tfowler11
1yr ago
China's economy is growing faster than the economy of the US, but the difference between the two has been decreasing as China's growth slows. I'd expect that slowing growth to continue for a number of reasons.
1 - The middle income trap and more generally the fact that catch-up growth is easier than innovative growth.
2 - Increasing centralized statist control in China, as opposed to the relaxation of such control in the past which allowed for tremendous growth (it is very unlikely to get anywhere near as bad as Mao, but it still been getting worse to a much lesser extent than that disaster).
3 - Demographics.
4 - The US and to a lesser extent a number of other rich countries becoming more hostile and less open to the US, while China itself is doing a bit of the same from the other side. Many countries are seeking to source outside of China. For things that don't need very low wages to be successful there is some attempt to bring the production home. For things that do, purchases will be more from places like Vietnam (and many other countries, I"m not saying Vietnam is going to grab everything from China). Not just from more hostility and less open trade to/from China but also as China's economy grows it will be less and less a low wage place.
5 - The extent of wealth and income in China that's related to a large real-estate bubble.
I still think that China's economy will pass the US's as the world's largest. But I don't see "at least twice as large" soon. Also China has a lot more people. That is the main reason it will become the largest economy. But OTOH that economy is spread among more people. As Chinese living standards improve (and if they don't that we'll create its own problems, but its very likely they will) a huge amount of national income will be needed to cover those living standards. 50% greater economy with over 4 times the people, doesn't give you 50% greater surplus to spend on military adventures or whatever.
tfowler11
1yr ago
those who value hunches more are more likely to “hold religious or paranormal beliefs,” AKA be right-coded
Traditional religion yes, but "paranormal beliefs"? Its possible my understanding about what "right-coded" means is incorrect but I don't think any belief in the paranormal or supernatural outside of traditional religions is right coded.
tfowler11
1yr ago
why do you think that building more will actually solve the problem with unaffordable housing? We have been adding lanes to highways since time immemorial (aka the 50s) and the congestion is still here.
But congestion isn't as bad as it would have been if we didn't add any lanes or build any new roads since the 1950s. Having to build more to stay in place doesn't imply that building more is a bad idea.
Similarly with housing, liberalizing housing rules, and so increasing building is extremely unlikely to result in cheap housing for everyone. But if it reduces prices a bit, or even just slows the increase in prices, its still useful.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Is there a way to view your overall "karma" here the way there is on Reddit. Yes "internet points" don't really matter, but still it can be mildly interesting to see.
tfowler11
1yr ago
"The Opposition Bloc - For Life (OPZZh) was lead by Yuriy Boyko and had 25 members in the Verkhovna Rada. In order to comply with sanctions against Russia after the invasion, OPZZh had to dissolve itself and immediately reform as a new party with a different funding structure. The party is now called Platform for Life and Peace (PLP) and has the same members in the Verkhovna Rada as before, including Yuriy Boyko. The opposition politicians all still have their seats, nobody was banned."
https://old.reddit.com/r/NAFO/comments/101c3rw/how_to_respond_to_claims_that_zelensky_banned/
Yes that's a source with a clear anti-Russian bias, but you ban parties with funding from Russia but allow the same people in a formally different organization to have the same ideas, same structure, same leadership, same people in office, ext, and don't block then from running for office, you still can have free and fair elections, and the ideas and groups that were "banned" still get to participate in that election.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I don't have a write-up on, or really even any knowledge about them. But often when a company isn't paying income tax its either because its not profitable or because it used to not be profitable and its using credit for it previous losses. Sometimes those losses are because of a huge amount of investment. So the company can have a lot of revenue and be expanding and look profitable on the surface if you don't have any of the financial data (maybe its a closely held private company that doesn't have to release the info, or maybe you just haven't look at the publicly available information).
I don't know if this applies to the motels your talking about. I had not heard of them until reading your post. I found a few articles about them one over 20 years old and some newer ones, but none that went in to details about their taxes. I'm not sure they are properly even considered a cartel, it seems to be different business owned by people from the same ethnic group from India, so there could be different answers for different companies. Presumably some of them do pay income tax.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I mean this happens, constantly, all the time. If you live in a desirable area you will get a veritable stream of calls, texts, e-mails trying to make you an offer on your land.
It's dreadfully annoying to filter.
Less annoying than if you can't say no to them.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Why are we letting financial illiterates sit on land that could be producing much greater value?
Because its their land, and properly their decision to sit on it or not. Not yours, not even "ours".
tfowler11
1yr ago
It built (or at least paid contractors to build) some of the early infrastructure, but mostly the infrastructure of the internet, the routers and other networking equipment, the fiber and wire connections, the wireless connections satellites, wifi devices, cell towers, microwave relays, etc., the servers, and the end user computers phones and other devices were built by private industry, and more for non-government use than by the government (and with much of even the government use being the government acting as a customer in the market).
