invading??? Since, like I said, the Russians are selling out their resources without any long term plan… think about their position in a decade, no internal cheap energy, so they become another dependent state on other countries’ energy resources… You think the massive country is poor now, wait until it is energy dependent on other countries and their import/export balance is a few hundred billion in the negative each year. They’ll be selling all of their gold minings just to pay the interest on their loans… like every other state dependent on the IMF/World Bank.

That is actually the war Russia is fighting against when it says the West is against them, and they always have been… why they dislike the West, because it always leads to the same lack of sovereignty, as they say. They want full sovereignty to be whoever they want and take whatever they want etc, be as rich as they want, etc. buy whatever they want (assuming they don’t just kill whoever has it if that is cheaper).

That’s also why this war happened to be the stupidest thing I’ve seen Russia do throughout their history of blunders and miscalculations. They had successfully deployed their banks into Europe and they were expanding ever more each year, making the possibility of a financial powerhouse and intellectual property focused Russia a thing… well, they could have become broadly diversified nation they need to become to support a population their size without becoming a failed state dependent on other states for energy and food.

I think Russia was castrated because they were beating the European banks… they took the bait at the Putin level to go steal “defenseless” Ukraine’s resources and Russia miscalculated why USA/EU would help defend Ukraine going forward. The trap was laid over the last 14yrs and Russia (cough Putin) didn’t think the west cared about Ukraine enough to back them in a war with Russia, the great savor of the sovereign world!? Or whatever they think they are.

Arguably, Russia could have become a powerhouse for international shipping (energy resources to transportation services), grain exports to processed food exports, car manufacturing from letting other car companies build their manufacturing there etc… and now they are castrated from those by the aspects of insurance and banking that they hadn’t gotten into yet.

It’s doubtful that they will now be integrated into the western banking system at any level of cooperation… the whole “New World Order” was based on allowing for the development of civilization without the border and destruction of cities and entire regions when someone wanted resources or a bit more empire, they were supposed to go after the resources through open markets… back when the bankers (state controlling oligarchs/rich ass idiots sitting on their estates wondering what they wanted to take or how to steal it if it wasn’t for sale) all agreed to stop trying to annihilate each other using other countries’ mercenary armies or their own citizens, if they had an army worth a damn.

Russia and China didn’t have the same intercontinental warfare experiences, they both seemed to walk away from the post war experience assuming it was the other “army” against them and not the multitude of countries and influences and markets that otoh forced Europeans to realize the single-state dynamics (and associated thinking perspectives) are too internal-or-external (nothing else can be considered, definitely not bad decisions by a dumbass leader) to be constructive for long term development… democracies are slight better in that politics that would be wars turn into political campaigns to win a dumbass election.

The best system I’m not sure what the best option is for the future… ultimately, and I mean this philosophically, its the option that gives the most energy to the individual who uses it for good but I have never been able to define that good in terms of the civilization and individual… they seem at odds with each other. Give more energy to individuals, independent of civilization that is, and it increases their odds of expanding more life but ultimately it has to be pollution free or it all is a short term gain that faults too soon in the future.

Now importing gas and oil from Russia is seen in Europe as supporting the invaders and their plans are to cut it off as soon as possible… Germany in particular will be hurt from a lack of cheap energy and Europe will have to speed up transitioning away from fossil fuels, but the truth is it was going to happen anyway and Russia saw that happening to them due to running out of oil completely in a decade and it decided to invade Ukraine to get more oil and gas reserves in the Donbas region… now they will likely have enough oil for multiple decades because they can’t sell it. Russia ends up being as dumb as the US in going after oil in their wars, while trying to ignore the other costs…

The human potential, losing population and anyone with a brain, cost for Russia is huge and will only grow as the sanctions bite into Russia over the next decade, the lasting effects on Moscow will be the death of a decent economy for the next president of Russia… which, by design, will result in Russia being less of a threat militarily and economically… no more Russia branch banks in Europe, no more oligarchs spending their billions either but its a win for Europe as their banks will have no competition from Russians who had finally figured out how to move into that sector after decades of always being at the bottom of the pack. Now they aren’t even in the pack, too many sanctions to even run their banks and if the rebuilding effort does strip the oligarchs of their assets, the banks are going to be effectively controlled by westerners once more.

