Of course it is. From what I understand, in nearly all cases the algorithms that make decisions about routine stuff don't even have access to information about the person's race, nationality, gender, etc. If so, how is bias even possible? It sounds like the individuals it disfavors may have some kind of adverse event in their history that was fed into the algorithm. I.e. missing down payments, drove 50mph over the speed limit, did 2 years in Virginia for possession of fentanyl, etc.
Except in the case of car insurance, where gender is given, and is very biased against males, and for good reason. Bias against any other identifiable category, no matter how good of a reason, and the court of public opinion will summarily issue a guilty verdict, and then Hank Johnson will introduce a new bill banning algorithms.
How do you expect someone who is living paycheck to paycheck to find the $5000 or so that it takes to move cities?
In order to be in such a situation, you have to have a loser attitude and believe that the situation is hopeless and that somebody else has to act first before you can do anything, rather than taking control of your own situation and applying a little creativity. Seriously, there is never anything at any time that will make a move impossible. $5000 for moving? You're stupid if you pay that much. I have done moves with low cash, and even with cash and a lot of stuff these days, I have NEVER paid $5,000 for a move, that's just stupid and ridiculous. My last move was the very first move I've ever hired movers for, and you know what? It cost me $300 to move from one 1,200 square foot two bedroom apartment to another apartment of a similar size 20 miles away. It was just a flat rate. Try shopping around instead of paying $5,000 to the first mover you called just because they had a full page newspaper ad.
I could see paying that much if you moved overseas and had a big family or something, but not even a trip across the continental US shouldn't cost this much, unless you're just bullshitting about being poor and you have enough furniture for a very large house.
For money: All of the good things in life are free, so take them. No drinking, no cigarettes, no restaurants, and no buying new stuff. Iphone broke? Get a cheapy feature phone instead. For entertainment, go find somebody to fuck. Just spend the bare minimum for a few months, and while you're at it, start selling your old stuff on ebay, or perhaps a garage sale. Not only does this put money in your pocket, but it makes your move cheaper and easier.
Apartment downpayments, time out of work, 3-4 months with no insurance once you find a new job, moving fees, 2 weeks of being unable to work even if you have a job lined up
Down payment...are you stupid? Just go rent something first, then at most you only need a deposit. Don't rent from a private individual because they always want massive refundable deposits that they often cheat you out of. Instead rent one of those named apartment places owned by a corporate entity. If they try to screw you over, it's much easier to hold them accountable. I currently rent from a more expensive place like this (Mark-Taylor is the corporate entity,) and the refundable deposit was only $600. No other deposit required, and first rent (along with any application fees, which I've always been able to negotiate my way out of) isn't due til the end of the month.
And there aren't any fees to move, they're moving expenses, and they're optional. Usually the best thing to do if you don't have much money is to sell everything, except your momentos and bare essentials, and move in your car, or buy a bus ticket. Oh, your poor AND a hoarder? Sucks to be you, but that's nobody else's fault.
I can't speak for everybody, but if an employer made me wait 3-4 months for health care, I'd withdraw my application. I've never had any employer make me wait more than a month and a half.
As for your comment about employment: It's stupid to not at least call potential employers before you move, and at least travel to where you're going to move to see if you like it. If you're that poor, then you probably don't mind taking a minim wage job at least temporarily. You can land those practically overnight, especially right now where we're experiencing a labor shortage in many areas.
Are you seriously that dense that you can't see the immediate breakdown of your excuses? Or do you just enjoy blaming poor people for circumstances they can't help?
I'm not making any excuses, it's all you. You're just making excuses why you can't move, and you're even inventing costs and not bothering to consider alternatives. Given you think it costs $5,000 to move, then perhaps that's why you're poor: You're not smart enough to be marketable to employers.
I don't live in USA but then, I moved to my country's "capital city" which also can be compared like "New York / everywhere else". Do you think I moved just for fun? Yes, cost of living at my native town is quite lower than that of capital city but, then, I can make a meagre income at capital city that at least allows me living paycheck to paycheck; my native town is absolutely cheaper, but relatively more expensive, since I wasn't able to take home even a paycheck to paycheck income there.
It's all relative, and of course I'm not referring to anywhere except the US, because that is the only area that TFA is relevant. In the US, there are hundreds of metro areas to choose from, and about 1/3rd of them are great choices for both job market and cost of living if you ask me.
No, I think I will have to give *you* a negative score on your understanding of accounting and finance. Just like in the case of living wages, money can move more quickly than -in this case, corporate strategies, which means jumping ships becomes a sustainable strategy for investors. That even was almost a "sport" back in the eighties: you can invest on dismantling a company, grab the short term profits (short term being days/weeks/months, not seconds, as it is today), and then move your money to the next company. Rinse and repeat and you'll get a whole trade market thinking about their next quarter at best because, otherwise, you won't get a dime of traders' money.
It, of course, would depend on those pesky little details, but that's exactly what happened when Nokia sold their phone business unit, so yes, that can be not only thought, but backed with data from real world.
This is a total fail on your part. Yes, there absolutely are cases where selling off a business unit is better for the future growth of the company, and hence, better for their stock price, and is absolutely done for the long-term. It's great that you brought up Nokia because you've made it easier for me to prove my point:
What you described is not at all what happened to Nokia. Nokia sold their handset division because it was operating at a heavy loss for years, meanwhile it was dragging down their still (very) profitable wireless back-haul equipment business. If they had held on to the handset division, either it was going to end up liquidated, or it would have brought down the whole company with it. The best thing to do was to find a buyer so they could at least get something out of it. They couldn't even find a buyer initially, because it was already well known just how much of a loser it was. Something you probably don't know is that even Microsoft (the buyer) didn't want it.
Before I get to how they sold it, and for the amount they wanted, first I need to explain how they ended up there.
The first mistake was hiring Stephen Elop, who (along with the board) made the terrible decision to go with Windows Phone (the infamous burning platform memo.) As if that wasn't bad enough, Elop somehow managed to make two of the absolutely worst mistakes you could possibly make as a CEO, and he did both at the same time, and the board seemed ok with it: Elop publicly announced that their current line of phones was being discontinued, and they were going with Windows Phone, but this was well before they could ship their new product. Elop then publicly bashed his own company's product (a CEO should NEVER talk bad about any product their company has made.) As if that wasn't bad enough (seriously, incredibly fucking stupid) him and the board accepted a billion dollar contract that stipulated that Nokia had to remain exclusive to Windows Phone for so many years (Microsoft offered this bribe because they wanted to keep Nokia away from Android.) Big giant mistake that ultimately sealed Nokia's fate.
By the time it was crystal clear obvious that Windows Phone was going to fail (honestly, they should have seen this much earlier; all of the indications were there) they now couldn't respond to the ma
It's you who needs a lesson. Reaganomics is what ruined America. He cut the top tier tax rate from 72% to 23% and raised taxes three times on the middle class, under the name of trickle down.
The tax situation didn't "ruin" America, and this is where you get retarded. The top tier effective tax rate never was 72%, and it certainly wasn't 90% that idiots like you think it was. There were so many tax loopholes and deductions that it was insane, and the highest effective tax rate was about 42%. By the end of Reagan's term, this didn't change much.
A 72% or above effective tax rate would cost the economy much more than it would return. There's a little concept we refer to as the Laffer Curve. It's not a hard and fast rule, rather it's an illustration of something that has occurred throughout history. France found this out the hard way during Hollande's presidency. Hollande, who stated loudly and often that he hated rich people, campaigned on the idea of taxing them at 75%. Well he got his wish. You know what happened? France saw a net reduction of $40 billion in tax revenues, and then he had to lobby for a reversal of his own tax increases.
Let me introduce you to Hauser's law, which is an empirical measurement of the Laffer curve:
So no, Reagan did not "ruin" America. As you can see in that link, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP didn't see any major changes under Reagan. That didn't happen until the tech bubble, which increased tax revenues by a lot since incomes saw major expansion (and no, Bill Clinton didn't create the tech bubble) and then again after the tech bust followed by the post-911 recession (and no, Bush didn't create that.) In fact, too many people like to credit presidents for economic booms and busts. Besides, by the end of Reagan's term, there was barely any change to tax rates or the economy, which, if we're crediting presidents for the economic status, is good thing overall since stagflation began just before Reagan (and stagflation also destroyed Keynesian economics, which relied on the Philips curve, whose mathematical model stipulated that stagflation is impossible) and should otherwise have decimated the economy.
He also cut corporate tax rates to the point where some companies like GE pay no taxes at all, and most of the big companies pay a smaller tax rate than the average American does.
GE's is a result of the tax code itself, not the tax rates at all. Consider wal-mart, for example, who pays the highest effective tax rate. In reality though, corporate income taxes have only been a thin slice of overall tax revenues; those are by far paid for the most by rich people. If you tax them out of country (as France did) then guess what happens to your tax revenue?
The richest have seen their income increase 300% (not a typo) since Ronnie while the middle class, the engine that drives the country, has seen their income essentially stay flat, allowing for inflation.
That isn't what drives inflation; that would be the CPI. Presently what's driving inflation the most is the high cost of housing, which is itself a result of purchasing decisions made by individual buyers outbidding one another. That itself is the result of an increase in the money supply, and no, increasing the money supply does not mean printing more money. (IMO, we're badly in need of a recession, which will have the effect of making housing prices fall fast once people default on loan payments and rents. And yes, recessions do need to happen; this long recovery period is overall deleterious.) It's a good thing you mentioned what follows, by the way...
The economic records bear this out. To compound this, the middle class is now heavily in debt and paying more and more interest on borrowed money, just to stay afloat.
This is a mix between individual buyers making stupid dec
WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments; it took years, not decades.
