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Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma Says the US Wasted Trillions on Warfare Instead of Investing in Infrastructure (cnbc.com)
Alibaba founder Jack Ma fired a shot at the United States in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. An anonymous reader shares a report: Ma was asked by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin about the U.S. economy in relation to China, since President-elect Donald Trump has been talking about imposing new tariffs on Chinese imports. Ma says blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided. If America is looking to blame anyone, Ma said, it should blame itself. "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way." He said the U.S. has wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home.
To be sure, Ma is not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland. Still, Ma said this was the reason America's economic growth had weakened, not China's supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a "wonderful" and "perfect" strategy. "The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization," Ma said. "The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions -- the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. ... But where did the money go?"
To be sure, Ma is not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland. Still, Ma said this was the reason America's economic growth had weakened, not China's supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a "wonderful" and "perfect" strategy. "The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization," Ma said. "The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions -- the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. ... But where did the money go?"
The US could cut its defense budget in half and nothing would change. The Russians would still have invaded and kept Crimea. The Chinese would still not have invaded Taiwan. Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq would be pretty much in the same state.
Well, he's right... We've been complaining here about inequality and how trickle-down economics don't work, and that's exactly what he's saying. It's not news though. The billionaires took control of politics and have been accumulating both money and power, and have been lying and getting votes from the exact people that would benefit most from redistribution. But that's okay... we prefer to believe we all have a chance at the American Dream, rather than have anything that resembles socialism.
The tariffs aren't to try and fix any economic problems for the US. They are to punish China for their unfair practices such as impeding imports in various ways, government subsidizing production of goods at a loss, and manipulating their currency. Reducing the US defense spending would correct those imbalances with China exactly how?
Better known as 318230.
...and this matters because...
While I expect his statement is meant as a Pro-China anti-US rant probably to rial up the Chinese citizens to help them deal with the economic hardships from the opposed restriction to their trade. Also would want the US to lower its military presence so China would have greater influence.
However he isn't wrong, the US has been complacent in investing into itself. Defecate spending isn't a bad thing, if the money is being put into US services that that will pay for it self later on. However our taxes go mostly to the Military first, and what is left will get the crumbs. This creates a lot of holes in our safety net. This will prevent people from trying to take a risk and start a new business, get up and move to a different state or city to get a new job, being afraid to switch jobs even ones you hate, because you need the medical insurance.
The conservative faction of the US calls such services as un-american, because that is what the Communist do. However a Democratic Republic with a Capitalist economy can have these support services as well too. The Communist also drink Vodka, so do Capitalist.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It might just be possible to be a billionaire in the US without being an evil psychopath. Maybe. But not in China, where you must be complicit in the atrocities of its government in order to succeed in any noteworthy way.
But of course China wants us to have a weaker military. Water is wet, the Pope shits in the woods, and China wants the possible military opponent with the strongest military to be weaker. What were the odds? Taiwan isn't going to conquer itself, after all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've said it on many occasions, too!
If all that money had been invested in energy research or something the USA could dominate the world by owning/running their power grids instead of by pointing missiles at people and making threats.
They'd also have almost-free electricity for manufacturing, enabling all sorts of fancy industrial processes and dominating the world economy by exporting cheap goods.
But noooooo...
No sig today...
Into defense contracts that go to the rich, and provide no defense.
Also, not communism. It is a Dictatorship. Also, our country is a plutocracy, regardless of the press and teachings. How is that any better.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided
You mean besides state sponsored IP theft, currency manipulation, dumping practices, and disregarding human & environmental welfare to compete on price?
He's not wrong about the war part. Bush, Cheney, and their cronies emptied the country's coffers to enrich a handful of millionaire and billionaires in the military industrial complex with their bullshit wars. What they did is inexcusable, especially when you consider the opportunity cost of not investing that vast sum of money elsewhere (ex infrastructure, education, healthcare, research, alternative energy, ect.). Think of what we could have if that money was spent productively, like finding cures for diseases (much more likely to hurt you than a terrorist) or aerospace, or any number of other things, and the US needs to get it's shit together when it comes to planning for the future. But China isn't playing entirely fair either.
he American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization,
When Joe Schmoe's job disappeared, he didn't see a gain, it was so a millionaire could have even more. It's not hard to understand why some people are unhappy.