So, a win for Russia in Ukraine covers up the wholesale asset stripping from Russia at fire-sale prices of everything Russians had acquired in Europe and their reserves in central banks too, which was the real aim of getting Russia to invade in the first place. Baiting them with a weak Ukraine — while the US/NATO trained their troops and dropped in enough antitank weapons to stop the invasion during the two months leading up to the invasion that the bluff was called on Russia to backdown due to their stupidity… which resulted in everyone who thought Russia wasn’t going to invade being turned into idiots in politics circles and those people had to give up their power now that they basically made their countries weak by relying on Russian oil/gas.

Someone had planned this out but the masters of this war are more likely western bankers, as they love wars for this asset stripping and the fire-sales. Once you stop thinking in terms of battlefields and deaths, there’s really only bankers and military industrials waiting to capitalize on the longer term “cold war” fronts.

Cough cough, Russia loses 3 decades of growth they had from the collapse of the USSR… and another 3 decades at minimum to their actions of invading another country.

Here’s to hoping Russia gets its act together before it is just another name for pissing away the future.]]>
They will deprive China of being able to rely on Russia to defend themselves against the West. Divide and conquer, China has been increasing military spending for a decade and it shows… military weapons, size of the Navy… but they are still in the 20th century thinking… Russia has been trying to outthink the 20th century to get ahead but they don’t have enough insight to think about the world that exists today and how to win in it…

China will happily bleed them of raw resources for their billion-plus people. Sad these leaders fail to see the present or future problems… oligarchs are a dying breed, mostly due to the competition they face, this only gets worse with every new technological development cycle… more people compete and more technology is available for competition to outcompete the old dogs who just use manual labor.

If you read the “great reset” you understand how insane it’ll be in another two decades with robotic manufacturing and material processing… Russia falls apart as the world passes it by with Russia going after the resources, it’ll be a bloodbath until Russia is banned from the ability to party in the West…

The West has wanted the small parts of the world to fully go western that hadn’t, like Cypress and Monaco. Now those places will become desolate and dangerous even for the few Russians who make it there because the oligarchs will mostly be stuck in Russia and no other Russians will be able to afford traveling. 

Putin could have engaged Ukraine as their western Allie and become European through Ukraine but Putin and his oligarchs didn’t want to give up their fake little empires of Russian resources. I spent most of yesterday reading through too many articles on Ukraine's war with Russia...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/202...sia-suffer

Russian generals keep making the same mistakes over and over again, Putin is trying to switch to a long haul war but they keep supplying Ukraine with tanks and armored vehicles every time the Russians retreat... Now about half Ukraine's armies tanks are Russian, over 400 of them... over 600 armored vehicles. Polish Krab tanks have 3x the precision of the Soviet tanks and just got added to Ukraine's army frontlines, upgrading the distance 2x and precision 3x of their attacks to outcompete anything Russians have...

Quoting the above article: “Nato is a $40tn economic bloc while Russia is a $1.7tn economy,” he says. “Nato is spending 2% of its income on the military, which means whatever Russia spends, Putin doesn’t stand a chance.” as the whole article points out the scale of Russia's failure to think long term and failure to capitalize on the last two decades to grow its economy and manufacturing potential, failing to comprehend that Russia's largest asset, energy in gas and oil, was the single largest vulnerability to the viability of the Russian state... Putin went all into a fight that he thought Ukraine's politicians were holding an empty hand in, NATO/US backing the Ukrainian hand means Russia sent their troops into a hell hole of a trap, prepped by 8yrs of training exercises in the East of Ukraine that effectively resulted in the blockage of Russia's flash invasion, and the three-day invasion didn't quite go according to plan.