Your very first assertion started out factually incorrect, so you're failing right out of the gate here. Germany was never at any point the second largest economy after the war, that was without a doubt the USSR. Germany's position kept going down from distant third until the noughties, where it remains at 5th, just behind India. More to my point here, you know the UK and France were still dismantling Germany's heavy industry until 1950s, right? And yes, Germany's economy did recover quickly, but primarily because of three things:
- The guy the US appointed to run Germany's economy made a pretty daring (yet, common sense under freshwater, read: Milton Friedman's, economics) move that even the US felt was a bad idea at the time: He ordered the removal all price controls, thus introducing a free market to Germany. This did the initial part almost overnight. - The Marshall Plan, which fed enough dollars into Europe that they were able to import capital goods (i.e. earth movers, industrial equipment) that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to obtain due to a lack of purchasing power. - The reconstruction boom, which every postwar economy experienced, not just Germany's.
That does NOT mean their industrial capability suddenly recovered to its pre-war levels. While the rest of the world was still rebuilding, the US was already in just the right place, and was growing even faster than the rest of the world as a result of its giant head start, making the US the top economy (by GDP) for the first time ever, until just recently. The same is also true of Japan, especially given Douglas MacArthur, who was Japan's governor at that time, made an effort to reconstruct Japan, with the direct assistance from the US, who paid laborers to travel there and assist. (By the way, the US didn't ask for reparations from anybody, while European countries did.) While virtually all countries experienced large growth, the country that by far experienced the fastest growth was the US, until 1973 when the first major postwar global recession happened.
China also rediscovered capitalism at this time, by the way, and their growth rate almost overnight began to outpace that of the US. Also for those who don't know, China has had the world's highest GDP by far until about the turn of the century, and stayed that way until communism ended.
Anyways, getting back to the original topic of why the US did exceptionally well at the time:
Fortunately we were carried further by having built industries that the rest of the world had not scaled to just yet, like our large aerospace manufacturing and heavy industrial equipment manufacturing industries for example. While the rest of the world has mostly (but not entirely) caught up to our industrial capability (hence those jobs are largely gone, but nonetheless it remains a large portion of our GDP) we now have by far the largest tech industry as our ace in the hole, which continues to carry us forward. And yes, presently the rest of the world is hopelessly dependent upon our tech industry, just like they were for our manufacturing industry in the past, so we're still in this game, just not with the same jobs.
Here's a well researched paper on all of this, by the way:
Inefficient and aging transport systems in cities where people waste many hours commuting - and that's eating up productivity. Add to it the misdirected idea that if it's getting harder for cars to get through people will use public
Yep commutes are bad, but that's fixable by living somewhere where your commute goes against the general flow of traffic. It's what I do.
Subprime loans is not just part of the 2008 crisis, that was just the tip of an iceberg. Foreclosures are used without realizing that the banks ends up with the short end of the stick in way too many cases.
Actually, loans in general are the reason housing prices are so unreasonable. Before mortgages were common, everybody just saved up for the price of the entire house, and then paid cash. This still happens to this day in every country where people don't take out mortgages. This is because big loans increase the money supply, and the more money people have access to, the more they'll pay. And no, you don't need to create more money to increase the money supply; the money supply refers to how much money that people have at their disposal. By making loans available, you increase the money supply. This is simultaneously why student loans are driving up tuition costs, and IMO new student loans (not existing ones) should make it legal to chapter 7, THAT will reduce both the supply and demand of student loans.
Cost of living in some areas has become so high that people need food stamps even if both family members have a job just to be able to raise their kids.
That situation is ridiculously easy to get away from: Move to a place that doesn't have insanely high cost of living. That's it, that's all you have to do. Where you live paycheck to paycheck in New York, San Francisco, or LA, you won't have to do that in any city that is at right around 100 on the cost of living index, nor will you have to stuff 5 families in one single family home just to be able to afford it. Phoenix rates about a 95 on that, and likewise it's almost unheard of for somebody to stuff multiple families into a single family house. At least, I personally don't know anybody who does this, unless it's just an extended family, which IMO doesn't count. Everybody I know here who is living paycheck to paycheck is simply living beyond their means. One such person, I make about twice as much as they do, yet they have chosen to live in a place with higher rent than mine (and it's not even as nice as mine is) and they spend more per month (most of it on random junk and partying) overall than I do, and then they wonder why they're always out of money.
Education that's ridicuously expensive.
Also easily avoidable: Don't start your college degree at a university, it's such a dumb and costly mistake that so many people make. Just stick to in-state community college where the tuition is a tiny percentage of any university until you've got at least half of that bachelor's degree. After that, pick an in-state university to finish your bachelor's degree as it's basically guaranteed to lower your costs. I personally picked a lesser known in-state university that only required me to take the core classes for my degree; the rest were done at community college. And for fucks sakes, don't take out a student loan. Apply for FAFSA instead. Some universities will add a grant on top of that based on the federal government's decision about what you're eligible. I actually profited about $500 per semester from college.
The value of a company is calculated on the short term profit of the company, not on the investment in future development. So companies can show short term good profit by firing their research&development teams
People on slashdot say this all the time...common sense should tell you how wrong it is, and if you don't understand how wrong it is, then I'd have to give you a negative score on your understanding
Milton Friedman was a brilliant economist, the same can't be said of you if you actually think he could cause this even if he tried. What people like yourself always fail to comprehend is why the US doesn't have that kind of economy anymore, or why we even had it in the first place, why it isn't coming back, and why it was a total fluke to begin with.
It's very simple: Germany started two world wars, which caused European countries to blow up each other's infrastructure, and later, after being pulled into a war we didn't ask for, the US had to cause further destruction. Japan decided to destroy Asia's infrastructure, then they thought they could destroy our navy, but it didn't work, and so in order for us to eliminate their offensive capability we had to carpetbomb all of their manufacturing capability. And then USSR simply made the economic blunder of the millennium: they adopted communism.
What all of this lead up to was that now the rest of the world was hopelessly dependent upon us since we were the only country left with a large scale infrastructure to build what they needed. That's what created all of those jobs that are now gone. Eventually the rest of the world (except Russia after the fall of the USSR, as well as the Warsaw pact countries who were forced into communism) had a competent infrastructure, and since they were still poor, they could offer labor services at a lower price. So guess what happens? We start seeing those jobs go away, and they won't ever return. Instead we got something far better: A very high tech, high skilled economy, and our median income is presently the highest ever at $59k. This means that half of the country makes that amount or higher.
So your can stop pretending you know economics, and you can stop trying to blame somebody for this, let alone pin it on one economist for no particular reason.
And when they're responding to a call, like this one, they're on duty. Even so, I doubt this is the case. They're never really off duty in most jurisdictions, as they retain their policing powers while not on the clock, can carry their service pistol, can make arrests, etc.
When I was in the military, I was always on duty, even outside of my duty time. I was also required to provide a means that they could contact me if they needed to. I wouldn't be surprised if cops did the same.
NASA actually put american men on the moon, onboard a wildling-designed spaceship, propelled by a nazi-designed rocket.
Well yeah, the US has well been known as the beneficiary of brain drains for a very long time now. This is not news at all. Wernher Von Braun's team of rocket scientists, and Avro's top engineers inclusive. Why be a wildling when going south of the wall gives you a much larger selection of companies to work for (and better weather...why would you want to live in a frozen wasteland? You already know most of them would prefer to be south, given 95% of the wildlings live within 150 miles of the wall.) Each of them will pay more than anything you could get north of the wall, plus you'll have access to much better facilities and resources than you would have had there.
It's even better these days: Rather than just NASA, there are three private sector companies developing and/or launching rockets, with one of them creating the most technologically advanced rockets in the world; even better than every government.
Of all that are in there, it comes down to three things:
- Clear and present danger - Public broadcasts (IMO this is stupid as well, but legally the government owns the airwaves, so they can regulate that.) - Making false statements for the purpose of committing another crime, including false advertising to defraud buyers.
It seems that obscenity laws are no longer a thing in most cases (even where it is, it seems few people, if any, are charged based on that) and in ALL cases on the internet it is never enforced (SCOTUS ruled that it can't be since two of the rules in the Miller test can't be reasonably applied.) That was established over 60 years ago, back in the time when we still had mandatory school prayer. The internet itself has desensitized people from porn, among other former taboos.
As for the government employees, that is basically the same as any other job.
A common theme in Germany is that any game that involves killing Nazis has to replace the Nazis with some other group. They just don't like it when people pretend to kill Nazis I guess.
no publisher tries to challenge that unconstitutional ban.
That would probably cost the publisher more than what their game would even make in Germany. Besides, the EU gives Germany explicit rights to engage in censorship of practically any kind. Article 10 of the EU human rights convention spells this out. Section 1 says you have full freedom of speech, whereas section 2 says "lol jk, we put really vague rules in place here, such as protecting "morality", that gives your country enough of a loophole to censor whatever the hell they want."
The antifa is not responsible for game censoring.
I never said they were, dummy.
On the other hand, while I would not ban the game I still find it tasteless. Going postal was dark humour. This is meant as a simulation without the comic relief.
While I don't know anything about this game, it would be absurd for any country to ban it.
It's funny that dumb republican faggots like yourself blame that on "sjw society" instead of looking around and seeing how the games are much, much, much worse than postal now.
If you're all about censoring video games, then go move to Germany you stupid fuck. Maybe you'll find some brown-shirted antifa chapter to join so you can terrorize those who want to play any of the games that Germany has censored or outright banned. In the USA, where I suspect GP is from and where you're probably not from, free speech is king, no matter your political affiliation.
The point is this: There's no such thing as a superfood. It's 100% pure unadulterated marketing wank made up by scammers as a way to extract money from holistic idiots.
Also worth mentioning that people who go on "superfood only" diets end up malnourished, given the marketing departments and "feel good" health food websites/magazines neglected to include a complete micronutrient balance in everything they labeled as a superfood. Even if they did, don't bother with them anyways. Sure, they may be nutrient dense in some areas, but after your body gets what it needs, then the extra amount doesn't matter, and can even be harmful, for example you can destroy your liver if you overdose on vitamin b3.