Social Security and Medicare amount to a 15.3% tax if you're self-employed, though most people have about half that amount paid by their employer
Which may not really matter much in terms of the effective impact of the tax. If it costs more to employ you that puts downward pressure on you wage or salary. If a change was made now to put it all on the employee, its not like all employee compensation would automatically or even quickly change but in the longer run the amount going to employees might not change much.
A large chunk of most state transportation budgets, however, is fuel taxes
Fuel taxes are also used to cover non-road transportation, so it may be the case that that large chunk is actually in a sense over 100 percent. (Yes the actual road expenses only cost 100 percent of what they costs but the fuel tax could be more than 100 percent of that cost.)
tfowler11
1yr ago
Also, what are the arguments against LVT, besides low-effort "taxes are always bad and raising them is evil?"
That would arguably be low effort only because its a simple statement of principle, rather than a development of the argument to support the principle. If it is low effort so is the simple statement "land value taxes are a good idea because they aren't making more land".
Alex Jones just lost a lawsuit for defamation for claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the reward was $965bil (after a previous $50mil verdict so its over a billion) for defamation and emotional damages. Jones is a kook, and his claim was both false, and outrageous; but I'm not 100 percent sure he even should have lost. Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say. As far as the defamation part if he claimed particular people created the hoax then I can understand a loss of a defamation lawsuit, but if its just a general comment along the lines of "I think it's a hoax" I don't think he should face any legal penalty for it. And a billion dollars for spouting off some nonsense seems ridiculous to me.
I suspect that he will appeal (I understand he tried to appeal the previous case all the way up to the Supreme Court, who refused to accept the case), and that the case won't be overturned on appeal, but perhaps the damages will be reduced.
There was also some talk about harassment and death threats against people suing Jones. If it can be proven that Jones was behind it I suppose that could be ground for a lawsuit (and perhaps even criminal charges depending on the details), but that would be a separate issue than defamation or emotional distress over the original comment.
No FTL travel, does not imply not getting a vast a mount of resources from space. It doesn't even imply no expansion to other star systems (although obviously it makes such expansion slower and more difficult, and any colonies set up in other star systems will be more isolated and have to be more self-sufficient).
Also even without resources from space, you could have fusion, and other new sources or improved sources of energy.
And in terms of population, projections in to the future can and often have been wrong, but we may be facing more of a problem going forward from declining population (mostly from people choosing not to have children, or to have fewer children, or to put off having children until later and then not having as many child bearing years left), rather than overpopulation for the world. Its possible the world won't hit 10 billion. Its reasonably likely it won't hit 20bil. Such numbers should be quite supportable with technological advances and continued economic growth.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I guess you could hijack this, or if you have some more to say about it you could make your own post. Personally I have very little idea what caused it at this point. Could be a truck suicide bomber but everything happens so fast and its not a high speed camera. The truck was obviously blown up but its unclear whether its actually the source of the explosion.
One thing I'm interested in is how much capacity they can get out of the bridges (road and rail) and how long it takes them to do it. Right now they seem to have one lane, light vehicles only, for the road bridge. Rail bridge is down. Russia is claiming they can have it up pretty quickly. We'll see. It may be possible if you ignore normal safety margins, and perhaps send fewer and less heavily loaded trains over it. But even that would have an impact on Russian logistics in the southern front. Worst case and the damage is less then it seems and they get it fully running, it would still have caused some temporary problems for them. Best case the rail side is down for a long time (the rail side is more important to war logistics), and the road side can't handle heavy trucks for a long time. That would have a serious impact.
You cannot possibly confuse a destroyer for a Liberty cargo ship unless you have no idea what ships look like whatsoever.
When your calmly looking at them with no thought of risk or pressure for immediate action, its rather unlikely. In war under certain circumstances is quite possible. Also that isn't even necessarily what happened. The person actually seeing the ship could report it as an enemy ship, and then others could think it was a destroyer.
Egypt might not have owned any liberty ships but they did own small merchant ships and likely enough converted merchants ships or ships similar enough that a flyby might not notice the difference.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The US pushing European powers to handle more of the defense of Europe long precedes Trump as president. Trump just increased (but didn't create) the public statement of the idea.
tfowler11
1yr ago
They didn't thoroughly control politics even at the time. And assuming the counterfactual that they did, such control rarely lasts, esp. in cases that aren't openly obvious puppet states. Control for a moment, is not control forever. The US didn't run the polling places in Ukraine, didn't set the election rules, didn't count the votes, etc. Once someone was elected, US opinion had some influence, because Ukraine seriously wanted support. But that's a separate issue than the elections.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Actually you do. A coup existing in the past doesn't inherently make a latter election not free and fair. It could easily create conditions to have an election that is neither, (or to not have any elections at all) but doesn't by itself or automatically make subsequent elections not free or fair.