The fact that the Kremlin still thinks this is a winnable war speaks of how mentally limited they are in seeing the larger picture of what they lost when they started the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine... Much like the invasions of Ukraine/Crimea centuries ago https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...de...180949969/ it always has been and will be a fight between what are "Russian Nobility" who think they own the peasants and the peasants who realize their only chance for freedom is to fight back... This time NATO is backing the peasants who are fighting for their land.

Fascinating history going on and repeating... This time the numbers of "peasants" seem to be too great for the nobility to suppress once more, so the democratic process proceeds towards the less corrupt forms of governance -- Commercism lol, so corrupt it should be stopped too but that requires so many more laws and regulations and pollution detection and responsibilities, etc. all the things that take time and technology to uphold... almost the exact opposite of what China and Russia are using technology for, so it basically seeds the self-destruction of pollution into the future that was the downfall of the Aztecs (mercury poisoning), Romans (lead pollution), and modern day (plastic pollution everywhere, individual countries like Russia and China have exceedingly high pollution in other realms...)... All seems like a shitshow now that I can use my brain again to think about all of it!

Russia has now put themselves back to before the collapse of USSR in terms of relations with Europe and sped up the retreat from fossil fuels by two full decades by the Europeans… this will give Russia (I mean Moscow’s idiots selling out the raw resources from the whole of Russia to the rest of the world) a life line for another few decades as they were set to run out of their oil and gas anyway by selling it to Europe, now they will have their own oil for a few more decades if they don’t solve their logistics problem of sending it across the entire country to Asian countries on the east coast.

I’d argue Putin is literally just reacting to the western powers excluding his direct involvement in the world economy — because his economy was failing and he only had a decade of energy resources to sell, as his country wasn’t moving outside of its backwardness and embedded corruption. So, leave the idiots too their idiocy and you often get wars

So, they’ll still be exporting wheat and gold to anyone who will take it to keep their economy going… likely falling to around the GDP of Mexico, so barely hanging on to a top G20 economy spot but they could slip beyond that with enough countries banning their products due to tainted war “funding”… maybe cut their annual import/exports in half, might fall below Turkey for economic size… have to wait and see.

The EU won’t ever rely on Russia for oil/gas again, they’re too busy trying to switch to solar/wind etc and alternative oil/gas energy sources too… and most of Russia’s oil and gas wells are connected to pipelines going to EU or in that direction… meaning Russia is going to have about half its energy income cut off minimum, by the time they could figure out how to transport the oil elsewhere, the wells will be offline and it’ll cost too much to restart them (especially without western oil and gas companies telling them how to do it or without the turbines and pumps etc).

Remember, the US started pumping oil when Russia went after Georgia and that crushed the Russian economy by killing the price of oil. So this isn’t the first time Russia basically got spanked for invading another country.

About 1/3 of their exports of energy products go to China, India will likely take up some of the available oil and gas… so I guess about half their ~$160B in energy exports will likely dry up.

No more western hydraulic turbines, airplane parts, CPUs, high tech services, auditing services, etc means lots of the Russian companies will implode thanks to lack of professionalism and lack of anyone checking the books to keep them investment-worthy, they’re already corrupt and willing to take whatever when they think they can get away with it, not to mention there’s no other way to get ahead. With a decent number of their citizens already leaving to find professional work elsewhere, the brain drain will be bad for a few decades until Putin and his Moscow hoard are either dead (two decades for that to maximum or less if Putin is already cancer and dying as reported by reports on his health by the CIA people who didn’t want to be named lol) or otherwise gone from politics, minimum of about 2 decades for the majority of the USSR people to die off but more likely 3-4 decades to really get rid of that mindset the USSR enforced on purpose to deprive people of their own will-to-power, assuming they got enough taste of it before this Russia being cut off from the West that is happening… where you could buy anything to where you are lucky to be able to buy something you want that might be modern… nothing wrong with second, secondhand stuff.

Their trade deficit will likely go to neutral vs making money off of energy exports, they were making about $110B more per year off of energy exports than imports… likely most of that was going directly to oligarchs, so not much to drive the economy forward or make improvements to education or healthcare, etc.