Remember kids, Dr. Oz, Foodbabe, Mercola, and practically every website with the word "nutrition" or "natural" in its name doesn't actually give you any useful information about much of anything. They just "invent" facts and then rip each other off, thus multiple sources claim the same shit, even though it's just shit. For example, Dr. Oz perpetuates the myth of HCG weight loss claims, as well as miracle weight loss pills. The whole point is to tell you what you want to hear so that you keep coming back, because these sound a lot better than the only proven method: Calories in, calories out. That, and it only makes for one episode.
Seriously, I am not entirely sure you know what you are talking about, because this is full of over-over-simplifications. Consider reading non-English and non-American books, or just live there a couple of months.
Actually some of that I found out about from Fry's Planet Word. In one segment, he interviewed some people in a region called Basque, whose cultural identity and language France is actively trying to snuff out. Same for other border regions, like Catalan.
You wanted nothing to do with it, but sell to both sides and profit off the war.
The US was a disinterested third party, so why fret over it? That would have been the thinking at the time. In fact, the US overall distrusted Europeans, who were at the time (and continued to be for another 40 years) expansionists who were colonizing other countries and turning their locals into effective slaves (hence the need for the "good neighbor policy").
Seriously, you certainly have a good historical culture, but you are missing many details (Not living there ? Language ?)
It's foolish to think that you fully understand the culture of a long past era, even though your culture descended from that. The fact is, you also don't have any idea. Professional historians even bungle this. Even if there are people still alive who can tell you, keep in mind that they too were separated from the generation of adults of that era. For a well pronounced example of this, Russian youth seem to have growing numbers of those who would like to see the return of communism, while their grandparents tell them how shitty it was, and they never end up understanding one another's motives.
They are extreme leftist for example used for provocation. Everyone knows that, sees that and hears that in Western Europe. Absolutely nothing to do with Fascism and Mussolini.
You really have no idea what I'm saying. My argument here is that even though their motivations are different, they do the same things as one another, so for all practical purposes, there is no difference.
Again you do not get the historical context, and do not take into account the massacre of WW1, growth of USSR and Communism, 1930's economical crisis etc... and other major factors. You have to be fully aware of the problems of European population at this time, things that are told by your parents or grand-parents.
Actually the primary cause of death among WWI belligerents was the Spanish flu, and it had actually spread throughout the whole world causing even more death far beyond Europe, including the USA. WWI also wasn't as destructive on infrastructure as WWII. Furthermore, Italy, the birthplace of fascism, was one of the allied powers back then, so they didn't pay reparations; they received them instead, and fascism didn't start because people were poor, rather it started because Italy, like the rest of Europe, can't tell the difference between a healthy amount of nationalism, and nationalism of the type that leads to death and destruction. Come to think of it, it seems that both of the world's two deadliest ideologies were born in Europe, so that's probably why Europe can't tell the difference.
Besides, the USA had the same economic crisis, and we weren't anywhere close to turning to fascism or communism.
Oh boy...the way you've just set yourself up is just too hard to resist...I apologize in advance for what I feel I am now lulzbound to do next.
Why do you think such nonsense? They got conquered, like the rest of Europe,
First of all, your silly little third empire did not conquer the "rest" of Europe, much of it simply joined you (or rather, your Fuhrer (not Merkel, your other Fuhrer) idolized Mussolini and his creation of fascism, who in turn didn't care about your Fuhrer until after he rose to prominence, and a number of other countries that liked Mussolini's creation also joined in. It was around this time that your grandfather joined the Schutzstaffel and enrolled your father into Hitler Youth. During the Phoney War, Belgium WAS NEUTRAL with your fatherland! In fact, they were still neutral until the day the invasion of France began, where your reich pushed England and France into the sea and maneuvered their tanks west of the Maginot line via Belgium while simultaneously attacking Belgium's military. Belgium didn't surrender until 27 days after this, so no, you didn't conquer them before the French invasion began.
France fell so quickly because
...of a lot of reasons.
The "antiFa" is not a fascist group, they are left wing militant trouble makers, thats all.
This is one of those things where if it waddles like a fascist, quacks like a fascist, and wears brown shirts and carries assault rifles during a show of intimidation towards the general public like an outright Nazi, then what the fuck is the difference? Really, I can't think of any tactic in the fascist playbook that Antifa hasn't used yet. Especially the ones who live in your fatherland.
Your whole premise in your talk is that there was a "united Europe" that did not get its ass up to fight against Hitler in time.
No it wasn't, you obviously didn't read my whole post, nor the post I replied to. Or you did and just have comprehension issues. I was replying to an ass who was shaming the US for waiting so long before going to Europe and tearing down your silly little reich, while not at all acknowledging that neither did most of Europe, even when it was obvious that your Fuhrer would come for them quite soon. We had a good excuse: Your Fuhrer had no ambitions about invading the USA, even though he would have liked to burn New York basically because he hated capitalism and democracy, but still he knew that was unlikely to ever happen (Many of his military advisers knew that they wouldn't stand a chance if the US entered the war, not sure if he knew it as well.) Even Japan knew this, they were just counting on us never being able to invade or otherwise counterattack any of their territories because they assumed that we didn't have either the technology or the will to ever bring warplanes across the Pacific, especially with much of our fleet destroyed. The battle of midway taught them a hard lesson, which was further driven home when Douglas MacArthur was Japan's de-facto governor for a while (though they did give him the endearing title Gaijin Shogun after he died, which was a nice gesture.)
There was basically no single place on the world where not either: German/Italian, British (later also Americans), Japanese, Russian and later Chinese troops where in action.
Yes there was, nearly all of the Americas, except Argentina when your government wanted to run and hide. We had our forts and naval bases that had already been there before the war that were basically put on higher alert, in addition to some prisons near my home town (Phoenix) where we kept a supply of used Germans, three of whom escaped and thought they could blend in when they walked to Phoenix, even though they had obviously thick German accents and could barely speak English. They didn't get punished though, rather they were just added back
Besides inventing and/or making practical nearly all of the technology that allows the world's economies to prosper and scale to heights that otherwise wouldn't be obtainable? Besides giving the world the internet, which the rest of world then began censoring to keep their population controlled (Europe inclusive,) and then recently began weaponizing? Besides being the primary source of the green revolution, which effectively ended world hunger as much as it can be without deposing all of the world's dictators and local warlords who use food as a bargaining chip to remain in power? Besides being the only bulwark that prevented the USSR from conquering the rest of Europe until the late 70's? Besides inventing 90% of the worlds drugs that treat and/or cure more diseases than any medicine that comes from the rest of the world combined, and to top it off, we end up subsidizing the cost of the R&D for these drugs so that the rest of the world gets them far cheaper after the fact? (Pro tip: If you use insulin for diabetes, in addition to other drugs for many other chronic diseases, then your very survival absolutely depends on American invented drugs, and possibly even surgical procedures invented here. The e.coli genetically modified to shit perfect human insulin, which doesn't cause allergic reactions like previously used insulin, is still the gold standard for insulin production after 46 years.) Besides being the TIP TOP destination for the best possible health care in the world in all health care specialties? (In fact, it's not unheard of for European countries to pay for their citizens to travel to the US when that is their best and/or only hope for survival; the fact that it is expensive is another debate though.) Besides being the greatest contributor to space technology period, and landing the first person on the moon, and currently in progress, fully recyclable rockets that are already dramatically lowering the cost of spaceflight?
Eh...well...nothing, I guess.
Meanwhile, what has YOUR country done since WWII? If you can't think of anything, then I'd start with this question: When does your country expect to invent the wheel? Given you finally connected to the internet, has your country already begun censoring it? If so, perhaps America should adopt a policy similar to the Federation in Star Trek: Do not share advanced technology with primitive civilizations as they frequently misuse it and harm themselves.
On the topic of the green revolution: The US is still improving food production yet more so that it can be more efficient, thus reducing cost, while also being more sustainable, which means it can scale to fit the needs of the growing population without consuming all of our natural resources fast enough that they can't replenish. All the while, Europe is making an active effort to go the opposite direction, vis-a-vis their ban on GMO production, even though they're ok with importing GMO crop from the US and in fact consume a great deal of it, probably because the reduced efficiency of European farming means our crop is less expensive while also being both superior quality and being more profitable. They just aren't interested in improving their own crop yields, meaning they use far more natural resources (including destruction of natural habitat to make room for more farmland) just to get the same yield as we otherwise can in the US.
This is trivially false as France was not a monarchy at the time. It was a republic. Like you know, the US. The real reason is below.
Yes, and at large would have been a better term. But France still actually fits here, namely because even though they've technically been a Republic almost as long as the US has been, even during the first republic they never really cared much for individual rights, and they pretty much still don't. France always has had this populist feel to it, IMO, including having leaders that were basically dictators from the very start and reoccurring throughout the history of their republic. During France's revolution:
You weren't totally enthusiastic about the revolution one particular day? That's a gillotine'in Somebody suspected you were rich? That's a gillotine'in (never mind that most of the leaders were actually quite well off) A "hero of the people" didn't like you? That's a gillotine'in You thought too many innocent people were going to the guillotine? Ohh you better believe that's a guillotine'in.
This was mostly overseen by Robespierre, who even sent his own Lieutenants to the gillotine simply because they disagreed with him on some topic. Basically North Korea type stuff. Even postwar, France was the sole cause of the mess that was Vietnam; the Hanoi Hilton was originally built by France as a place to torture Vietnamese who woulnd't submit to what was basically slavery, prior to that Vietnam actually admired the west, including Ho Chi Minh himself. As for today, France actively works to eradicate French co-cultures from existence if they aren't French enough, including making huge efforts to prevent the French language from changing at all by making it illegal to use certain words, among other things (by the way, banning everyday words that aren't part of the official language is something that happens in many European countries; are you Europeans ABSOLUTELY SURE that you have freedom of speech? Because if so, I have some connections to a certain Nigerian Prince that will prove quite lucrative for you.)