Jack Ma is Chinese for Ric Romero.
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Yeah, an evil Chicom.
Corporatism != Free Market
That's pretty fucking rich coming from a country that's pouring billions of dollars into building artificial islands in the South China Sea, a brand-new war fleet and expensive ballistic missiles, all of which are designed for the sole and explicit purpose of ejecting the United States from SE Asia by force of arms. To say nothing of blowing tens of billions on the "Belt and Road" initiative, which was intended to spread Chinese influence and control across the region, but has ended up being a colossal waste of money, just like skeptics warned. And this shithead's going to sass us for "wasting money?" Fuck him.
Besides, he knows damn well where the money from globalization went - straight into the pockets of the huge multinational corporations that directly benefited from labor outsourcing, who've either sat on it or re-invested it in expanding factories overseas to employ more foreign workers and create more cheap product - everything and anything butb injecting it into the US economy. We know why our economy stagnated - worker wages flatlining (considering inflation, actual falling) while the globalizing corporations profits skyrocketed. And some of that money went into the pockets of Reps and Senators on both sides of the aisle to keep them lecturing those silly rube voters on why globalism "works."
Fuck Jack Ma, and fuck the Chicoms that brung'im.
I agree with you 100%. Why are you posting AC? With that much truth, you should put your name on it.
If we HAVE to spend money on military vehicle, how about designing vehicles that can be fossil fuel free. How many of our men and women are blown to bits each year from driving a tanker truck full of highly explosive fuel?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The military is effectively just burying money (in the backyards of military industrial complex execs). During the cold war we got micro computers and the internet out of it. Today we don't get much of anything, it would be nice to be dumping that cash into the backyards of construction execs, at least we would have non-crumbling bridges and high speed rail.
Sure, but how much military strength is enough?
Of course this is like asking a billionaire how much wealth is enough. There is never enough!
Isn't it ironic that the supposedly anti-tax party is also the one that supports an expensive military?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
He'll revive the clean coal industry and crush the rest of the industrialized world!
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(please don't make me explain sarcasm)
What HAVE we accomplished over there?
Killed over 10 million people - I'm looking at the whole of Asia, optionally with Africa and South America thrown in - since 1945. That's about 2-3 Holocausts, depending on who's counting.
Oh, and overthrown the governments of a few dozen nations, and destroyed their infrastructure.
If you can't make your own people rich, prosperous and happy, why not make everyone else poor, desperate and miserable? (Those who aren't dead).
It's much easier. And, as some people see it, more fun.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization"
Billions, not millions.
"Where did it go?
To officers and shareholders of the corporations, i.e. the "elites".
Some of it dribbled down to the workers in China and Vietnam in the form of slave wages, but not all that much. None of it went to American workers, because they're not using American workers. But hey no problem, just get 'em on food stamps and tell them to live in section 8 housing. Who needs a middle class lifestyle?
But it's gonna backfire on them sooner or later. I foresee a socialist revolution in the making, led by the likes of Ocasio-Cortez. Well not by her specifically, I don't think she has the ruthlessness or the balls to become the next Lenin. But someone in her orbit who does have what it takes to be a good dictator and who isn't afraid of executing a few thousand members of the opposition.
Do I want to see such a thing happen? No, not really. Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela etc. weren't exactly pleasant places to live. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, the current rulers of USA (a.k.a. the Deep State) are such despicable characters, it would feel really good to see their billions wiped out and the high and mighty former CEOs and directors and senators become penniless, and then summarily executed 1918 style.
That must be a typo.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please do the same criticism of your country's military.
Just try it. See what happens.