This means they don’t have any direct way to make a import/export profit and will be crippled for the foreseeable future… basically a dependent of China.

Russia is just a Mafia state

In some capacity, this type of system is necessary in developing countries. The majority of people are simply too ignorant to make good decisions, and there is no "deep state" to right the ship. In Book Six of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates trying to get Adeimantus to see the flaws in democracy by comparing a society to a ship. Socrates asks: if you were heading out on a journey by sea, who would you ideally want to decide who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring? The latter, of course, says Adeimantus, so why then, responds Socrates, do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to judge who should be a ruler of a country?

Socrates’s point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. And like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm.

Ancient Athens had painful experience of demagogues. For example, the louche figure of Alcibiades, a rich, charismatic, smooth-talking wealthy man who eroded basic freedoms and helped to push Athens to its disastrous military adventures in Sicily. Socrates knew how easily people seeking office could exploit our desire for easy answers. He asked us to imagine an election debate between two candidates, one who was like a doctor and the other who was like a sweet shop owner. The sweet shop owner would say of his rival: Look, this person here has worked many evils on you. He hurts you, gives you bitter potions, and tells you not to eat and drink whatever you like. He’ll never serve you feasts of many and varied pleasant things like I will.

Socrates asks us to consider the audience response:  Do you think the doctor would be able to reply effectively? The true answer — "I cause you trouble, and go against your desires in order to help you" — would cause an uproar among the voters, don’t you think?

We have forgotten all about Socrates’s salient warnings against democracy. We have preferred to think of democracy as an unambiguous good – rather than a process that is only ever as effective as the education system that surrounds it. As a result, we have elected many sweet shop owners and very few doctors.

Approximately 100 years are required for democracy to become functioning. Systematic corruption is pervasive. Twenty years were spent by the United States to rebuild Afghanistan's military into a robust and autonomous fighting force. But the Afghan military collapse began far before President Biden's September 11 declaration that the United States would withdraw. Commanders inflated the number of soldiers in order to siphon off resources, and men on the battlefield frequently lacked ammunition, supplies, and even food. Individual outposts in rural locations where army and police units were besieged by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left their equipment behind gradually ceded control of routes and eventually entire districts to the rebels.

Many of these former Russian republics are currently mafia states. Read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Bere...sinessman) In 2000, he made the mistake of openly challenging Vladimir Putin, someone Berezovsky had played a big role in helping to get elected president. When Putin threw down the hammer, Berezovsky was forced to flee Russia. In Russia, after shock therapy, First it was the mafia, then the police, then the federal government, and then the competition for market share began between gangsters, police, and the Agency. As the police and the federal government became more competitive, gangs were forced out of the market. In many instances, though, rivalry gave way to cooperation, and the services themselves became gangsters. Once a crime lord attains sufficient wealth, they become oligarchs. The oligarchs' economic power buttresses the political power of the Russian president, and the president's power buttresses the economic power of the oligarchs — like a medieval king getting tribute from his aristocracy in exchange for his protection. It's an arrangement that the West is now fighting to disrupt.

Democracy is a complete failure without the Republic understanding that the rules and laws must be there to prevent evils and abuses and corruption and pervasive of intents… I wish more people understood Socrates and philosophy!!! Should be like all types of tests questions concerning socrates and democracies in histories… if you fail too many of the questions, your vote doesn’t count! Lol intelligence matters! Probably the most important piece of information to look at right now is well the Russian people are doing?

Corruption is widespread

One of Russia's greatest impediments to quicker economic growth is the fact that businesspeople lack confidence in the courts and that property rights remain inadequate. The result is that successful businesspeople are extremely reluctant to spend and instead take a defensive stance to safeguard their present enterprises rather than expansionist stances to increase their businesses. This mentality operates as a growth inhibitor, and once a business reaches a scale where the owner can make a comfortable living, it ceases to expand

Enterprises cannot rely on the rule of law to protect their transactions or prevent attempts to extort/bribery from corrupt officials. The news that Vladimir Putin, the Russian tsar of recent days, plans to endlessly hold on to power is not surprising. However, this is very worrying for Putin’s sacrifice - mainly the Russian people and Western democracies. The average nominal monthly wages fell below $450 per month in 2016, and tax on the income of individuals is payable at the rate of 13% on most incomes. Approximately 19.2 million Russians live below the national poverty line. This all-embracing Russian poverty is everywhere: in people’s houses, clothes, the cars they drive, the food they eat, and the entertainment they have.