So.. Let me slightly twist your words into this: "practically the only reason a [...] country would take action during this period was after they were already [attacked]" It's okay, we all did that.
I did intend to use the word "invaded", and while that can be argued as semantics in a way, it wasn't the point. The point is, the stupid of the Europeans always name and shame the US for not taking action, but they never bothered to look in the mirror first. (One of the reasons behind my "dog feces under the rug" analogy.) It also occurs to me in all of this (and I was first told this by a Polish guy after I asked him if he thought we were a racist country) that Europe is more racist than the US, just the US looks particularly bad at it because we're the only ones who try to do something about it, so we keep detailed records of who did what to whom, and who said what to whom. Compare that to Germany for example, who doesn't record anything at all about race in their crime statistics, so it really is impossible to know in their case. That, and while I don't remember which countries all did this, but some scandinavian regions have this annual parade where they have caricatures of black people depicted as looking kind of dumb and/or silly while they're wearing something akin to a maid's clothing while they're cleaning something. If somebody did something even close to this in the US, even if it was supposed to be chimney sweepers that got black from the soot, (which is what some people claim that is what is going on in this parade) the mass media would be pointing out racial overtones, and it would make international headlines, meanwhile it's relatively unheard of while it happens openly in Europe.
Yes, let's describe WW2 as "Europe deciding to blow themsel
Aside from the fact that your link is useless, (and I find it hilarious that somebody upmodded you in spite of having no idea what the fuck you're talking about since you really haven't made any kind of a point) the hard (voting) numbers speak for themselves. Really, if you make somebody have a very good reason to not be open about their beliefs, then guess what? You really have no idea just how many there actually are. Penalty of going to jail is a good enough reason to not be open about it. I really think that going by vote counts is as good as you're going to get, even though it's a poor measurement (as in, the numbers are probably somewhere above that.)
Saying otherwise would be the same as saying that the actual percentage of homosexuals well reflects the current numbers that are already known. It's totally absurd to make that assumption. Over the past 5 (or so) decades that number has been increasing relative to the general population. I strongly doubt that the actual percentage of homosexuals has changed very much throughout human existence, especially if it is in any way genetic rather than being purely environmental.
Besides, I do know a couple of European languages: English and Spanish. Yes, two makes a couple. But honestly, that's not even important: Knowing the languages just means you're better able to gather anecdotal evidence, which is entirely useless. This is especially true because the people you are going to hear from the most (even without removing free speech, as Europe has done) are the people who always look for something to be outraged about. The EU isn't alone there though, because the US also has a very strong culture of outrage.
France has fought a hell of a lot more wars than America and they didn't hang back in either WW1 or WW2.
Apparently you've never heard of the Phoney War, so I'll tell you how it all went down:
Germany invades Poland and conquers it in 5 weeks. France and England largely stood by and did nothing, except for a small operation called the Saar Offensive, which officially began the Phoney War. This offensive was so light that it didn't even tickle Germany. The USSR (on friendly terms with Germany at this point) invaded Finland, and then Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. This caused France to get cold feet, so they picked up what meager forces they sent and ran home.
That is a very brief summary of what happened, and you'll find it to be accurate if you research it. Granted, I've omitted many details, obviously, because of how short I wrote it, but it's hard to overstate how little of an effort that France and England made to stop Germany for TEN MONTHS after the invasion of Poland began. Anyways, immediately after France withdrew, they assumed their WWI playbook and hunkered down in the trenches in the Maginot line. It didn't work though: France didn't bother to fortify the region near Belgium's border thinking Germany wouldn't go there, but neutral Belgium and Holland seemed ok with allowing Germany's forces to quickly shift to the west and bypass the Maginot line entirely. In spite of France having a large and well armed and prepared Army (which they never tried to use to break Polish invasion,) they surrendered in 6 weeks.
So in other words, Europe as a whole sat on its ass (except for Germany, Austria, and their allies) for TEN FREAKING MONTHS! It's one thing for a country separated by an entire ocean, but good fuckin lord, practically the only reason a European country would take action during this period was after they were already invaded.
It was only after the fall of France that a serious allied war effort actually began. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor about 14 months after that. The US was isolationist at the time because we wanted nothing to do with your kings, queens, kaisers, and fuhrers because they looked all the same to us, and still do: But the lesson we took from Pearl Harbor is that even if you don't want a war, you're going to get one anyways. This meant we had to, among other things, assist the fucking USSR that we had to go to proxy wars with while we funded Europe's reconstruction with the Marshall plan, even though it wasn't our fault that they decided to blow themselves up. Here we are, 80 years later, and one third of Europe wants to be fascist again. And that is NOT an exaggeration:
Now that Europeans aren't allowed to see what today's fascists actually say because it's censored, then all they see is the mild stuff that they sympathize with, and then they start liking them. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you banned hate speech? Just because you don't see or hear the fascists doesn't mean they aren't there (for the most part, the only fascists you actually see in Europe call themselves antifa.) Some things never change...
I don't hate Europe or Europeans by the way, just the stupid ones who think tossing dog feces under the rug makes it go away, and then proceed to tell you that their house doesn't actually smell like shit.
Most of the post-WWII prosperity and middle-class growth in the US was thanks to the labor movement.
No it wasn't, it was because the rest of the world destroyed itself (especially Europe) while the US's infrastructure remained completely unscathed. This meant that the USA could scale up its manufacturing while the rest of the world bought practically everything from us. We WERE to the rest of the world what China is today. THAT is why the US saw big prosperity, not because you were giving a cut of your paycheck to the mafia. Similarly, the fact that the rest of the world has built up its manufacturing capabilities means that there are more global competitors, which means fewer buy from us, which means we manufacture less, which means we have less demand for those types of jobs. That, and better technology means less demand for the type of labor that you look at with rose tinted lenses. Besides, it's probably a good thing that fewer people give a cut of their pay to the mafia these days.
I guess there are different types of anti GMO people:D I'm only against GMO'ed food.
For what purpose? Because honestly, there is no rational reason to be opposed to it. Here's what GMO food can (and already does in many cases) do for us:
- Reduced need for landmass for farming. Increased need for agricultural landmass is the #1 reason this planet is losing forest areas. - Reduced agricultural waste. - Reduced need for insecticides. - Reduced need for resources for farming, especially water. - Increased nutritional value of food while reducing the toxicity. And yes, there is plenty of that in food already. - Increased flavor of food without needing to add more of what you can do without (i.e. simple sugars.) Possibly reducing it even.
Apparently, Greenpeace doesn't like these things. They don't like saving lives either:
So what's your beef with all of the above? Keep in mind, nearly all of the negatives you've heard are either outright lies or scientific fraud. There is zero evidence that GMO causes cancer, or any other negative health effect. All of the claims that GMO will "contaminate" wildlife have already been addressed. The claim that "GMO is dangerous because we don't know what it does, therefore it's probably dangerous and should be avoided" is so stupid it's laughable: With GMO, we know exactly what we're getting, whereas with natural breeding, there are millions of unknowns.
Honestly, there is no reason to be against it. You're basically the same as an anti-vaxxer, only you're targeting something else. Possibly you think natural is better, only it is a fact that natural is NOT better, and you rarely eat anything natural. For example, apples don't grow massively oversized and with much higher amounts of sugar than is needed in order for their seeds to consume and survive. It simply goes against the plant's survival, namely because producing all of that extra sugar consumes energy that wild plants are usually in short supply of. Human intervention is required for them to thrive in all but the most perfect growing conditions (which are rare to find.) The fact is, most plants you eat have been bred to be calorie dense enough for us to thrive on. In fact, they are themselves genetically modified, only the means is different.
Pro tip: Your body can't actually digest most natural plant matter, which means most wild plants are inedible for you. Disagree? Then here's a challenge: Go to your nearest wooded area and survive on only plant matter for a month. By the way: All of these little vegetarians and vegans who claim that humans evolved as herbivores are demonstrably false. In fact, there is no one place in the world that vegans can obtain all of the nourishment the human body needs; they can only live on their diet because of the technology available.
And: we want it labeled.
And this is the most ASSHOLE position to have, because it only serves one purpose: To stigmatize the product so that it can't sell. There really is no rational reason to demand to know if it's genetically modified even though this fact is immaterial to the food, while at the same time you don't seem interested in its heavy metal content, which IS a material fact. You're just an asshole for doing your best to make GMO produce unmarketable. Asshole.
Hence we have laws according to it in Europe...
That's because Europe is stupid. Really, it is. Just as California is stupid for labeling cofee as carcinogenic (It has a ring of truth to it, but this is all relative. Practically everything you eat contains carcinogens, the question is just how much. And by the way, GMO can reduce said content.)
Btw you do not work in biotech, do you? I would like to think that you advocate more GMOs for purely ethical reasons and not because you stand to gain from GMOs in any way.
I do not. Though I'm a network engineer working for a health care company (mostly servicing the providers (i.e. doctors) needs,) and it has nothing to do with agriculture. I did once have stock in a biotech company (which wasn't doing anything with agriculture, rather they were focused on four types of cancer,) but it was a penny stock that I only held briefly. I have a medical technology fund long-term, but it's not biotech. I've never held any funds that have anything to do with agriculture in any way.
If I was to invest in agriculture, to be honest I'd prefer organic based stuff. Not that I like organic, rather the opposite: Organic food is environmentally wasteful since what it does is effectively say "we have to farm like its 1950", which means you have to consume far more landmass and natural resources for the same yield. Rather, the reason I would invest in organic is because people are stupid and spend insane amounts of money on it, and as time passes they keep spending more and more on it, which means it has great growth prospects.
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Of course it is. From what I understand, in nearly all cases the algorithms that make decisions about routine stuff don't even have access to information about the person's race, nationality, gender, etc. If so, how is bias even possible? It sounds like the individuals it disfavors may have some kind of adverse event in their history that was fed into the algorithm. I.e. missing down payments, drove 50mph over the speed limit, did 2 years in Virginia for possession of fentanyl, etc.
