The first one where he was a drifter somewhere in the Pacific Northwest getting taunted by cops? I think you mean the 2nd or 3rd.

Part of the problem for the US is that such a huge amount of gdp is buried in the masses of beauracracy that makes up the US healthcare system, it’s essentially acting (economically) as proxy government spending to prop up a failing economy. The average US citizen is so heavily propaganda’d into hating government run projects that the sensible economic stimulus (government infrastructure projects or public services) are well and truly off the table.

What this ultimately means is fixing healthcare isn’t just breaking up the cartels, preventing price fixing and untangling the web of nonsense that makes up the US private system… unless you want to inspire a massive crash (which absolutely has real human cost), it also means redistributing government spending and implementing (unrelated) government run services and/or projects to keep all these people employed (which would also mean re-training and potentially relocating) - all of which needs to be done against the overwhelmingly loud voices screeching “government employee bad”.

With the respect, the Trump team failed to invade the US Capitol when they controlled it’s defense apparatus, they are more likely to kill themselves than succeed in any ground invasion.

In that scenario I’m not sure if Ukraine allies are as significant as Russians allies. I very much doubt China has any tolerance for nuclear eacalation, that sets a precedent that will change how the West behaves in Taiwan. I imagine Xi’s fury at being undermined this way would manifest in ways that meaningfully hurt Russia without any actual violence.

You strawmanned about the BYD factory, which I never mentioned, clearly you’re engaging in bad faith. The use of ughur slave labour throughout the economy, or indentured workers at places like foxcon is better documented than the recent conviction of Donald Trump. I have no more reason to cite sources for this than a comment referencing the earth being round or Ukraine being at war.

The only possible way to be ignorant of these facts is by choice. I don’t care if people who choose ignorance refute my claims, no evidence I could provide would change that anyway and again, it isn’t my responsibility to deprogram anyone.

I am certainly not making scientific claims in an academic paper or publishing breaking news with an obligation to cite sources, I’m providing commentary on that which has already been well documented and in doing so, insinuating (very different from claiming, which you seem to have missed) that the Chinese state supports the use of what is, effectively, slave labour.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Weird how tankies and anti-semites use the same tricks to push their agenda.

Google forced labour in China yourself, it isn’t my responsibility to provide resources to those choosing wilful ignorance or living under a rock when there’s masses of well documented human rights violations and masses of evidence documenting appallingly negligent mining and manufacturing practices.

Yeah when you use literal slaves instead of union labour, costs are down. I’m not willing to trade my humanity to save a few dollars and a debatable improvement to the climate disaster (I doubt the manufacture and extraction practices in China are anything approaching clean).

IMO this is a rare case of Washington doing the right thing.

Edit For the benefit of anyone at risk of being fooled by authoritarian propaganda, there is a plethora of evidence of slave labour used throughout the Chinese economy, from uyghur muslims to foxcons indentured workers. It’s prevelent through the supply chain for many, many industries, and that alone warrants discentives on imports until such time as these practices end.

To suggest that individual businesses, who are built within this system, may be somehow operating outside of it is clearly absurd, however it’s simply not possible for a layman to unpack and debate the supply chains and business practices hidden behind the bamboo curtain.

The discourse below is an example of how bad faith arguments can create doubt, by employing strawman arguments and ignoring actual points raised to create the appearance of being reasonable by hiding behind “citation needed” type arguments. If you read through it, you’ll see that the propagandist doesn’t once engage in anything I’ve actually said - this is intentional, they do not want to be in a position where any claim they make can be contested, nor do they actually want to directly contest any claim I’ve made. Rather they only want to sow doubt in what I’m saying, which takes considerably more effort to discredit than any actual claim.

*words hahaha

Only the first 7 letters words of this headline are needed.

XP sp1 and 2 were more or less the same as me with an updated UI and non existent 64 bit. However flawed vista was, it added an actual tangible benefit for 7 to further improve on.

I’d argue 7 was the last windows os that could be described as “better” in some way than what came before (which most, even the ones we remember as “bad” at the time, did offer some real step forward which isn’t true for 8/10/11).

The “speculative investors removing housing stock to drive up costs” folks tend to be corporately owned and industry coordinated properties that deliberately keep units open above the clearing rate, in hopes of driving up the prevailing cost of new housing.

This is dependant on the market (the post didn’t say where they are), but I understand is true in the US.

In Australia, the speculation is driven by individuals who get incredible tax incentives if their income is above a certain level. Because of this, the housing market is distorted to the point where housing values are detached from rent potential, with all the value being driven by capital gains and tax offsets. This further leads to a situation where it’s often more economically viable to leave a house empty (and therefore not have to maintain the property or deal with tenants) while the value grows and the tax is written down.

Dude he’s losing money year on year and capital gains carry it through to make it profitable longer term. The problems isn’t “landlords make a profit”, the problem is “speculative investors are removing housing stock driving up costs”.

Through that lense this guy is no saint.

Because he has unrealized capital gains - in yearly income/expenditure their losing money but big picture, when they sell, they profit.

In Australia, rental returns are paltry (less than 2%) compared to any other investment, but steep tax concessions on and insane capital growth (often higher than 6% annually) incentivises speculative investment in real estate… This is what’s driving up the cost of housing to the cartoonist levels they currently are in. It’s not unusual for these speculators to not even bother with tenants, because like op suggests they often lose money maintaining the property, it’s cheaper to speculate and maybe renovate immediately before selling.

The problem has nothing to do with landlords and everything to do with speculators going for capital gains. Greedy landlords can be a problem where there are no rentals protections, but that can easily be resolved with regulation.

What do you think “math” is?