sliders1234
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User ID: 685
sliders1234
21d ago
Blocking $26 billion in aid to an extremely wealthy country that also has the wealthiest per capita diaspora community is now anti-semitism? When the country sending the money has a $1.5 trillion budget deficit?
I’m pro sending money to Ukraine because they are a poor country fighting out geopolitical enemies but I don’t understand sending money to a wealthy nation like Israel especially not when we are essentially funding both sides.
sliders1234
22d ago
Jews are just a white ethnicity now. Sacredness is gone.
What they do have is power.
sliders1234
27d ago
I had to look up Ray Kroc because there was something I was guessing that has a good culture war angle not discussed. Foundations and donations over the long term seem to always end up in the left camp.
Ray Kroc my intuition was telling me he would not be a leftist. To no one’s surprise a small business owners political philosophy is described in Wikipedia as
“A lifelong Republican, Kroc believed firmly in self-reliance and staunchly opposed government welfare and the New Deal. Kroc donated $255,000 to Richard Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972”
I guess it was actually his widowed wife’s estate that donated $200 million to NPR, but still seems there is a conservative can create a foundation and 30 years after their death the money ends up supporting everything they were opposed to.
sliders1234
28d ago
I’ve obviously read Wikipedia before.
Like I said which you ignored if Israel could off Iran the deal their offer the Saudis they would take it.
Sure every geopolitical game is wrapped in other games. And many Iranians don’t like Jews. But they are not the primary geopolitical aim of Iran. Jews also happen to be one of the main players in geopolitics in the region. It’s Russia/Iran versus Saudis/US/Israel. It doesn’t break down on any hard religious lines.
People saying the west told Ukraine not to take peace are doing a giant motte-and-Bailey. Personally think it is bad argumentative form to do that without including a lot of asterisks. To use a known motte-bailey without adding disclaimers. No doubt Putin did offer peace but I see no evidence it was anything less than the end of Ukranian nation/ethnicity (heavy Russian culturalization).
I feel like this should be a proper way to cite a motte-and-Bailey when using one to indicate you are only meaning the motte.
sliders1234
28d ago
He also indicated he would strong arm Russia into peace.
sliders1234
29d ago
Vietnam isn’t a great power. Always a vassal. This is just everything good just bend the knee to America and ignores that other countries have goals and the US interferes with them.
sliders1234
3d ago
On 1. Can a lawyer answer for me how that case has gone forward. It feels as though there are serious questions on the law in the case versus proving whether he did the acts in question.
Interpreting the law seems like a question for judges not juries. I guess my question is did Bragg provided the SOL run to the current judge and he agreed it’s a correct interpretation. Now the jury is deciding if he did the actual acts? If he’s convicted then does Trump challenge Bragg’s interpretation of the law to try and get the conviction thrown out. To me it would make more sense to challenge the legal interpretation of the law first (does SOL apply). Then do the jury trial.
Even if Trump is convicted now I feel like there are years of appeals. Potentially all the way to the SC to litigate whether SOL applies. Obviously not a lawyer but I would have thought he could have done a lot of challenges before the trial on the SOL issues. There is no reason to have a jury trial on whether he’s guilty if the underlying act he’s accused of either isn’t a crime or is protected by SOL.
sliders1234
4d ago
Is Tiberius Gracchus someone we are expected to know here as common knowledge? I’ve actually read Gibbons huge book and can’t place him a long time ago. I assume I am just expected to be smart enough to google and hit Wikipedia.
sliders1234
7d ago
That wouldn’t even be a correct interpretation of MMT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_monetary_theory
I think some butchered downstream version got all deficits are fake thing perhaps from the 2010’s where inflation was low so plausibly in their theory it was fake when inflation was below 2% and we had excess unemployment.
sliders1234
13d ago
The bill barely does anything to eliminate asylum.
I have repeated told you why I oppose the bill. But it summarizes to I believe the bill would increase immigration I do not want. You are fine to disagree with my logic. What is not fine is acting like I haven’t told you why I oppose it.
The bill lacks any teeth to limit immigration during a Democratic Presidency. America is also very bad at letting the legislature get a second crack at legislating. The Dems offered the GOP very little in this deal. Biden would claim victory if the bill passes, probably enforce the border during the election season, and once the election was over every loophole in the bill would be utilized by the left to flood the border again with immigrants.
I prefer to just boost Trumps chance at election which would allow us to actually fix the border.
If Dems gave us a real bill with teeth and banned the current asylum situation I would vote for the bill and give them the win, but they are not doing it.
sliders1234
20d ago
We do not know the West limits on escalation. We saw the US dither on aid until it felt like Ukraine was losing and Putin would eventually break thru and maybe take Kiev again.
If Ukranian lines got to a point of collapse the West would still have options. An imminent breakthrough does put things like Anduril tech as suggested in play, Poland entering with a superior fresh army, trad American AirPower. The west may not care much about Ukranian lives, but the closer it comes to threatening core Europe which Poland may be changes a lot of calculus.
The Biden administration has clearly been anti-winning the war but when we hit losing the war points things get done. It’s almost like inflation where 3% inflation the fed is suppose to hike and 1% inflation they are suppose to ease but the 2% line is keeping the war in no one winning position.
If Ukraine cared about their men’s lives they may be wise to lose a few battles at minimal causalities.
sliders1234
22d ago
It doesn’t seem very fair to call WN as “brainwashing” or “propaganda”. A lot of their ideas seem very truthful to me. It’s probably impractical to make the US Sweden today, but a society like that with low crime and a far larger percent of their population being able to function in the modern world and therefore a higher trust society and a larger capability for a welfare state feels truthy to me. It’s not like they are just making stuff which brainwashing or propaganda seems to apply to me.