Except in the case of car insurance, where gender is given, and is very biased against males, and for good reason. Bias against any other identifiable category, no matter how good of a reason, and the court of public opinion will summarily issue a guilty verdict, and then Hank Johnson will introduce a new bill banning algorithms.
Even kings of yore didn't have it as good as we do today.
How do you expect someone who is living paycheck to paycheck to find the $5000 or so that it takes to move cities?
In order to be in such a situation, you have to have a loser attitude and believe that the situation is hopeless and that somebody else has to act first before you can do anything, rather than taking control of your own situation and applying a little creativity. Seriously, there is never anything at any time that will make a move impossible. $5000 for moving? You're stupid if you pay that much. I have done moves with low cash, and even with cash and a lot of stuff these days, I have NEVER paid $5,000 for a move, that's just stupid and ridiculous. My last move was the very first move I've ever hired movers for, and you know what? It cost me $300 to move from one 1,200 square foot two bedroom apartment to another apartment of a similar size 20 miles away. It was just a flat rate. Try shopping around instead of paying $5,000 to the first mover you called just because they had a full page newspaper ad.
I could see paying that much if you moved overseas and had a big family or something, but not even a trip across the continental US shouldn't cost this much, unless you're just bullshitting about being poor and you have enough furniture for a very large house.
For money: All of the good things in life are free, so take them. No drinking, no cigarettes, no restaurants, and no buying new stuff. Iphone broke? Get a cheapy feature phone instead. For entertainment, go find somebody to fuck. Just spend the bare minimum for a few months, and while you're at it, start selling your old stuff on ebay, or perhaps a garage sale. Not only does this put money in your pocket, but it makes your move cheaper and easier.
Apartment downpayments, time out of work, 3-4 months with no insurance once you find a new job, moving fees, 2 weeks of being unable to work even if you have a job lined up
Down payment...are you stupid? Just go rent something first, then at most you only need a deposit. Don't rent from a private individual because they always want massive refundable deposits that they often cheat you out of. Instead rent one of those named apartment places owned by a corporate entity. If they try to screw you over, it's much easier to hold them accountable. I currently rent from a more expensive place like this (Mark-Taylor is the corporate entity,) and the refundable deposit was only $600. No other deposit required, and first rent (along with any application fees, which I've always been able to negotiate my way out of) isn't due til the end of the month.
And there aren't any fees to move, they're moving expenses, and they're optional. Usually the best thing to do if you don't have much money is to sell everything, except your momentos and bare essentials, and move in your car, or buy a bus ticket. Oh, your poor AND a hoarder? Sucks to be you, but that's nobody else's fault.
I can't speak for everybody, but if an employer made me wait 3-4 months for health care, I'd withdraw my application. I've never had any employer make me wait more than a month and a half.
As for your comment about employment: It's stupid to not at least call potential employers before you move, and at least travel to where you're going to move to see if you like it. If you're that poor, then you probably don't mind taking a minim wage job at least temporarily. You can land those practically overnight, especially right now where we're experiencing a labor shortage in many areas.
Are you seriously that dense that you can't see the immediate breakdown of your excuses? Or do you just enjoy blaming poor people for circumstances they can't help?
I'm not making any excuses, it's all you. You're just making excuses why you can't move, and you're even inventing costs and not bothering to consider alternatives. Given you think it costs $5,000 to move, then perhaps that's why you're poor: You're not smart enough to be marketable to employers.
I don't live in USA but then, I moved to my country's "capital city" which also can be compared like "New York / everywhere else". Do you think I moved just for fun? Yes, cost of living at my native town is quite lower than that of capital city but, then, I can make a meagre income at capital city that at least allows me living paycheck to paycheck; my native town is absolutely cheaper, but relatively more expensive, since I wasn't able to take home even a paycheck to paycheck income there.
It's all relative, and of course I'm not referring to anywhere except the US, because that is the only area that TFA is relevant. In the US, there are hundreds of metro areas to choose from, and about 1/3rd of them are great choices for both job market and cost of living if you ask me.
No, I think I will have to give *you* a negative score on your understanding of accounting and finance. Just like in the case of living wages, money can move more quickly than -in this case, corporate strategies, which means jumping ships becomes a sustainable strategy for investors. That even was almost a "sport" back in the eighties: you can invest on dismantling a company, grab the short term profits (short term being days/weeks/months, not seconds, as it is today), and then move your money to the next company. Rinse and repeat and you'll get a whole trade market thinking about their next quarter at best because, otherwise, you won't get a dime of traders' money.
It, of course, would depend on those pesky little details, but that's exactly what happened when Nokia sold their phone business unit, so yes, that can be not only thought, but backed with data from real world.
This is a total fail on your part. Yes, there absolutely are cases where selling off a business unit is better for the future growth of the company, and hence, better for their stock price, and is absolutely done for the long-term. It's great that you brought up Nokia because you've made it easier for me to prove my point:
What you described is not at all what happened to Nokia. Nokia sold their handset division because it was operating at a heavy loss for years, meanwhile it was dragging down their still (very) profitable wireless back-haul equipment business. If they had held on to the handset division, either it was going to end up liquidated, or it would have brought down the whole company with it. The best thing to do was to find a buyer so they could at least get something out of it. They couldn't even find a buyer initially, because it was already well known just how much of a loser it was. Something you probably don't know is that even Microsoft (the buyer) didn't want it.
Before I get to how they sold it, and for the amount they wanted, first I need to explain how they ended up there.
The first mistake was hiring Stephen Elop, who (along with the board) made the terrible decision to go with Windows Phone (the infamous burning platform memo.) As if that wasn't bad enough, Elop somehow managed to make two of the absolutely worst mistakes you could possibly make as a CEO, and he did both at the same time, and the board seemed ok with it: Elop publicly announced that their current line of phones was being discontinued, and they were going with Windows Phone, but this was well before they could ship their new product. Elop then publicly bashed his own company's product (a CEO should NEVER talk bad about any product their company has made.) As if that wasn't bad enough (seriously, incredibly fucking stupid) him and the board accepted a billion dollar contract that stipulated that Nokia had to remain exclusive to Windows Phone for so many years (Microsoft offered this bribe because they wanted to keep Nokia away from Android.) Big giant mistake that ultimately sealed Nokia's fate.
By the time it was crystal clear obvious that Windows Phone was going to fail (honestly, they should have seen this much earlier; all of the indications were there) they now couldn't respond to the ma
It's you who needs a lesson. Reaganomics is what ruined America. He cut the top tier tax rate from 72% to 23% and raised taxes three times on the middle class, under the name of trickle down.
The tax situation didn't "ruin" America, and this is where you get retarded. The top tier effective tax rate never was 72%, and it certainly wasn't 90% that idiots like you think it was. There were so many tax loopholes and deductions that it was insane, and the highest effective tax rate was about 42%. By the end of Reagan's term, this didn't change much.
A 72% or above effective tax rate would cost the economy much more than it would return. There's a little concept we refer to as the Laffer Curve. It's not a hard and fast rule, rather it's an illustration of something that has occurred throughout history. France found this out the hard way during Hollande's presidency. Hollande, who stated loudly and often that he hated rich people, campaigned on the idea of taxing them at 75%. Well he got his wish. You know what happened? France saw a net reduction of $40 billion in tax revenues, and then he had to lobby for a reversal of his own tax increases.
Let me introduce you to Hauser's law, which is an empirical measurement of the Laffer curve:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So no, Reagan did not "ruin" America. As you can see in that link, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP didn't see any major changes under Reagan. That didn't happen until the tech bubble, which increased tax revenues by a lot since incomes saw major expansion (and no, Bill Clinton didn't create the tech bubble) and then again after the tech bust followed by the post-911 recession (and no, Bush didn't create that.) In fact, too many people like to credit presidents for economic booms and busts. Besides, by the end of Reagan's term, there was barely any change to tax rates or the economy, which, if we're crediting presidents for the economic status, is good thing overall since stagflation began just before Reagan (and stagflation also destroyed Keynesian economics, which relied on the Philips curve, whose mathematical model stipulated that stagflation is impossible) and should otherwise have decimated the economy.
He also cut corporate tax rates to the point where some companies like GE pay no taxes at all, and most of the big companies pay a smaller tax rate than the average American does.
GE's is a result of the tax code itself, not the tax rates at all. Consider wal-mart, for example, who pays the highest effective tax rate. In reality though, corporate income taxes have only been a thin slice of overall tax revenues; those are by far paid for the most by rich people. If you tax them out of country (as France did) then guess what happens to your tax revenue?
The richest have seen their income increase 300% (not a typo) since Ronnie while the middle class, the engine that drives the country, has seen their income essentially stay flat, allowing for inflation.
That isn't what drives inflation; that would be the CPI. Presently what's driving inflation the most is the high cost of housing, which is itself a result of purchasing decisions made by individual buyers outbidding one another. That itself is the result of an increase in the money supply, and no, increasing the money supply does not mean printing more money. (IMO, we're badly in need of a recession, which will have the effect of making housing prices fall fast once people default on loan payments and rents. And yes, recessions do need to happen; this long recovery period is overall deleterious.) It's a good thing you mentioned what follows, by the way...
The economic records bear this out. To compound this, the middle class is now heavily in debt and paying more and more interest on borrowed money, just to stay afloat.
This is a mix between individual buyers making stupid dec
WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments; it took years, not decades.
Your very first assertion started out factually incorrect, so you're failing right out of the gate here. Germany was never at any point the second largest economy after the war, that was without a doubt the USSR. Germany's position kept going down from distant third until the noughties, where it remains at 5th, just behind India. More to my point here, you know the UK and France were still dismantling Germany's heavy industry until 1950s, right? And yes, Germany's economy did recover quickly, but primarily because of three things:
- The guy the US appointed to run Germany's economy made a pretty daring (yet, common sense under freshwater, read: Milton Friedman's, economics) move that even the US felt was a bad idea at the time: He ordered the removal all price controls, thus introducing a free market to Germany. This did the initial part almost overnight.