Preliminary Rosstat figures show Russian gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first three months of 2019 was just 0.5 percent year-on-year, a figure well below even the most cautious forecasts. This has been attributed to to three factors — weak consumption as consumers had to absorb the pension age increase and a higher VAT rate, as well as much more unpredictable warmer winters that lower utilities output, a big contributor to the GDP number, as well as slower growth of state military orders.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has fallen to next to nothing, and if the money reinvested by foreign companies already working in Russia (which counts as FDI) is discounted, then actually FDI is negative as some smaller foreign investors have left Russia as the economy becomes increasingly moribund. The VAT hike also hit wages as the increase in nominal wages of just 5.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter was almost entirely eaten up by the similar increase in inflation.

Putin’s supposedly transformative national spending projects worth an eye-watering $390bn have largely failed to materialize. His promises of economic modernization and raised living standards must be set against a consecutive five-year fall in real wages and cuts to state pensions. Putin is already feeling the squeeze after state pollster VTsIOM reported that trust in the president fell to its lowest level in almost two decades, to 31 percent in May whereas it used to be over 70 percent ten years ago.

The slow pace of progress in the implementation of the national projects led Putin to chew out deputies on live TV and has fuelled tension between the various branches of government. The Kremlin has put a lot of store in the national projects which is the state's leading investment programme, but critics say not enough attention has been paid to improving the business environment and state-led investment by itself will not be enough to spur growth to get to the 3 percent GDP growth target by 2021. At most, the programme may increase Russia’s economic potential by 0.5 percent, the International Monetary Fund said.

Russian proverb: “Ne podmazhesh — ne poedesh”. Means “if you don’t grease the wheels, the cart won’t go”. And boy, do you need the grease when living in this country…

A gift to a doctor is not just a gratitude, it’s the assurance that (s)he will pay enough attention to your health issues. Same with nurses, if you want them to change bed and clean urinals after your severely ill relative — you need to be extra “grateful” to them. The fact that all these people must do that for free because that is their direct job and they are getting paid for it is totally ignored. Same applies to universities and colleges — you can buy your spot there and\or keep paying teachers to pass exams. Same applies to the army — parents pay enormous buybacks to allow their kids to dodge the humiliating service in Russian army.

As BNE IntelliNews recently argued, corruption is the system in Russia, but it is a little more sophisticated than that. Putin is increasingly leaving the apolitical parts of the economy to the state apparatus to run, where market forces and the rule of law are supposed to apply, but he keeps control over those parts of the economy where the state makes and spends the most money, and where only his personal rules of the game apply. His state capitalism alternative is probably founded in a belief that the rule of law is insufficient to stop corruption in Russia – or at least it can’t be put in place fast enough for him to use it as a way of transforming the country.

Conclusion

The total “pay-to-win” culture in Russia leaves no question why the most powerful people in the country steal billions of budget money and people are somewhat okay with that: they do the same everyone else does, only on a bigger scale. Russia will likely not be a major player in the future if they do not invest in its people. However, the fact that the world is closing in on them may provide some motivation. Additionally, they only have a decade's worth of energy resources to sell.