My guess is you will find out what an internment camp looks like. That is communism for you. Tyrannical and not open to questioning.
I am being nice. Personally I would rather fight every fucking commie on the planet for the mass murder and mayhem they have created, resulting in the US having to spend such sums.
Being that countries are political entities not geographic ones your entire assertion is complete bullshit.
I think wealth and income inequality is a bigger problem than military spending.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were problematic in many ways, but for better or worse, the US has been the main guarantor of freedom of the seas and trade and a lot of the global economy wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for US power projection. So a lot of that military spending has basically been enabling the global commerce that China depends on.
My guess is if you had to zero-sum swap parts of the economy, I'd be inclined to have looked at taxation strategies that went after corporate profits and the windfalls the very wealthy have achieved vs. axing the military budget.
China doesn’t need any carriers, military airplanes, or build artificial islands in South China Sea. They totally could use that money to build more bridges, skyscrapers and maybe fix the roads between Tianjin and Beijing. Or maybe a few more nuclear plants.
50% have no wealth now! Using data from Congressional Budget Office study and doing a polynomial regression shows who got rich and who did not.
He's absolutely right. We've spent trillions of dollars destroying and then rebuilding infrastructure for the Taliban and other terrorist organizations while allowing our own to rot.
Half right, half absolutely wrong.
The US government has spent at least $3 trillion since 2001 destroying infrastructure in Asia and Africa.
But it hasn't rebuilt a single thing. Even in Raqqa, which it bombed relentlessly for months, there are still tens of thousands of corpses rotting under the ruins.
See much rebuilding here?
http://a.abcnews.com/images/In...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"instead of feeding graft and cronies." FTFY.
Meh. Come back when China's average person is as well off as a the US's average person. As a middle class member I'd rather be anywhere in the US than anywhere else in the world from an economic standpoint.
You'd like to live in San Francisco, for instance?
https://media.boingboing.net/w...
https://www.gospelherald.com/d...
Or maybe in a district with open pools of raw sewage?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/41857...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Let's face it: our military is conservative welfare. If you live in a small town or rural area, the only job opportunity for many young men is the military.
Table-ized A.I.
Both countries are making the same mistake. Military one-upmanship is a wanker size contest driven by the male ego.
Table-ized A.I.
Is this a *shoot the messenger* moment?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What a dipshit
Logical fallacy: argumentum ad hominem.
The fact that he is a dipshit does not change the validity of his argument. An assertion should be judged on its merits, not on the character of the advocate.
America is spending a trillion dollars on a new manned fighter as we enter an age that will almost certainly be dominated by drones.
America is spending $1.2 trillion on nuclear modernization despite already having 10 times the nuke capability of China.
Prior to WW2, America spent little on the peacetime military. Instead, we had to "gear up" for each war. After WW2, we went to permanently high spending.
Let's look at the "before" and "after" scorecard:
Before:
1776 - Won - American Revolution
1812 - Tie - War of 1812
1847 - Won - Mexican War
1861 - Won - Civil War
1898 - Won - Spanish-American War
1914 - Won - WW1
1941 - Won - WW2
After:
1950 - Tie - Korean War
1964 - Lost - Vietnam
1982 - Lost - Lebanon intervention
1991 - Thought we won, but eventually lost - Iraq
1992 - Lost - Somalia
2003 - Lost - Iraq
2001 - Lost - Afghanistan
So is "eternal vigilance" actually working? I don't think so, and the evidence suggests that the main effect of a "always ready" military is that it makes it really easy to jump into stupid wars without clear goals or strategies.
We re losing jobs because China and other countries tolerate working conditions, environmental transgressions, and things that would never fly in the US.
You CANNOT pick up a Chinese steel plant, drop it in Ohio, and operate it at the same level of profit as you can in China, even taking into account the wages and cost of materials. THAT is why US manufacturers go there.
Some people say we have outsourced jobs. What we really outsourced was the pollution and working conditions that would never be tolerated in the U.S.