- The Marshall Plan, which fed enough dollars into Europe that they were able to import capital goods (i.e. earth movers, industrial equipment) that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to obtain due to a lack of purchasing power.
- The reconstruction boom, which every postwar economy experienced, not just Germany's.
That does NOT mean their industrial capability suddenly recovered to its pre-war levels. While the rest of the world was still rebuilding, the US was already in just the right place, and was growing even faster than the rest of the world as a result of its giant head start, making the US the top economy (by GDP) for the first time ever, until just recently. The same is also true of Japan, especially given Douglas MacArthur, who was Japan's governor at that time, made an effort to reconstruct Japan, with the direct assistance from the US, who paid laborers to travel there and assist. (By the way, the US didn't ask for reparations from anybody, while European countries did.) While virtually all countries experienced large growth, the country that by far experienced the fastest growth was the US, until 1973 when the first major postwar global recession happened.
China also rediscovered capitalism at this time, by the way, and their growth rate almost overnight began to outpace that of the US. Also for those who don't know, China has had the world's highest GDP by far until about the turn of the century, and stayed that way until communism ended.
Anyways, getting back to the original topic of why the US did exceptionally well at the time:
Fortunately we were carried further by having built industries that the rest of the world had not scaled to just yet, like our large aerospace manufacturing and heavy industrial equipment manufacturing industries for example. While the rest of the world has mostly (but not entirely) caught up to our industrial capability (hence those jobs are largely gone, but nonetheless it remains a large portion of our GDP) we now have by far the largest tech industry as our ace in the hole, which continues to carry us forward. And yes, presently the rest of the world is hopelessly dependent upon our tech industry, just like they were for our manufacturing industry in the past, so we're still in this game, just not with the same jobs.
Here's a well researched paper on all of this, by the way:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-eco...
And in 1961, Kennedy would give the country a direction with a decree to go to the moon.
Actually that was a huge burden on our economy at the time. In today's dollars, that would be about $122 billion, and its economic returns weren't an
Inefficient and aging transport systems in cities where people waste many hours commuting - and that's eating up productivity. Add to it the misdirected idea that if it's getting harder for cars to get through people will use public
Yep commutes are bad, but that's fixable by living somewhere where your commute goes against the general flow of traffic. It's what I do.
Subprime loans is not just part of the 2008 crisis, that was just the tip of an iceberg. Foreclosures are used without realizing that the banks ends up with the short end of the stick in way too many cases.
Actually, loans in general are the reason housing prices are so unreasonable. Before mortgages were common, everybody just saved up for the price of the entire house, and then paid cash. This still happens to this day in every country where people don't take out mortgages. This is because big loans increase the money supply, and the more money people have access to, the more they'll pay. And no, you don't need to create more money to increase the money supply; the money supply refers to how much money that people have at their disposal. By making loans available, you increase the money supply. This is simultaneously why student loans are driving up tuition costs, and IMO new student loans (not existing ones) should make it legal to chapter 7, THAT will reduce both the supply and demand of student loans.
Cost of living in some areas has become so high that people need food stamps even if both family members have a job just to be able to raise their kids.
That situation is ridiculously easy to get away from: Move to a place that doesn't have insanely high cost of living. That's it, that's all you have to do. Where you live paycheck to paycheck in New York, San Francisco, or LA, you won't have to do that in any city that is at right around 100 on the cost of living index, nor will you have to stuff 5 families in one single family home just to be able to afford it. Phoenix rates about a 95 on that, and likewise it's almost unheard of for somebody to stuff multiple families into a single family house. At least, I personally don't know anybody who does this, unless it's just an extended family, which IMO doesn't count. Everybody I know here who is living paycheck to paycheck is simply living beyond their means. One such person, I make about twice as much as they do, yet they have chosen to live in a place with higher rent than mine (and it's not even as nice as mine is) and they spend more per month (most of it on random junk and partying) overall than I do, and then they wonder why they're always out of money.
Education that's ridicuously expensive.
Also easily avoidable: Don't start your college degree at a university, it's such a dumb and costly mistake that so many people make. Just stick to in-state community college where the tuition is a tiny percentage of any university until you've got at least half of that bachelor's degree. After that, pick an in-state university to finish your bachelor's degree as it's basically guaranteed to lower your costs. I personally picked a lesser known in-state university that only required me to take the core classes for my degree; the rest were done at community college. And for fucks sakes, don't take out a student loan. Apply for FAFSA instead. Some universities will add a grant on top of that based on the federal government's decision about what you're eligible. I actually profited about $500 per semester from college.
The value of a company is calculated on the short term profit of the company, not on the investment in future development. So companies can show short term good profit by firing their research&development teams
People on slashdot say this all the time...common sense should tell you how wrong it is, and if you don't understand how wrong it is, then I'd have to give you a negative score on your understanding
Milton Friedman was a brilliant economist, the same can't be said of you if you actually think he could cause this even if he tried. What people like yourself always fail to comprehend is why the US doesn't have that kind of economy anymore, or why we even had it in the first place, why it isn't coming back, and why it was a total fluke to begin with.
It's very simple: Germany started two world wars, which caused European countries to blow up each other's infrastructure, and later, after being pulled into a war we didn't ask for, the US had to cause further destruction. Japan decided to destroy Asia's infrastructure, then they thought they could destroy our navy, but it didn't work, and so in order for us to eliminate their offensive capability we had to carpetbomb all of their manufacturing capability. And then USSR simply made the economic blunder of the millennium: they adopted communism.
What all of this lead up to was that now the rest of the world was hopelessly dependent upon us since we were the only country left with a large scale infrastructure to build what they needed. That's what created all of those jobs that are now gone. Eventually the rest of the world (except Russia after the fall of the USSR, as well as the Warsaw pact countries who were forced into communism) had a competent infrastructure, and since they were still poor, they could offer labor services at a lower price. So guess what happens? We start seeing those jobs go away, and they won't ever return. Instead we got something far better: A very high tech, high skilled economy, and our median income is presently the highest ever at $59k. This means that half of the country makes that amount or higher.
So your can stop pretending you know economics, and you can stop trying to blame somebody for this, let alone pin it on one economist for no particular reason.
And when they're responding to a call, like this one, they're on duty. Even so, I doubt this is the case. They're never really off duty in most jurisdictions, as they retain their policing powers while not on the clock, can carry their service pistol, can make arrests, etc.
When I was in the military, I was always on duty, even outside of my duty time. I was also required to provide a means that they could contact me if they needed to. I wouldn't be surprised if cops did the same.
NASA actually put american men on the moon, onboard a wildling-designed spaceship, propelled by a nazi-designed rocket.
Well yeah, the US has well been known as the beneficiary of brain drains for a very long time now. This is not news at all. Wernher Von Braun's team of rocket scientists, and Avro's top engineers inclusive. Why be a wildling when going south of the wall gives you a much larger selection of companies to work for (and better weather...why would you want to live in a frozen wasteland? You already know most of them would prefer to be south, given 95% of the wildlings live within 150 miles of the wall.) Each of them will pay more than anything you could get north of the wall, plus you'll have access to much better facilities and resources than you would have had there.
It's even better these days: Rather than just NASA, there are three private sector companies developing and/or launching rockets, with one of them creating the most technologically advanced rockets in the world; even better than every government.
Of all that are in there, it comes down to three things:
- Clear and present danger
- Public broadcasts (IMO this is stupid as well, but legally the government owns the airwaves, so they can regulate that.)
- Making false statements for the purpose of committing another crime, including false advertising to defraud buyers.
It seems that obscenity laws are no longer a thing in most cases (even where it is, it seems few people, if any, are charged based on that) and in ALL cases on the internet it is never enforced (SCOTUS ruled that it can't be since two of the rules in the Miller test can't be reasonably applied.) That was established over 60 years ago, back in the time when we still had mandatory school prayer. The internet itself has desensitized people from porn, among other former taboos.
As for the government employees, that is basically the same as any other job.
But it eased over the last couple of years.
How so? Even cartoony games like Team Fortress 2 still can't show any body parts.
http://www.dorkly.com/post/809...
A common theme in Germany is that any game that involves killing Nazis has to replace the Nazis with some other group. They just don't like it when people pretend to kill Nazis I guess.
no publisher tries to challenge that unconstitutional ban.
That would probably cost the publisher more than what their game would even make in Germany. Besides, the EU gives Germany explicit rights to engage in censorship of practically any kind. Article 10 of the EU human rights convention spells this out. Section 1 says you have full freedom of speech, whereas section 2 says "lol jk, we put really vague rules in place here, such as protecting "morality", that gives your country enough of a loophole to censor whatever the hell they want."
The antifa is not responsible for game censoring.
I never said they were, dummy.
On the other hand, while I would not ban the game I still find it tasteless. Going postal was dark humour. This is meant as a simulation without the comic relief.
While I don't know anything about this game, it would be absurd for any country to ban it.
It's funny that dumb republican faggots like yourself blame that on "sjw society" instead of looking around and seeing how the games are much, much, much worse than postal now.
If you're all about censoring video games, then go move to Germany you stupid fuck. Maybe you'll find some brown-shirted antifa chapter to join so you can terrorize those who want to play any of the games that Germany has censored or outright banned. In the USA, where I suspect GP is from and where you're probably not from, free speech is king, no matter your political affiliation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The point is this: There's no such thing as a superfood. It's 100% pure unadulterated marketing wank made up by scammers as a way to extract money from holistic idiots.
Also worth mentioning that people who go on "superfood only" diets end up malnourished, given the marketing departments and "feel good" health food websites/magazines neglected to include a complete micronutrient balance in everything they labeled as a superfood. Even if they did, don't bother with them anyways. Sure, they may be nutrient dense in some areas, but after your body gets what it needs, then the extra amount doesn't matter, and can even be harmful, for example you can destroy your liver if you overdose on vitamin b3.