It’s definitely an honest debate on whether the US should move in a white nationalist direction (limit immigration, promote western civ, meritocracy, expect minorities to live by white standards, etc). And very honest for Europe to turn anti-immigrant so they do not develop similar problems as the USA.
sliders1234
25d ago
I bet he runs in 2028. Perhaps it’s officially Donny Jr. But the old man is the one giving the stump speeches.
sliders1234
26d ago
Looks performative for now.
I’ve seen reports Iran gave the US flight paths for prior attacks to make sure everything was shot down.
The funny thing to me is there is some Air Force pilot somewhere whose highlight of his career is shooting down missiles the enemy gave him intel on just begging for someone to fuck up and give him a real mission like engaging some Iranian pilots and bombing a nuclear base.
sliders1234
27d ago
It’s not a laffer curve element. That’s for raising tax revenue alone. It includes other indirect costs like government interest costs.
https://www.thebigquestions.com/2011/04/18/the-man-who-cant-be-taxed/
This thought experiment was popular on econ blogosphere back then. It seems roughly right to me.
Now someone above mentioned they consume capital gains and quit working. The story gets a bit different then since higher cap gains taxes or full consumption would lead to him entering the labor market producing more goods and services for others to consume.
But in general without causing a change in behavior (rich consuming less, getting people to work more) there would be no net gain in government fiscal position.
Elon Musks for example can’t be taxed. If you took $100 billion from him it’s not changing his lifestyle. Just numbers on a bank account. He would still work and he consumes so little compared to his net worth consumption changes would be meaningless.
sliders1234
27d ago
A good econ piece for a good researcher would be to figure out why the costs of construction increased so much between 2019 to 2024. It seems like Texas could atleast print 3k sq ft at 500-600k new back then. With then older 3k sq ft homes going for 400k.
WFH killing construction costs doesn’t vibe right to me. Construction workers and lumberjacks aren’t the people afraid of COVID or the people who ever could do WFH. We have had general inflation probably totaling 20-25% but it still feels harder to build now.
sliders1234
29d ago
It is in the US. I am not sure it is true in the EU. The population boom in Africa and the population shrinkage makes that feel far more possible over there.
I think it’s far more of a real threat for them and one reason I think Europe might go hard right politics at some point.
sliders1234
29d ago
If you want to steelman it you would probably say Russia is thinking in centuries. Break Ukraine today and permenently put them in their sphere of influence. Then population rebounds and Ukraine maintains its historical place in the greater Slavic empire.
Of course that works in the 12th century but the world today feels less and less like land etc is going to matter.
sliders1234
2d ago
No.
The most important parts of our army have dropped out of the army. Masculine males often southern no longer feel they fit in with the military.
Racial resentment is higher now.
A significant portion of the right (and disproportionately our best fighting men) now have a great deal of fondness for Putin or Xi. A masculine Chinese or Russian ruler doesn’t sound that bad to them versus being an adrogenous they/them with no real purpose in society.
On Balkanization - moreso in Europe but you did not have to worry about balkanization when a Swede was a Swede and you didn’t invite in sub Saharan blacks or Syrian immigrants. In the U.S. I think we have fewer big cultural issues with our immigrants coming from the South but they aren’t going to be our sophisticated fighting class.
Blacks in America have never posed a political problem. They are lower class. They have never been a key part of our fighting class. If they rose up against white well violent repression would not be hard.
On the left wokeism and oppressor-oppressed has literally caused a not that small group of Americans to identify with Hamas and take the side of our enemies.
In short if wokeism came from the intelligence community it’s the worst idea they have ever had.
The lefts concern that Putin in 2016 infiltrated our social media to radicalize America against itself plus China weapononizing wokeism on Tic-Tock is far more logical. America is far more Balkanized today than it was in 2008.
sliders1234
5d ago
I remember that posts. But Trump appears to no longer be Gracchus. Trump seems to be rising from the dead. He survived the Jan 6 loss in popularity. Crushed the GOP nomination. I saw on Twitter today that everyone on Wall St assumes he’s won the election. I know the prediction markets say 50-50 but I don’t feel those vibes at all and prediction markets have some issues. If the elections goes as expected and he’s survived all of this that feels like he’s crossed the rubicon with all the memory of his own experience being Gracchus. I think we have to upgrade him to Caeser if he pulls off the election victory.
sliders1234
6d ago
Fairly sure you are technically wrong on “illegals immigrants”. Being intellectually honest when these debates were going on the asylum seekers are “legal”. They are allowed to claim asylum without proof but that status makes them legally allowed to be in the U.S.
But I too just call them illegals immigrants for dramatic effect. But the Biden administration has in fact found a way to make them “legal”. It’s embarrassing that illegal is technically wrong.
sliders1234
6d ago
The Biden administration themselves are the people who built the networks that tell immigrants about the asylum loophole. All those organization and NGOs organize this are Biden aligned groups.
sliders1234
7d ago
Trust to me seems like why the immigration bill failed. If you don’t trust the other party to implement legislation in good faith and all the power rests with the executive then winning the next election is far more important.
Yes this is a trivial problem to solve. We already have a massive auto insurance industry. Everything looks like self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers.
You either add it to the costs of the car as essentially pre-bought insurance for the purchaser (which should be cheaper than current policies) or work out some long-term payment plan on the buyer for yearly insurance (with some kind of termination in time after so many years etc).
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