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Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

wilsoniumite.com

681–690 of 697 posts

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#681
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ofcourse people break laws. But they are enforceable and the authorities have absolute power to enforce them. Putin can get away doing whatever the f he wants but nobody in Canada can get away with breaking any law they want whenever they feel like it, for example. That's the difference between the very real Canadian laws over Canadians and "international law" over nobody. Now Canada can pass a law that is in line wi…

International law is different, but everyone knows the scenario where like, the ICJ tries and imprisons Putin is remote. Almost as remote as Trump being tried for treason tho....

I'm not sure "everyone knows" applies here. This is one of these situations where the language is intentionally confusing. Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work.

In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality. So yes, neither Trump, nor Putin, nor Starmer, nor Macron, nor any US citizen, and likely no citizen, or government of no country with any sort of power (India, China) or with a patron country with power isn't subject to any "international law". I.e. doesn't exist, it's just a word salad to manipulate the masses.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#682
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US became the wealthiest country on a per capita income basis in the 1880’s, over taking the UK. The US was quite isolationist up until the end of WW2, so I’d argue global hegemony isn’t that important when it comes to economic performance.

What about the Spanish American war (1898), the Philippine-American war(1899), and World War One (1917)

The US was a local power, but by no means a global hegemon during that period.

Spanish American war was mostly isolated to the Western hemisphere (although the US gained colonial possessions after).

It took forever to join WW1 due to the small size of the US standing military. Same with WW2.

It wasn’t until after WW2 the US was able to project power globally and through that, set the global power structure with the USSR.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#683
post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International law is different, but everyone knows the scenario where like, the ICJ tries and imprisons Putin is remote. Almost as remote as Trump being tried for treason tho....

I'm not sure "everyone knows" applies here. This is one of these situations where the language is intentionally confusing. Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work. In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality. So yes, neither Trump, nor Putin, nor Starmer, nor Macron, nor any US citizen, and likely no citizen, or government…

> Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work.

I disagree; I would guess most people assume rich/powerful/etc people aren't subject to laws, no matter the jurisdiction.

> In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality.

How many people think the US is bound by international law? I looked for polling but I couldn't dig anything up

> ["international law"] just a word salad to manipulate the masses.

How are people manipulated by this?

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And then people will have much to criticize about what Trump is doing. But okay then, so do something better instead of all the doing nothing that was happening before. I'm not in power and unlikely to ever be. I can criticize others actions even if I don't have a solution because doing nothing is better than making it worse. The average person in the US has a living standard higher than the vast majority of the wor…

> I can criticize others actions even if I don't have a solution because doing nothing is better than making it worse. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes messing up the status quo forces people to then go back and fix it properly and you ultimately get a better result than doing nothing. > The average person in the US has a living standard higher than the vast majority of the world. ~20% of people in the US have a net wor…

>Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes messing up the status quo

What exactly does this mean?

Do you mean making things worse will cause other to make it better?

How do you know that will happen? Are you claiming that Trump making things worse without plan is beneficial as a catalyst for better?

>~20% of people in the US have a net worth of zero or negative. Housing costs are unsustainably increasing faster than wages:

What's this compared to other countries?

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#685
post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the Spanish American war (1898), the Philippine-American war(1899), and World War One (1917)

The US was a local power, but by no means a global hegemon during that period. Spanish American war was mostly isolated to the Western hemisphere (although the US gained colonial possessions after). It took forever to join WW1 due to the small size of the US standing military. Same with WW2. It wasn’t until after WW2 the US was able to project power globally and through that, set the global power structure with the U…

What you said is true but my comment was in reply to

"The US was quite isolationist up until the end of WW2"

Being involved in these wars, regardless of entry time, is on no way "quite isolationist'

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#686
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea what you're talking about. Explain.

Statement: if AI crashes where will the capital go? Claim: people will just choose to not invest capital at all Response: that’s the opposite of what we know about supply/demand. When a supply of something (desirable investments), goes down, with demand steady, prices go up It’s the same thing that happened during zero interest rate environment - huge supply of capital, few places to put it, so it piled into tech whi…

> Claim: people will just choose to not invest capital at all

No. Claim: People will have less capital to invest.

Most portfolios are not cash-heavy. They own assets. If they want to invest in something they borrow against the assets or sell them and get cash. If the assets' prices crash they can't get as much cash for those assets.