Remember kids, Dr. Oz, Foodbabe, Mercola, and practically every website with the word "nutrition" or "natural" in its name doesn't actually give you any useful information about much of anything. They just "invent" facts and then rip each other off, thus multiple sources claim the same shit, even though it's just shit. For example, Dr. Oz perpetuates the myth of HCG weight loss claims, as well as miracle weight loss pills. The whole point is to tell you what you want to hear so that you keep coming back, because these sound a lot better than the only proven method: Calories in, calories out. That, and it only makes for one episode.
Seriously, I am not entirely sure you know what you are talking about, because this is full of over-over-simplifications. Consider reading non-English and non-American books, or just live there a couple of months.
Actually some of that I found out about from Fry's Planet Word. In one segment, he interviewed some people in a region called Basque, whose cultural identity and language France is actively trying to snuff out. Same for other border regions, like Catalan.
You wanted nothing to do with it, but sell to both sides and profit off the war.
The US was a disinterested third party, so why fret over it? That would have been the thinking at the time. In fact, the US overall distrusted Europeans, who were at the time (and continued to be for another 40 years) expansionists who were colonizing other countries and turning their locals into effective slaves (hence the need for the "good neighbor policy").
Seriously, you certainly have a good historical culture, but you are missing many details (Not living there ? Language ?)
It's foolish to think that you fully understand the culture of a long past era, even though your culture descended from that. The fact is, you also don't have any idea. Professional historians even bungle this. Even if there are people still alive who can tell you, keep in mind that they too were separated from the generation of adults of that era. For a well pronounced example of this, Russian youth seem to have growing numbers of those who would like to see the return of communism, while their grandparents tell them how shitty it was, and they never end up understanding one another's motives.
They are extreme leftist for example used for provocation. Everyone knows that, sees that and hears that in Western Europe. Absolutely nothing to do with Fascism and Mussolini.
You really have no idea what I'm saying. My argument here is that even though their motivations are different, they do the same things as one another, so for all practical purposes, there is no difference.
Again you do not get the historical context, and do not take into account the massacre of WW1, growth of USSR and Communism, 1930's economical crisis etc... and other major factors. You have to be fully aware of the problems of European population at this time, things that are told by your parents or grand-parents.
Actually the primary cause of death among WWI belligerents was the Spanish flu, and it had actually spread throughout the whole world causing even more death far beyond Europe, including the USA. WWI also wasn't as destructive on infrastructure as WWII. Furthermore, Italy, the birthplace of fascism, was one of the allied powers back then, so they didn't pay reparations; they received them instead, and fascism didn't start because people were poor, rather it started because Italy, like the rest of Europe, can't tell the difference between a healthy amount of nationalism, and nationalism of the type that leads to death and destruction. Come to think of it, it seems that both of the world's two deadliest ideologies were born in Europe, so that's probably why Europe can't tell the difference.
Besides, the USA had the same economic crisis, and we weren't anywhere close to turning to fascism or communism.
and then we attacked France.
Oh boy...the way you've just set yourself up is just too hard to resist...I apologize in advance for what I feel I am now lulzbound to do next.
Why do you think such nonsense? They got conquered, like the rest of Europe,
First of all, your silly little third empire did not conquer the "rest" of Europe, much of it simply joined you (or rather, your Fuhrer (not Merkel, your other Fuhrer) idolized Mussolini and his creation of fascism, who in turn didn't care about your Fuhrer until after he rose to prominence, and a number of other countries that liked Mussolini's creation also joined in. It was around this time that your grandfather joined the Schutzstaffel and enrolled your father into Hitler Youth. During the Phoney War, Belgium WAS NEUTRAL with your fatherland! In fact, they were still neutral until the day the invasion of France began, where your reich pushed England and France into the sea and maneuvered their tanks west of the Maginot line via Belgium while simultaneously attacking Belgium's military. Belgium didn't surrender until 27 days after this, so no, you didn't conquer them before the French invasion began.
France fell so quickly because
...of a lot of reasons.
The "antiFa" is not a fascist group, they are left wing militant trouble makers, thats all.
This is one of those things where if it waddles like a fascist, quacks like a fascist, and wears brown shirts and carries assault rifles during a show of intimidation towards the general public like an outright Nazi, then what the fuck is the difference? Really, I can't think of any tactic in the fascist playbook that Antifa hasn't used yet. Especially the ones who live in your fatherland.
Your whole premise in your talk is that there was a "united Europe" that did not get its ass up to fight against Hitler in time.
No it wasn't, you obviously didn't read my whole post, nor the post I replied to. Or you did and just have comprehension issues. I was replying to an ass who was shaming the US for waiting so long before going to Europe and tearing down your silly little reich, while not at all acknowledging that neither did most of Europe, even when it was obvious that your Fuhrer would come for them quite soon. We had a good excuse: Your Fuhrer had no ambitions about invading the USA, even though he would have liked to burn New York basically because he hated capitalism and democracy, but still he knew that was unlikely to ever happen (Many of his military advisers knew that they wouldn't stand a chance if the US entered the war, not sure if he knew it as well.) Even Japan knew this, they were just counting on us never being able to invade or otherwise counterattack any of their territories because they assumed that we didn't have either the technology or the will to ever bring warplanes across the Pacific, especially with much of our fleet destroyed. The battle of midway taught them a hard lesson, which was further driven home when Douglas MacArthur was Japan's de-facto governor for a while (though they did give him the endearing title Gaijin Shogun after he died, which was a nice gesture.)
There was basically no single place on the world where not either: German/Italian, British (later also Americans), Japanese, Russian and later Chinese troops where in action.
Yes there was, nearly all of the Americas, except Argentina when your government wanted to run and hide. We had our forts and naval bases that had already been there before the war that were basically put on higher alert, in addition to some prisons near my home town (Phoenix) where we kept a supply of used Germans, three of whom escaped and thought they could blend in when they walked to Phoenix, even though they had obviously thick German accents and could barely speak English. They didn't get punished though, rather they were just added back
Besides inventing and/or making practical nearly all of the technology that allows the world's economies to prosper and scale to heights that otherwise wouldn't be obtainable? Besides giving the world the internet, which the rest of world then began censoring to keep their population controlled (Europe inclusive,) and then recently began weaponizing? Besides being the primary source of the green revolution, which effectively ended world hunger as much as it can be without deposing all of the world's dictators and local warlords who use food as a bargaining chip to remain in power? Besides being the only bulwark that prevented the USSR from conquering the rest of Europe until the late 70's? Besides inventing 90% of the worlds drugs that treat and/or cure more diseases than any medicine that comes from the rest of the world combined, and to top it off, we end up subsidizing the cost of the R&D for these drugs so that the rest of the world gets them far cheaper after the fact? (Pro tip: If you use insulin for diabetes, in addition to other drugs for many other chronic diseases, then your very survival absolutely depends on American invented drugs, and possibly even surgical procedures invented here. The e.coli genetically modified to shit perfect human insulin, which doesn't cause allergic reactions like previously used insulin, is still the gold standard for insulin production after 46 years.) Besides being the TIP TOP destination for the best possible health care in the world in all health care specialties? (In fact, it's not unheard of for European countries to pay for their citizens to travel to the US when that is their best and/or only hope for survival; the fact that it is expensive is another debate though.) Besides being the greatest contributor to space technology period, and landing the first person on the moon, and currently in progress, fully recyclable rockets that are already dramatically lowering the cost of spaceflight?
Eh...well...nothing, I guess.
Meanwhile, what has YOUR country done since WWII? If you can't think of anything, then I'd start with this question: When does your country expect to invent the wheel? Given you finally connected to the internet, has your country already begun censoring it? If so, perhaps America should adopt a policy similar to the Federation in Star Trek: Do not share advanced technology with primitive civilizations as they frequently misuse it and harm themselves.
On the topic of the green revolution: The US is still improving food production yet more so that it can be more efficient, thus reducing cost, while also being more sustainable, which means it can scale to fit the needs of the growing population without consuming all of our natural resources fast enough that they can't replenish. All the while, Europe is making an active effort to go the opposite direction, vis-a-vis their ban on GMO production, even though they're ok with importing GMO crop from the US and in fact consume a great deal of it, probably because the reduced efficiency of European farming means our crop is less expensive while also being both superior quality and being more profitable. They just aren't interested in improving their own crop yields, meaning they use far more natural resources (including destruction of natural habitat to make room for more farmland) just to get the same yield as we otherwise can in the US.
Europe 'as a whole' did not exist.
I should have used the term "at large".
This is trivially false as France was not a monarchy at the time. It was a republic. Like you know, the US. The real reason is below.
Yes, and at large would have been a better term. But France still actually fits here, namely because even though they've technically been a Republic almost as long as the US has been, even during the first republic they never really cared much for individual rights, and they pretty much still don't. France always has had this populist feel to it, IMO, including having leaders that were basically dictators from the very start and reoccurring throughout the history of their republic. During France's revolution:
You weren't totally enthusiastic about the revolution one particular day? That's a gillotine'in
Somebody suspected you were rich? That's a gillotine'in (never mind that most of the leaders were actually quite well off)
A "hero of the people" didn't like you? That's a gillotine'in
You thought too many innocent people were going to the guillotine? Ohh you better believe that's a guillotine'in.
This was mostly overseen by Robespierre, who even sent his own Lieutenants to the gillotine simply because they disagreed with him on some topic. Basically North Korea type stuff. Even postwar, France was the sole cause of the mess that was Vietnam; the Hanoi Hilton was originally built by France as a place to torture Vietnamese who woulnd't submit to what was basically slavery, prior to that Vietnam actually admired the west, including Ho Chi Minh himself. As for today, France actively works to eradicate French co-cultures from existence if they aren't French enough, including making huge efforts to prevent the French language from changing at all by making it illegal to use certain words, among other things (by the way, banning everyday words that aren't part of the official language is something that happens in many European countries; are you Europeans ABSOLUTELY SURE that you have freedom of speech? Because if so, I have some connections to a certain Nigerian Prince that will prove quite lucrative for you.)
