Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump is not weak. He has more power then any other previous president and completely loyal party behind him. He does not have e to even worry about laws at all. Plus, Trump will blame Biden, woke, women, democrats and especially Canada and EU for bad economy. And Trumps base will 100% believe him.
Powerful people "speak softly and carry a big stick". Trump spoke loudly, then swung the stick that was given to him and proved to the rest of the world that the stick was a lot smaller than they believed it was.
Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
271–280 of 355 posts
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#272[flagged]
This is at best misleading, but basically disinformation. Here is a better explanation that is also specific to US/CAN trade under USMCA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZvDhayPHxs
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also think about which industries and constituencies are helped by the U.S. having the reserve currency, and which ones are hurt by that. What would it take for America to have more of a German-style economy than the current American one? Who would that hurt and who would that help?
I could be wrong, but think the German economy just broke last week when they blew the cap off their debt ceiling and kicked current day payments to future generations. Note that Germany protects its production with tariffs and VATs, the rough average I've found is 19-21%. I think China is the one to watch. They have double the energy output of the US and are basically the production capital of the world for the fore…
Second, how does VAT protect domestic production? VAT applies to both imported and domestically manufactured goods equally. VAT is really ultimately just a sales tax, just collected in a somewhat different way, and you pay the same sales tax regardless of where the good was produced.
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
We will have to disagree on this. >unless military decides to level all cities in the country. See Gaza, most of eastern Ukraine. The existence of armoured equipment, air support, satellite monitoring and encrypted/EW resistant communications means civilian resistance is all but irrelevant. Civilians co-operating with an organized, funded and supplied military is one thing, but on their own its a laughable concept at…
I see your examples as in opposite direction. In Ukraine, militia with rifles ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Defence_Forces_(Uk... ) dug into the ground and stopped invasion of 1M army with thousands of armored vehicles, absolute superiority in artillery, airforces, tactical missiles and 100B annual budget. In Gaza, Israel with all tech advantages struggles to efficiently police relatively small urban ar…
Actual untrained civilian forces with nothing but rifles on their own made little impact to the speed of russian advances however, which after multiple defeats and setbacks led to the formation of that defence force.
Gaza is a whole can of worms in many ways, but its a shining example of a civilian group with access to arms being completely unable to stop a superior local force from driving over them multiple times when they have the desire and political backing.
Which is exactly the point. A bunch of untrained sport shooters and hunters with more guns than they can personally use at once and no supply lines for ammunition or anything else aren't going to stand for any length of time against an organized military, especially on the military's home soil.
More realistic scenarios in any case are full civil war and the military itself splitting and civilians join sides as reserve forces to back them. in which case civilians having blanket access to arms before hand doesn't have any significant bearing on.
All of this is hypothetical, and ultimately comes down to the argument for unrestricted access to guns being 'so we can stand up to a tyrannical government' falls short. You are welcome to disagree, and that's OK with me. My country is largely in line with my sentiment and sees gun ownership as a privilege not a right, one that comes with restrictions balancing the safety of our society. You do you, we will do us.
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada has its own agricultural subsidies, in fact they're almost double that of the U.S. [0] > The OECD estimated the subsidy equivalent in 2012 (producer support estimate) in all Canadian agriculture represented 18% of the value of the industry with most of this amount going to supply managed sectors which represent only a percentage of Canadian agriculture. Critics say that this results in a "much higher effective…
... "for supply managed industries" In the end Canada is a net importer of US agricultural products. By far . Or at least was until last month. The stuff is rotting on the shelves now. So what's the gripe? We import more food products than we export, and we overwhelmingly consume US agricultural goods. Just not dairy and eggs (or poultry, I guess) Is the concern that the US dominance of our economy is not total enoug…
This hasn't been remotely true since the early 70's.
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://angusreid.org/trump-carney-51st-state-canada-usa/ ~10% support overall. However, that's 21% of Conservative voters and 1-3% everyone else. So it's beyond fringe for everyone else, but maybe not as much for Conservatives.
didn't hear about this poll. probably cooked.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/43-percent-canadians-would-vote-...
https://leger360.com/canada-51st-state/
Note that despite the headline, The Ipsos poll also says 80% polled would never vote for Canada to become part of the United States, while the Leger poll says 82% would not like Canada to become the 51st state. These are 3 of the standard pollsters that regularly get commissioned by TV and newspaper to do polls for them, and I have no reason to suspect that the polls are "cooked". 338 rates Angus Reid as B+, Ipsos as A, and Leger as A+.
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
>[Canada] may eliminate the US from the world arena Is this a joke?
For any armed force, even a 2-3 million strong one, fighting a war against an entire population of 40 million goes one of two ways: - unimaginable atrocities that would make Hitler blush, and then they might still lose - Vietnam x 100
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the Democracy Index (article about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/democracy-index-dat... ) there are about 25 "Full Democracies", 107 Non-authoritarian regimes, and 60 authoritarian regimes. Fun fact: The US isn't counted as a "Full Democracy" by that index, so seems it's not as a great of an achievement as you seem to think. I'm looking forward to see how the ranking of the US changes…
What’s the basis of that index. Are they alleging US elections are rigged?
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the Democracy Index (article about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/democracy-index-dat... ) there are about 25 "Full Democracies", 107 Non-authoritarian regimes, and 60 authoritarian regimes. Fun fact: The US isn't counted as a "Full Democracy" by that index, so seems it's not as a great of an achievement as you seem to think. I'm looking forward to see how the ranking of the US changes…
What’s the basis of that index. Are they alleging US elections are rigged?
> However, the political and structural problems that caused the US to be downgraded to a “flawed democracy” in 2016 (a downgrade that pre-dated the inauguration of Donald Trump as president in January 2017) persist. These include low levels of trust in political institutions and the media; institutional gridlock; excessive influence of lobbyists, interest groups and the mega-rich; sharp economic and social inequalities; and an absence of social consensus on core national values.
Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the Democracy Index (article about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/democracy-index-dat... ) there are about 25 "Full Democracies", 107 Non-authoritarian regimes, and 60 authoritarian regimes. Fun fact: The US isn't counted as a "Full Democracy" by that index, so seems it's not as a great of an achievement as you seem to think. I'm looking forward to see how the ranking of the US changes…
Sorry, but why exactly should we care about what some random score that some people invented and named Democracy Index says? It’s not like there is some universal agreement that maximizing the score in these people’s quiz is good or proper.
Just saying "USA is the most democratic country in the world" feels like worse than at least trying to look at things objectively.