Which begs the question: If it's not OK to manufacture things in the US under these conditions, then why is it OK to do so in China? If we import these items, are we not even a little bit morally responsible for the misery and pollution inflicted while creating these things?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
States STILL have statutes banning someone who doesn't believe in god (not gods, either) is not allowed a state position of authority.
That China doesn't have to invest in much of their own Warfare tech because they steal it from everyone else.
"If our defense budget was cut in half, which freedoms would I lose?"
You would gain freedom, because there would be more money for taking care of citizens.
The "Defense" of the U.S. is poorly managed. Highly qualified people don't want to work helping the military kill people and destroy property.
800 military bases in more than 70 countries: Where in the World Is the U.S. Military?
Quote:
"Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad -- from giant "Little Americas" to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined."
Jack Ma isn't the first person to point this out and certainly won't be the last. For example, Thomas Friedman has been saying this for years. Friedman questioned the wisdom of pouring money into countries that will NEVER amount to anything. Afghanistan will always be a backwards, tribal s**thole country riven by warlords and violence. Iraq has a tiny sliver of potential to be more than just another oil barrel nation, but it's too rife with corruption and sectarian grudges to ever realize that potential. Friedman pointed out that the amount of money pissed away on our adventures in the middle-east and central Asia could buy every American a 4-year college degree and still have money left over for infrastructure development and other societal ills. What really saddens me is that we're 17 years into this "Forever War," and every year the memory of living in a nation at peace fades just a little bit more.
Discretionary is 600 billion. But non discretionary and R&D for military purposes, along with the military intelligence forces and spy satellites add nearly 1 trillion. Sure, you ALSO use some of the things from that other trillion elsewhere, but it is sourced based on the military use of it.
Chinese Wasted Trillions on Authoritarianism
...now let me be sure my Tor was working correctly throughout the posting of this comment...
Calling Captain Obvious.
Almost certainly true but then, it is still stronger than any two opponents combined and has an arsenal that can literally wipe any nation from the globe in a span of minutes if we got pissed off enough. How much stronger does it need to be?
Medicaid pretty much requires you to be destitute. If you make $8/hr for 30/week you're not getting it. Source: Have friends & family that depended on it to survive major illnesses.
SNAP has been cut back for decades. WIC too.
The top brackets of our Progressive Income tax have been slashed non-stop for 40 years. Laws were put in place to make it hard to raise them again but easy to cut them, resulting in a "ratcheted" effect where they go down but never up. Government are then forced to implement regressive taxes like the "Netflix" and "Soda" taxes or just plain more sales tax because those aren't covered by the laws.
Good luck getting on SSI Disability. I've got a buddy who's been in a wheel chair his entire life and has massive hearing loss (no call center work for him) and he fights tooth and to get what little he can. Only reason he's not homeless is friends and family keep pitching in.
I could go on. We started slashing the safety net with Reagan. Nobody noticed because there were two massive economic bubbles in a row (Internet and Housing). Those bubbles are over and there's nothing on the horizon, folks are feeling it now. That's how we got a guy like Trump, the lower working class is looking for answers (well, their parents mostly, based on the polls of who voted for him and why). Thing is, we've danced this Charleston before: bad economy, demagogue, desperate working class.... It doesn't end well.
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The funny thing is, you aren't showing that military intervention doesn't work - you're showing that one US political party has consistently used the political process to sabotage military action, so that people like you could call it a "failure".
For example: Vietnam wasn't lost militarily. North Vietnam signed a treaty with the US, where the US agreed to withdraw. Afterwards, North Vietnam broke the treaty and re-invaded South Vietnam. Despite the US treaty obligations to protect our ally, and to sell them weapons and equipment, the US Congress voted NOT to authorize any of that.
So the US was not involved in the second North-South Vietnamese War, which resulted in the conquest of South Vietnam.