So.. Let me slightly twist your words into this: "practically the only reason a [...] country would take action during this period was after they were already [attacked]"
It's okay, we all did that.
I did intend to use the word "invaded", and while that can be argued as semantics in a way, it wasn't the point. The point is, the stupid of the Europeans always name and shame the US for not taking action, but they never bothered to look in the mirror first. (One of the reasons behind my "dog feces under the rug" analogy.) It also occurs to me in all of this (and I was first told this by a Polish guy after I asked him if he thought we were a racist country) that Europe is more racist than the US, just the US looks particularly bad at it because we're the only ones who try to do something about it, so we keep detailed records of who did what to whom, and who said what to whom. Compare that to Germany for example, who doesn't record anything at all about race in their crime statistics, so it really is impossible to know in their case. That, and while I don't remember which countries all did this, but some scandinavian regions have this annual parade where they have caricatures of black people depicted as looking kind of dumb and/or silly while they're wearing something akin to a maid's clothing while they're cleaning something. If somebody did something even close to this in the US, even if it was supposed to be chimney sweepers that got black from the soot, (which is what some people claim that is what is going on in this parade) the mass media would be pointing out racial overtones, and it would make international headlines, meanwhile it's relatively unheard of while it happens openly in Europe.
Yes, let's describe WW2 as "Europe deciding to blow themsel
Aside from the fact that your link is useless, (and I find it hilarious that somebody upmodded you in spite of having no idea what the fuck you're talking about since you really haven't made any kind of a point) the hard (voting) numbers speak for themselves. Really, if you make somebody have a very good reason to not be open about their beliefs, then guess what? You really have no idea just how many there actually are. Penalty of going to jail is a good enough reason to not be open about it. I really think that going by vote counts is as good as you're going to get, even though it's a poor measurement (as in, the numbers are probably somewhere above that.)
Saying otherwise would be the same as saying that the actual percentage of homosexuals well reflects the current numbers that are already known. It's totally absurd to make that assumption. Over the past 5 (or so) decades that number has been increasing relative to the general population. I strongly doubt that the actual percentage of homosexuals has changed very much throughout human existence, especially if it is in any way genetic rather than being purely environmental.
Besides, I do know a couple of European languages: English and Spanish. Yes, two makes a couple. But honestly, that's not even important: Knowing the languages just means you're better able to gather anecdotal evidence, which is entirely useless. This is especially true because the people you are going to hear from the most (even without removing free speech, as Europe has done) are the people who always look for something to be outraged about. The EU isn't alone there though, because the US also has a very strong culture of outrage.
France has fought a hell of a lot more wars than America and they didn't hang back in either WW1 or WW2.
Apparently you've never heard of the Phoney War, so I'll tell you how it all went down:
Germany invades Poland and conquers it in 5 weeks. France and England largely stood by and did nothing, except for a small operation called the Saar Offensive, which officially began the Phoney War. This offensive was so light that it didn't even tickle Germany. The USSR (on friendly terms with Germany at this point) invaded Finland, and then Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. This caused France to get cold feet, so they picked up what meager forces they sent and ran home.
That is a very brief summary of what happened, and you'll find it to be accurate if you research it. Granted, I've omitted many details, obviously, because of how short I wrote it, but it's hard to overstate how little of an effort that France and England made to stop Germany for TEN MONTHS after the invasion of Poland began. Anyways, immediately after France withdrew, they assumed their WWI playbook and hunkered down in the trenches in the Maginot line. It didn't work though: France didn't bother to fortify the region near Belgium's border thinking Germany wouldn't go there, but neutral Belgium and Holland seemed ok with allowing Germany's forces to quickly shift to the west and bypass the Maginot line entirely. In spite of France having a large and well armed and prepared Army (which they never tried to use to break Polish invasion,) they surrendered in 6 weeks.
So in other words, Europe as a whole sat on its ass (except for Germany, Austria, and their allies) for TEN FREAKING MONTHS! It's one thing for a country separated by an entire ocean, but good fuckin lord, practically the only reason a European country would take action during this period was after they were already invaded.
It was only after the fall of France that a serious allied war effort actually began. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor about 14 months after that. The US was isolationist at the time because we wanted nothing to do with your kings, queens, kaisers, and fuhrers because they looked all the same to us, and still do: But the lesson we took from Pearl Harbor is that even if you don't want a war, you're going to get one anyways. This meant we had to, among other things, assist the fucking USSR that we had to go to proxy wars with while we funded Europe's reconstruction with the Marshall plan, even though it wasn't our fault that they decided to blow themselves up. Here we are, 80 years later, and one third of Europe wants to be fascist again. And that is NOT an exaggeration:
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
Now that Europeans aren't allowed to see what today's fascists actually say because it's censored, then all they see is the mild stuff that they sympathize with, and then they start liking them. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you banned hate speech? Just because you don't see or hear the fascists doesn't mean they aren't there (for the most part, the only fascists you actually see in Europe call themselves antifa.) Some things never change...
I don't hate Europe or Europeans by the way, just the stupid ones who think tossing dog feces under the rug makes it go away, and then proceed to tell you that their house doesn't actually smell like shit.
Speak of stupidity...
Most of the post-WWII prosperity and middle-class growth in the US was thanks to the labor movement.
No it wasn't, it was because the rest of the world destroyed itself (especially Europe) while the US's infrastructure remained completely unscathed. This meant that the USA could scale up its manufacturing while the rest of the world bought practically everything from us. We WERE to the rest of the world what China is today. THAT is why the US saw big prosperity, not because you were giving a cut of your paycheck to the mafia. Similarly, the fact that the rest of the world has built up its manufacturing capabilities means that there are more global competitors, which means fewer buy from us, which means we manufacture less, which means we have less demand for those types of jobs. That, and better technology means less demand for the type of labor that you look at with rose tinted lenses. Besides, it's probably a good thing that fewer people give a cut of their pay to the mafia these days.
I guess there are different types of anti GMO people :D
I'm only against GMO'ed food.
For what purpose? Because honestly, there is no rational reason to be opposed to it. Here's what GMO food can (and already does in many cases) do for us:
- Reduced need for landmass for farming. Increased need for agricultural landmass is the #1 reason this planet is losing forest areas.
- Reduced agricultural waste.
- Reduced need for insecticides.
- Reduced need for resources for farming, especially water.
- Increased nutritional value of food while reducing the toxicity. And yes, there is plenty of that in food already.
- Increased flavor of food without needing to add more of what you can do without (i.e. simple sugars.) Possibly reducing it even.
Apparently, Greenpeace doesn't like these things. They don't like saving lives either:
https://geneticliteracyproject...
So what's your beef with all of the above? Keep in mind, nearly all of the negatives you've heard are either outright lies or scientific fraud. There is zero evidence that GMO causes cancer, or any other negative health effect. All of the claims that GMO will "contaminate" wildlife have already been addressed. The claim that "GMO is dangerous because we don't know what it does, therefore it's probably dangerous and should be avoided" is so stupid it's laughable: With GMO, we know exactly what we're getting, whereas with natural breeding, there are millions of unknowns.
http://www.vocativ.com/272885/...
https://futurism.com/two-decad...
Honestly, there is no reason to be against it. You're basically the same as an anti-vaxxer, only you're targeting something else. Possibly you think natural is better, only it is a fact that natural is NOT better, and you rarely eat anything natural. For example, apples don't grow massively oversized and with much higher amounts of sugar than is needed in order for their seeds to consume and survive. It simply goes against the plant's survival, namely because producing all of that extra sugar consumes energy that wild plants are usually in short supply of. Human intervention is required for them to thrive in all but the most perfect growing conditions (which are rare to find.) The fact is, most plants you eat have been bred to be calorie dense enough for us to thrive on. In fact, they are themselves genetically modified, only the means is different.
Pro tip: Your body can't actually digest most natural plant matter, which means most wild plants are inedible for you. Disagree? Then here's a challenge: Go to your nearest wooded area and survive on only plant matter for a month. By the way: All of these little vegetarians and vegans who claim that humans evolved as herbivores are demonstrably false. In fact, there is no one place in the world that vegans can obtain all of the nourishment the human body needs; they can only live on their diet because of the technology available.
And: we want it labeled.
And this is the most ASSHOLE position to have, because it only serves one purpose: To stigmatize the product so that it can't sell. There really is no rational reason to demand to know if it's genetically modified even though this fact is immaterial to the food, while at the same time you don't seem interested in its heavy metal content, which IS a material fact. You're just an asshole for doing your best to make GMO produce unmarketable. Asshole.
Hence we have laws according to it in Europe ...
That's because Europe is stupid. Really, it is. Just as California is stupid for labeling cofee as carcinogenic (It has a ring of truth to it, but this is all relative. Practically everything you eat contains carcinogens, the question is just how much. And by the way, GMO can reduce said content.)
Btw you do not work in biotech, do you? I would like to think that you advocate more GMOs for purely ethical reasons and not because you stand to gain from GMOs in any way.
I do not. Though I'm a network engineer working for a health care company (mostly servicing the providers (i.e. doctors) needs,) and it has nothing to do with agriculture. I did once have stock in a biotech company (which wasn't doing anything with agriculture, rather they were focused on four types of cancer,) but it was a penny stock that I only held briefly. I have a medical technology fund long-term, but it's not biotech. I've never held any funds that have anything to do with agriculture in any way.
If I was to invest in agriculture, to be honest I'd prefer organic based stuff. Not that I like organic, rather the opposite: Organic food is environmentally wasteful since what it does is effectively say "we have to farm like its 1950", which means you have to consume far more landmass and natural resources for the same yield. Rather, the reason I would invest in organic is because people are stupid and spend insane amounts of money on it, and as time passes they keep spending more and more on it, which means it has great growth prospects.