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> American lost engineering culture everywhere except software microprocessor design : Apple Silicon and lately Intel Panther Lake and later?
Both companies created in the previous century and running on old fuel of past success
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What's wrong with it? It shows the article, with a little banner on top, showing when it was captured. Doesn't mess with scrolling, what's not to like?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-a...
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Walter, I believe the idea against wealth inequality is not purely that there are wealthier people but that their wealth should be redistributed such that the wealthier people are less wealthy (but still wealthier) and the poorer people are less poor (but still poorer).
There have been many attempts at taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and the result was always everybody was worse off except the people who ran the government.
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Hey, don't leave out the New Zealand Navy having an entire two frigates and an oiler. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUYbI64QHI
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That'd be _your_ strawman that _you_ typed.
In the factual world, how many non NZ born billionaires already have residences in New Zealand?
I thought the Economist used to have much higher quality articles. Where is the historical analysis? Is it more apocalyptic now than during the cold war when kids hid under their desks? Did America really win the space race because of a presidential speech or was it the apocalyptic threat that if we lose, we will all live under communist rule? Would American manufacturing have ever caught up to Germany if it weren't…
> Where is the historical analysis? Is it more apocalyptic now than during the cold war when kids hid under their desks? the Cold War apocalypse was solely military in nature which had few implications economically, whether you get nuked or not doesn't change an investors strategy, you just assume the world doesn't end and carry on. The cold war calculus was if anything maybe the most rationally (albeit scary) period…
I'm not sure about that, I think it would make me favor investments in science and technology, or if college age I would likely choose engineering over say art. The "Sputnik Shock" did have a cultural effect not to mention more direct methods like the National Defense Education Act.
I would say with inflation, wealth inequality and skyrocketing housing, gas and grocery prices as well as super high amounts of consumer debt and families stretching to keep up it feels a lot like pre-bust 2005/2006 economy out there right now. We might not be on the cusp of a subprime mortgage bank crisis but it does feel ominous lately.
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I feel a lot of the arguments being made here (one way or the other) are rooted in different ideas of what is needed to make a good society. There is some objective data (e.g. The Spirit Level) which I, personally, find persuasive. But often I think folks just have different ideas of what the ideal state is.
For some people, the best society is where everyone is approximately equal (within some range).
For others, they’re happy in a very unequal world, perhaps even one where there are no bounds on that inequality.
I think the arguments of the former amount to: wealth creation in and of itself is not the problem, the problem is with its concentration in someone’s hands and the resulting inequality it causes. In the latter’s case the arguments are more “why should anyone object if I try to climb the ladder as far as I can?”
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Read my responses here.
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Creating wealth means the pie gets bigger by that amount. And no, wealth is not the amount of liquid cash you have. If that were true, I'd be dead broke. > the rate of growth of the pie certainly does not feel like it is growing as fast as accumulation of nominal wealth of some. Wealth creators will be growing the pie at a higher rate than those who do not create wealth.
I agree that's the theory. It used to be mostly true in the past, but given current valuations it does not look true at all. My worry is that we are not creating enough new wealth but just distributing it lopsidedly.
Because statistics clearly show median real wealth growing rapidly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N