Another example: Somalia was never anything to win or lose. It was a UN guided mission to guard food distribution. That was highly successful, until the politicians got bored and pulled out again. There was no attempt to conquer, or even dominate, the nation. Much like Lebanon, it was a President that wanted to look decisive and provide a distraction for a short while, the bail when it wasn't working anymore.
Incidentally, why didn't you mention Panama, or Grenada, or Yugoslavia, or Libya, or Yemen, or Mali, or Sudan, or the Congo, or Colombia, or any of the dozens of other places the US has deployed troops since 1950?
Since the USA basically just prints money, how it is spent is irrelevant. The system is about as close to infinite money & power as is physically possible.
Not if you think about it. They are anti-tax because they don't want the government to take their money, the only valid duty they see the government as having is keeping other people from taking their money. Hence, the military and police are to keep people from stealing from them and every other thing the government does IS stealing from them.
The wealthy only view the meritocracy concept as a way to seem fair. They don't actually want it to be fair, they want to retain everything they have and if anything get more. In an actual meritocracy they'd have to compete on a level playing field and lose. So in their minds they equate wealth to merit and thus automatically identify those who already have the wealth (which happily includes themselves) as those with merit. Isn't it glorious? Why on earth would you pay for healthcare and education for the children of others... that only raises the chance of them outperforming relative to you and your own children. To them such a thing is paying to do something counter to your own interest.
That is a perfectly reasonable philosophy for the wealthy to have. It just baffles the shit out me why everyone out who outnumbers them a million to one puts up with it. We could exercise emminent domain on the property of the top 0.01% and put a third of the wealth in this country back into the hands of the people without impacting any significant portion of our population and we could do it leaving them enough to never have to work for the rest of their lives. But that is evil, in the meantime we'll steal the property of a poor person and pay them pennies on the dollar to build a road and a stop light to accommodate building a new franchise. A franchise that will pay its staff below the poverty level.
Did you just try to suggest that piracy is free trade?
Saddam Hussein was someone you put into place in the first place you batshit idiot
So what you are saying, is that if you make a terrible mistake you should never try to rectify it...
HMM.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good propaganda uses truth and fact to obscure and confuse. It should be taken with a grain of salt because what he is talking about is entirely in his and China's benefit. Weaker US military means less intervention for Chinese territorial claims and resources. Job outsourcing corners various manufacturing industries in China who are willing to undercut everyone with poor environment and worker protections.
It's easy to criticize the US because even Americans will criticize the US right a long with you.
For the most part I think he is wrong. I think it should be obvious why he is wrong on the internet talking about military spending. Not all military dollars are for bullets.
A large chunk of the US GDP gets turned into smoking craters in the middle east, or gets locked in Scrooge McDuck vaults in Switzerland.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Part of that warfare was necessary. Basically, AQ in Afghanistan, and maybe ISIS. Had W not invaded Iraq, I tend to believe that the middle east would not be so loony right now. But yes, we continue to ignore IKE's advice.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's a pretty funny list. Hard to believe there were at least three dipshits who believed it and nodded you up.
You Bred Raptors?
Chinese national says china is completely blameless and the US has to fix its 'distribution policies'. Spoken like a true communist shill. How about the part where china vastly underpays its workers and treats them like slaves?
If we hadn't fought many of those wars, we'd've fought others instead, likely on our own soil, and we'd likely be speaking russian or mandarin today.
No fucking thanks.
Am I the only one that read this as welfare?
I'm as conservative as they come, but he's right.. Wasting money on bombs..... Like, if some country is an actual threat, I'm all for bombing them to dust, but that's not the case in almost all of our recent wars....
Isn't it ironic that the supposedly anti-tax party is also the one that supports an expensive military?
No, it's not ironic, because they prioritize (government) military power over (citizen) economic power.
They might not be honest about their priorities, but it's hardly as though they hiding them.
Also, not communism. It is a Dictatorship.
Why not both? Stalin was certainly a dictator. The USSR was certainly communism.