The embedded corruption is a huge problem in Russia that not even Putin can fix. The slow pace of progress in the implementation of the national projects led Putin to chew out deputies on live TV and has fueled tension between the various branches of government. The Kremlin has put a lot of stock in the national projects, which is the state's leading investment program, but critics say not enough attention has been paid to improving the business environment, and state-led investment by itself will not be enough to spur growth. The program may increase Russia’s economic potential by 0.5 percent, the International Monetary Fund said. As I have said before, Putin is increasingly leaving the apolitical parts of the economy to the state apparatus to run, where market forces and the rule of law are supposed to apply, but he keeps control over those parts of the economy where the state makes and spends the most money, and where only his personal rules of the game apply. His state capitalism alternative is probably founded on a belief that the rule of law is insufficient to stop corruption in Russia – or at least it can’t be put in place fast enough for him to use it as a way of transforming the country.

Yeah, it’s pretty humorous to me to see Russians complain about foreign banks seizing their reserves and about sanctions seizing their properties/yachts when that pretty much happened by default mode against every single owner of a company that didn’t fully support Putin for the last three decades! Now we have billionaire oligarchs in Russia “murdering” their families and committing suicide by guns or knives, and business people don’t seem to have any faith in the justice system there, hmm! It seems like Putin’s Russia is his playpen of supporters and dead people who didn’t get the memo to only support the guy, aka don’t try to coup d’etat because the secret police have your cellphones bugged, idiots. Lol

American CIA operatives and the spies for centuries before them, acted mostly just like the Russians-Kremlin still does, with killings of foreign presidents and up & coming politicians before they get to power… so the only question in my mind is how long can Putin/Kremlin get away with it before the shitshow shows up on their own door in response to their shitshow in some other places, based on ******* on Ukraine and what I see happening — they have about 10yrs before the Kremlin basically implodes unless they get access to a lot more natural resources to sell off from the Russian motherland, you just can’t sustain bribery when your import/exports are negative for the whole country.

Arguably that is the plan that the exploitative West (aka bankers and rich elites who don’t care about the future and just want to rake in the wealth, not the average human that is) hatched long ago and they love Russia for its raw resources, nobody can stand up and say this is polluting our future, stop it… in Russia, you do that and you don’t wake up from a drinking party with “friends”, oh that guy who showed up that almost nobody knew might not have been a friend… another alcoholic stat, such a sorry state of humanity the newspaper reads. In Soviet Russia, you try to kill alcohol before alcohol kills you, never knowing how is a friend and who is a spy sent to kill you if you don’t play the party line. In modern Russia, well they’re bringing back the Soviet red flag to support the war, so it’s the same.

The Donbas region was all Putin really wanted for the Crimea land bridge, since it was useless without the river-diverted water channel to it. Crimea being a sorta resort in waiting for the rich Oligarchs lol. Of course that was cover for oil and gas resources being taken since when was there a war without oil/gas being a direct driver for the reason/justification for invading??? Since, like I said, the Russians are selling out their resources without any long term plan… think about their position in a decade, no internal cheap energy, so they become another dependent state on other countries’ energy resources… You think the massive country is poor now, wait until it is energy dependent on other countries and their import/export balance is a few hundred billion in the negative each year. They’ll be selling all of their gold minings just to pay the interest on their loans… like every other state dependent on the IMF/World Bank.

That is actually the war Russia is fighting against when it says the West is against them, and they always have been… why they dislike the West, because it always leads to the same lack of sovereignty, as they say. They want full sovereignty to be whoever they want and take whatever they want etc, be as rich as they want, etc. buy whatever they want (assuming they don’t just kill whoever has it if that is cheaper).

That’s also why this war happened to be the stupidest thing I’ve seen Russia do throughout their history of blunders and miscalculations. They had successfully deployed their banks into Europe and they were expanding ever more each year, making the possibility of a financial powerhouse and intellectual property focused Russia a thing… well, they could have become broadly diversified nation they need to become to support a population their size without becoming a failed state dependent on other states for energy and food.

I think Russia was castrated because they were beating the European banks… they took the bait at the Putin level to go steal “defenseless” Ukraine’s resources and Russia miscalculated why USA/EU would help defend Ukraine going forward. The trap was laid over the last 14yrs and Russia (cough Putin) didn’t think the west cared about Ukraine enough to back them in a war with Russia, the great savor of the sovereign world!? Or whatever they think they are.