Also "a foreign backed coup" isn't a very accurate description of what happened in the first place.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Ukraine had several free and fair elections post Maidan, and those elections actually determined who got to run the government.
tfowler11
1yr ago
NATO is here to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down
That might have made some sense in the 50s with memories of WWII fresh. Its thoroughly obsolete now when many of Germany's partners, including the US, would want Germany to do more in terms of building up its defense capabilities not less.
tfowler11
1yr ago
That would explain the first problem, I still have an issue with the size of the explosion as well.
OTOH an explosion of that size was hardly needed for sabotage if someone taking it out had direct access to the pipeline they could have cut it open or used a fairly small shaped charge. Even an unshaped charge wouldn't really need to be that big.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Sure it can. In fact there is a good chance it was. Having no liberty ship in service really doesn't matter. The fog and friction of war is enough to cover such mistakes. Had it been a huge and highly distinctive ship like a carrier or battleship then you would have a better point (of course then it would have been much better defended).
Confusion and mistakes are rampant in war. Iraq didn't have any M1 tanks, Warrior armored vehicles, Scorpions, Panavia Tornadoes, Challenger 2s, F/A-18 Hornets, Bradleys, M113s, or Spartans, yet all of those were taken out in either the Gulf War or the 2003 Iraq war, despite it all being forces that train with each other (US taking out US weapons systems, US taking out British weapon systems, and the UK taking out their own equipment). That's on the ground or the air, not the sea, but the basic ideas is the same and there is nothing about a Liberty Ship that screams "US war ship" or "couldn't possibly be Egyptian". A Liberty ship is just an old (even at the time it was 22 years old), small (by modern standards) that have been owned by numerous countries and companies around the world.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Some sort of argument can be made about the US. I don't think its as strong as the people normally making the argument would claim, but on respecting sovereignty it isn't nonsense, there is a real argument there. Less so on the democracy question.
Ukraine? Maybe its just because they haven't had a lot of time or a lot of power as an independent country but they haven't done much in the way of infringing on anyone's sovereignty. As for democracy they are far more democratic than Russia, corrupt maybe but a solid democracy, at least until after they were invaded and large sections of their country occupied by a foreign power (when they outlawed pro-Russian parties as traitorous)
tfowler11
1yr ago
The Soviets talked about joining NATO as early as around the time of its foundation. Their idea though was to either exclude the US from NATO or to require unanimous agreement for any NATO action, either way gutting NATO.
Putin did indeed at one point talk about joining NATO. He asked when they would be invited to NATO. Was told that it didn't work that way that countries applied to join. Then Putin said "Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
In addition to not wanting to follow the process, I'm not sure Russia would really want to be in an alliance where another country was the dominate member (Russia would be 2nd in population, and military strength, 3rd in PPP GDP, and 7th in nominal GDP).
And I'm not so sure it would have qualified for membership -
While there is no membership checklist for interested nations, NATO has made clear that candidates for membership must meet the following criteria. Interested nations must:
Uphold democracy, including tolerance for diversity;
Be progressing toward a market economy;
Have their military forces under firm civilian control;
Be good neighbors and respect the sovereignty of other nations; and
Work toward interoperability with NATO forces.
https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_970815members.html
The first and 2nd to last points have been questionable at best for years and has become more so lately. And I'm not sure Russian leadership would care to change the way their military operates to fit with the last point.
Its greater then their headline spending numbers. If you adjust for purchasing power there is even a bigger difference then their official numbers. But its still less than the US's spending (although something like 85 or 90 percent instead of a much smaller fraction. Perhaps the numbers should be adjusted by a bit less than purchasing power parity (the difference between costs for high tech, or even more mundane military items isn't likely to be the same as it is for civilian production, and at least for the more advanced items is likely to be less), but even then you still get well over half, and China's spending is growing faster, and at least at the moment (and probably at least for the next couple of decades) any conflict would likely happen nearer to China, where China has almost all its forces while American forces are spread across the world with the largest portion in the relatively distant North America.
The main counterbalancing advantages for the US are
1 - The US has more built up capability from previous spending. (But military equipment is a depreciating asset, not a productive investment so the importance of this declines over time).
2 - The US is more likely to have allies on its side.
3 - The US has some geographical advantages. China has to get past potentially hostile countries in the first (and depending on the scenario 2nd) island chains. Also its easier to interdict shipping to China (at least with a distant blockade, a close blockade would be too costly) than it is to the US.
4 - (This one is weaker and less certain) China would probably be seen as the aggressor and get a more hostile world reaction then the US would. The US isn't going to invade China, or just start lobbing missiles at if for the lols. A war with China would most likely start over a Chinese attack of Taiwan, and the other scenarios mostly involve China grabbing disputed territory as well. If China doesn't make such an attack there won't be any war.
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