Although honestly, after they ditched the centrally planned economy tenet of communism they're like commie-lite. With the poohbear serving emperor for life and putting an end to any party member having a vote.... I'm not sure what aspect is left wearing the color red. I guess their close ties and control over their corporations. Just give that some time though. I mean, technically, nobody owns land over there. They just rent from the state. Which just sounds like property tax with extra steps.
Also, our country is a plutocracy,
Heeeey, one of the (very few) silver linings to the latest election is showing that it DOESN'T matter who spends more money. People still control the vote. Hilary out spent him by far and still ended up losing. It's not JUST money. But it's mostly money.
I'd say we're more of a corporcracy, rule by corporations. Partly because any new legislation essentially has to be bartered through with (or comes directly from) the businesses they're trying to regulate and partly because it meshes with the idea that we're stepping into a bad cyberpunk novel.
That China icon for stories is getting old, can I suggest a new one that looks something like this:
https://img.thedailybeast.com/... (source TDB)
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
...from a guy whose country is literally building massive empty cities.
Infrastructure sans people.
https://www.afr.com/news/world...
The only thing creepier is a friend of mine in the military that said there is some speculation that these empty cities could be relocation destinations for refugees from other cities in the event of war...which would then make one wonder what does China expect?
-Styopa
the US economy did grow, maybe not as much as it should. But it wasn't all because of the money wasted on war. A lot of the lack of growth can be blame on inequality.
>"Isn't it ironic that the supposedly anti-tax party is also the one that supports an expensive military?"
You are not basing this on ACTUAL history, just stereotypes. I think you will find that Democrats are and have been just as adept and eager to spend on military. And spend and spend and spend.
This has nothing to do with party. It has to do with a two-party system that supports CRONY capitalism. Inotherwords- corruption, kickbacks, bribes, favors, and other UN democratic workings. It is not a fault of capitalism but of government. It is a symptom of a government that is too big, too centralized (non-State), too powerful, not accountable enough to the people, and has access to too much money, while ignoring the rules the Constitution set in place about the limits of the government, especially the Fed.
I believe there are two things necessary to start to fix it- instant runoff voting so other parties can exist to compete with the two main-stream ones, and a Constitutional amendment to force a balanced budget. People need the pain of less services, more taxes, or BOTH to snap them into forcing the government to treat OUR money like we would treat it.
Spying on all other nations globally. From space and via computer networks.
Detecting nuclear testing. From space and via globally networks.
Detecting nuclear weapons launch. From space and via globally networks.
Having camps, forts, ports and bases all over the USA and around the "free" world.
Supporting freedom and democracy everywhere for decades. Any political groups that supported the USA got free "funds".
Hunting down criminals everywhere all the time.
Hunting down other nations spies everywhere all the time.
Paying in full for other nations random people to live, get education and health care in the USA.
Illegal migrants using city and state gov services meant for a low number of US citizens.
The US budget faces growing mil spending demands. State and city virtue signalling to show how politically correct they are to look after illegal migrants.
An education system that cant test and sort the best students on merit to ensure only the best of every generation gets more education.
Non academic considerations ensure the education system has to keep on funding a lot of students who will not and cant study.
Allowing in more and more random refugees over the years that then need more support in the USA.
While US citizens in the USA get fewer services.
Due to all that political spending and mil spending the US had to let a lot of city, state and federal spending go.
Roads, bridges, charity health care for US citizens all needed better support and regulation.
The trick few other nations understand is the freedom the USA offers allows all its citizens to fail, win, make money, keep their own money and be the best.
Freedom is the key to why the USA is winning and the best.
Not a Communist party banning words, history, art, religion, bears and all images of protests.
Not a French government putting more taxes on an emerging and growing tech sector.
Not a German government watching how it citizens use words and comment on history and politics online.