Arguably, Russia could have become a powerhouse for international shipping (energy resources to transportation services), grain exports to processed food exports, car manufacturing from letting other car companies build their manufacturing there etc… and now they are castrated from those by the aspects of insurance and banking that they hadn’t gotten into yet.

It’s doubtful that they will now be integrated into the western banking system at any level of cooperation… the whole “New World Order” was based on allowing for the development of civilization without the border and destruction of cities and entire regions when someone wanted resources or a bit more empire, they were supposed to go after the resources through open markets… back when the bankers (state controlling oligarchs/rich ass idiots sitting on their estates wondering what they wanted to take or how to steal it if it wasn’t for sale) all agreed to stop trying to annihilate each other using other countries’ mercenary armies or their own citizens, if they had an army worth a damn.

Russia and China didn’t have the same intercontinental warfare experiences, they both seemed to walk away from the post war experience assuming it was the other “army” against them and not the multitude of countries and influences and markets that otoh forced Europeans to realize the single-state dynamics (and associated thinking perspectives) are too internal-or-external (nothing else can be considered, definitely not bad decisions by a dumbass leader) to be constructive for long term development… democracies are slight better in that politics that would be wars turn into political campaigns to win a dumbass election.

The best system I’m not sure what the best option is for the future… ultimately, and I mean this philosophically, its the option that gives the most energy to the individual who uses it for good but I have never been able to define that good in terms of the civilization and individual… they seem at odds with each other. Give more energy to individuals, independent of civilization that is, and it increases their odds of expanding more life but ultimately it has to be pollution free or it all is a short term gain that faults too soon in the future.

Now importing gas and oil from Russia is seen in Europe as supporting the invaders and their plans are to cut it off as soon as possible… Germany in particular will be hurt from a lack of cheap energy and Europe will have to speed up transitioning away from fossil fuels, but the truth is it was going to happen anyway and Russia saw that happening to them due to running out of oil completely in a decade and it decided to invade Ukraine to get more oil and gas reserves in the Donbas region… now they will likely have enough oil for multiple decades because they can’t sell it. Russia ends up being as dumb as the US in going after oil in their wars, while trying to ignore the other costs…

The human potential, losing population and anyone with a brain, cost for Russia is huge and will only grow as the sanctions bite into Russia over the next decade, the lasting effects on Moscow will be the death of a decent economy for the next president of Russia… which, by design, will result in Russia being less of a threat militarily and economically… no more Russia branch banks in Europe, no more oligarchs spending their billions either but its a win for Europe as their banks will have no competition from Russians who had finally figured out how to move into that sector after decades of always being at the bottom of the pack. Now they aren’t even in the pack, too many sanctions to even run their banks and if the rebuilding effort does strip the oligarchs of their assets, the banks are going to be effectively controlled by westerners once more.

So, a win for Russia in Ukraine covers up the wholesale asset stripping from Russia at fire-sale prices of everything Russians had acquired in Europe and their reserves in central banks too, which was the real aim of getting Russia to invade in the first place. Baiting them with a weak Ukraine — while the US/NATO trained their troops and dropped in enough antitank weapons to stop the invasion during the two months leading up to the invasion that the bluff was called on Russia to backdown due to their stupidity… which resulted in everyone who thought Russia wasn’t going to invade being turned into idiots in politics circles and those people had to give up their power now that they basically made their countries weak by relying on Russian oil/gas.

Someone had planned this out but the masters of this war are more likely western bankers, as they love wars for this asset stripping and the fire-sales. Once you stop thinking in terms of battlefields and deaths, there’s really only bankers and military industrials waiting to capitalize on the longer term “cold war” fronts.

Cough cough, Russia loses 3 decades of growth they had from the collapse of the USSR… and another 3 decades at minimum to their actions of invading another country.

Here’s to hoping Russia gets its act together before it is just another name for pissing away the future.]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=5 Sat, 10 Feb 2024 23:27:15 +0000 pitbull510]]> https://rooshvforum.org/showthread.php?tid=5