Cost of borrowing - which is what you're referencing from the ZIRP era - is another factor into how much people can borrow against assets. But if the assets themselves trade at an average P/E of 20 instead of 40 then people can only borrow half as much money at 1% interest rates.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right the Uyghurs, a word we never knew before. When faced with credible threat of islamic terror in their country China implemented some harsh, systemic ideas about what to do with it. I'm sure if they just started two wars in the middle east instead the western community would be way more lenient towards them. China did what it though was the correct thing and the west happily classified it as racism and religious…

Your comments are all about "the US is bad too" which I consider whataboutism. I am not from the US nor live there and I was opposed to all the wars in the middle east and to palantir and the Snowden revelations etc. But that doesn't make what China does better in any way. And those millions of Uyghurs they locked up couldn't possibly all be terrorists. That makes it racism and religious persecution. Ps how is Cuba a…

Whataboutism is when someone tries to wipe the issue from the dialog by steering conversation towards a different issue of the same nature. I mostly acknowledge that China implemented less than stellar ideas. I'm merely suggesting that such things should be evaluated in the context. I don't believe in objective morality so how moral you are must be evaluated in relation to your peers.

> And those millions of Uyghurs they locked up couldn't possibly all be terrorists.

They were unassimilated population that China believed (while watching the west) might breed trouble. This alone makes the comparison with what US is doing right now pretty fair.

> That makes it racism and religious persecution.

Chinese was locking up all ethnic and religious groups during the pandemic. That might point to an explanation that maybe religion and race is irrelevant. Only safety matters.

If westerners did that it would be racism and religious persecution. But in a culture that gives a very little thought to both race and religion saying that might be just western projection.

> Ps how is Cuba a vassal state of the US? When you speak of a concentration camp I assume you refer to Guantanamo?

No. I'm talking about Salvador and a place built with US money where people that ICE has no idea where to send back are kept indefinitely. But I don't want to discuss that, to avoid whataboutism. I'm just telling it to provide background for evaluation how terrible were the things that China did.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#688
post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "everyone knows" applies here. This is one of these situations where the language is intentionally confusing. Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work. In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality. So yes, neither Trump, nor Putin, nor Starmer, nor Macron, nor any US citizen, and likely no citizen, or government…

> Because most people when they hear about laws have certain assumptions about what those are and how they work. I disagree; I would guess most people assume rich/powerful/etc people aren't subject to laws, no matter the jurisdiction. > In this case this assumption is completely disconnected from reality. How many people think the US is bound by international law? I looked for polling but I couldn't dig anything up >…

Rich and powerful people go to jail all the time. SBF? Ghislaine Maxwell? Maybe that boundary is pushed but at least in theory in the "western/democratic" world you can't get away with breaking the law simply by having power (and yeah Trump and such - but in general). So sure, there is some erosion of rule of the law in the western world, but it's still a thing.

But you are right that people assume that. They also assume the rich pay no taxes. So they "assume" a bunch of nonsense. Some once told me assume makes an ass of you and me.

I think people think the US is supposed to follow this thing called international law, or at least they'll express some outrage when it doesn't.

The manipulation is that people believe in this thing called international law as something that anyone has to follow where in practice no country would ever let international law supersede its laws if it went against their interest and there is no mechanism to force this. You keep seeing news about this and that being against international law (be it Israel or the US or Russia, would be the typical use case) and people actually think this is a real thing, like there's some law book somewhere that applies universally to every country. Very few people have the real and correct understanding that these are just norms or treaties or agreements that countries decide to follow or not on a case by case basis as per their interest, i.e. not a law in any real sense of the word.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#689

Last 2 reported quarters have 3.8% and 4.4% gdp growth. Next report is end of february. So it's minimum 4 months away at earliest. Stock markets are at 10 year peaks. Unemployment is a little bit high at 4.5%. Inflation is a little bit high at 2.7% US government debt is very high at 125% PMIs are strong across the board. Also in context, trillions in declared new investments in the usa. Probably trillions more in und…

> Stock markets are at 10 year peaks. Put the value of gold on the X axis instead of the USD.

Correction: I was exhausted when I wrote this. I meant: keep time on the X, express the value of the stock in question in gold on the Y.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the supreme court decision about Trump went out, I took all of my investments and put into a savings account. When a dip happens, I simply take 10% of the money, buy the dip, then sell when the price hits pre dip. So far Ive netted significantly more than any of my peers that actually do investing.

You have explained well how you are determining the point to sell. But how do you determine that "the dip" is now?

Anytime it dips due to some announcement, I buy (usually big cap stuff like AMZN, or index like VOO). Then I sell when the price goes back to what it was prior to announcement
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