Freedom of speech and freedom after speech allows the USA to win every time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Aubrey de gray (SENS, Mprize project) said (about 10 years ago) that 1 billion R&D would be needed to develop good therapies (using biotechnology and nanotechnology) to get a good handle on controlling and reversing aging.....he figures that we are now 5 years away from the first therapeutic application of this actually hapenning (see fightaging.org).....these wars in the Middle East (since 9-11) have done so much destruction and drained away many thousands of billions (4,500 X 1000,000,000 DOLLARS) that a very tiny fraction of that could have given us a working life extension tech by now.......youâ(TM)re going to need this tech to repay all those student loans off, not to mention hoe long itâ(TM)s going to take to take on a mortgage to eventually buy an apartment or small house!!!! Also, a lot of high tech companies tend to dump you once you as soon as you reach your early 40â(TM)s (even way back in 1974, it was a major problem for electrical engineers at certain companies), !!
I'd mod you up if I hadn't already responded to this thread. Well said sir.
The US should have the best infrastructure in the world bar none.
Congratz on perpetual war.
China is communist in name only. It's a one party dictatorship market-ish economy with uncontrolled capitalism except by the state.
Uh, yes they do. Even the US, probably the wort example in the lot, has been on a steady downtrend of spending since 1954.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
France is the 3rd largest nuclear power, so 2nd largest 1st world nation on that front and their military spending as percent of GDP has been heading down since 1960 too.
https://data.worldbank.org/ind...
So, yeah, you're wrong on the first point. What follows is reasoning from incorrect data.
They want their talking points back.
Nope. It's aliens.
The only thing that's gonna make us all stop wanting to fuck the other guy is the desire fuck the other planet instead.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Sure, but how much military strength is enough?
A part of me says slightly more than the next biggest military on Earth. The other part of me says big enough to fight off a type II alien civilization.
nm
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
You forgot "Won - the Cold War". Of which Korea and Vietnam were minor parts.
Add "Won - the first Iraq War" and the US is undefeated in wars since WW2, but has a poor record at "nation building".
"Gone will be the manufacturing jobs, the service industry jobs, and eventually the farming jobs"
Actually the big push is toward technology with technology being the primary target of automation. You don't expend your resources eliminating $12/hr jobs when you can eliminate thousands of $65-200k+ jobs.
Roman Empire Trick;
Bread and Circuses: bribe the population with free bread and distract them with circuses whilst the rulers do whatever they want.
Casteism
Actually no, the USSR wasn't certainly communist. Their official stance was that they were merely socialist with the communism as a long-term goal.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
As a resident of the UK I know full well the awful mismanagement and short-sightedness of government. Any small surplus in the balance sheet is immediately used for tax break bribes to win the next election, as just one example. Would help if politicians looked beyond the next election when planning.
... medicating the US population to calm their "commies are coming" anxiety.
sigo ergo sum
We also support roads and lighthouses, what's your point?
Sure, but how much military strength is too little? Of course, this is like asking an anorexic how much weight is too little. There is always too much!
Isn't it ironic that the supposedly pro-government party is also the one that opposes an expensive military?
Man, did you actually think you said something meaningful? Folly.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sure, but how much military strength is enough?
Of course this is like asking a billionaire how much wealth is enough. There is never enough!
Isn't it ironic that the supposedly anti-tax party is also the one that supports an expensive military?
You tell me, one US carrier task force and a couple of marine divisions have enough firepower to defeat something like 80-90% of the armies on earth.
China's infrastructure strategy in recent years -- and apparently going forward -- is to make enormous loans to third-world countries in Africa and Southeast Asia for Chinese companies to build giant infrastructure projects like harbors and high-speed railways. They know that the country will never be able to repay the loans, and wait until they start to come due to squeeze privileges out of the defaulting government. This is how they got an eternal lease on the new harbor facilities in Malaysia that Chinese companies built there. Similar things are going on in Africa. It's all a sort of back-door colonialism cloaked in altruism, at least in the beginning. It's also a great way to establish a foothold in foreign countries for commercial and military activities.
Again, that either gives them money or reduces the amount "stolen" from them. Completely consistent with their philosophy.