Political Posts

[james22]

7 minutes ago, Sweet said:

Does that change anything I just said?

 

When you've lost The Hill . . .

[LC]

5 hours ago, CGJB said:

Most of these comments are all dumping on Trump. That virtually all of those on here doing so never dumped on Biden is telling.

John Mearsheimer might get some things wrong, but he was right on the big picture years ago -- Ukraine was being led down the primrose path. And the western "intellectuals" and "strategists" who have been gung ho to use the Ukrainians as a battering ram to weaken Russia have egg all over their faces but will pay no price. But hundreds of thousands of people, Russian and Ukrainian, are dead and countless more have had their lives ruined.

Hate to break it to you -- but Trump isn't responsible for that.

Maybe take some of the anger you have for Trump and direct it at the western elites who deserve it.

 

Let me be the first to break it to you: There is this asshole guy in Russia named Vladimir Putin who is invading a sovereign country and killing its citizens. 

 

That is wrong.

[james22]

6 minutes ago, LC said:

Let me be the first to break it to you: There is this asshole guy in Russia named Vladimir Putin who is invading a sovereign country and killing its citizens. 

 

That is wrong.

 

Let me be the first to break it to you: there are an infinite number of wrong things in this world.

 

We've only finite resources.

[LC]

Oh so now the issue is cost.
 

Well that’s not what I was responding to, so let’s try keeping the goalposts all in one place. 

[Sweet]

51 minutes ago, james22 said:

 

When you've lost The Hill . . .

I don’t know what way the Hill blows, or care, if it’s wrong it’s wrong.

[Xerxes]

Don’t be nasty Canada.
What’s wrong with you Canada 

why so nasty, you were suppose to be the 51st. Why so nasty 

 

 

 

[Sweet]

6 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

Don’t be nasty Canada.
What’s wrong with you Canada 

why so nasty, you were suppose to be the 51st. Why so nasty 

 

 

 

Yeh, Canada is the problem…

 

Does he not seem to realise that his smack talking makes it far less likely Canada becomes a state?

 

[SharperDingaan]

Make it yourself comes with a cost, particularly if you need scale to get the cost per unit down. It may be domestic ... but also utter sh1te (the LADA). That national security additional cost is defense spending.

 

Food production is national security. Maybe you import the potash and labour and try to grow your own; year round. Or maybe you just import the food, from around the world, as you need it. That national security additional cost is ALSO defense spending.

 

Both Germany and Japan are re-arming, last time out that didn't go so well. The same thing is also happening across Europe and Canada in response to the NATO 5% mandate. Lots canceling US weapons purchases as well, as the US continues to prove its unreliability.

 

Most folks are either dead or in care homes by the time they are 84. Orange Boy and Putin are old men ... in 5-10 years, they may not even be here.

 

National security is valid for some things, but there are real limitations.

 

SD

 

Edited March 19, 2025 by SharperDingaan

[Sweet]

3 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:

Make it yourself comes with a cost, particularly if you need scale to get the cost per unit down. It may be domestic ... but also utter sh1te (the LADA). That national security additional cost is defense spending.

 

Food production is national security. Maybe you import the potash and labour and try to grow your own; year round. Or maybe you just import the food, from around the world, as you need it. That national security additional cost is ALSO defense spending.

 

Both Germany and Japan are re-arming, last time out that didn't go so well. The same thing is also happening across Europe and Canada in response to the NATO 5% mandate. Lots canceling US weapons purchaseds as well, as the US continues to prove its unreliability.

 

Most folks are either dead or in care homes by the time they are 84. Orange Boy and Putin are old men ... in 5-10 years, they may not even be here.

 

National security is valid for some things, but there are real limitations.

 

SD

 

It does have yeh, it’s not going to be painless but the cost is necessary.  

 

Make it yourself is more expensive but it forces you to innovate and increase productivity too.

[Spekulatius]

13 minutes ago, Sweet said:

It does have yeh, it’s not going to be painless but the cost is necessary.  

 

Make it yourself is more expensive but it forces you to innovate and increase productivity too.

Tariffs in most cases lead to the protected industries becoming less competitive over time. Many countries have tried, but I don’t know a single example where tariffs alone created a competitive industry.

 

I do think that tariffs against China are fair game because they clearly manipulate markets with their mercantilist policies and they indeed security risk if they run out communication infrastructure or all the cars on the road can become spy vehicles due to a host sensor attached a backdoor to Chinese army datacenters.

 

I don’t think blanket tariffs are the right answer because they cost consumers and also create even less competitive industries that over time that will scream for more tariffs.

There sure some things that any country will protect like food and I also think pharmaceuticals should be on that list. I think 90% of all drug ingredients now are coming from foreign sources. It’s not because it can’t be done here but because China and India are just cheaper and the prices for generics (which are 90% of the  columns) are race tonite bottom.

Edited March 19, 2025 by Spekulatius

[Spekulatius]

2 hours ago, Sweet said:

Yeh, Canada is the problem…

 

Does he not seem to realise that his smack talking makes it far less likely Canada becomes a state?

 

Goes to show again that for Trump everything is personal. He just hates Trudeau. But he likes Putin and wrote love letters to Kim Yong Un. Go figure.

[changegonnacome]

1 hour ago, Sweet said:

Make it yourself is more expensive but it forces you to innovate and increase productivity too.

The record on this is poor - you protect an industry and shield it from global competition….and like tenured government employee…they become fat, lazy and complacent…domestic consumers pay more and get a poorer product relative to what they could have bought absent tariffs.

 

Bessent has called their plan a re-privatization of the US economy….when you take a step back and think about it….what your doing with tariffs is governmentizing the US economy…putting domestic producers behind artificial walls such that they DONT have to compete in a fully private market.

 

The ‘tell’ on some of this nonsense talk re: non-trade barriers….is this administrations focus on sales taxes in other jurisdictions…and using them as some kind of reciprocal yardstick measure…when everybody knows that sales taxes in Europe, for example, fall on domestic and international producers equally. Making them non-discriminatory re:imports. Crazy stuff.

[LC]

2 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

I don’t think blanket tariffs are the right answer because they cost consumers and also create even less competitive industries that over time that will scream for more tariffs.

 

Agreed. It has long term complications as long-term capital is invested, but inefficiently. If tariffs get lifted, those long term investments (factories etc.) will go to shite.

[dealraker]

32 minutes ago, LC said:

 

Agreed. It has long term complications as long-term capital is invested, but inefficiently. If tariffs get lifted, those long term investments (factories etc.) will go to shite.

Yes.  An endless slew of political power related shocks certain to be layered to the normal economic and business ones.  An economy that historically plays out as intermittently "inherently unstable" will go guaranteed constantly unstable.

Edited March 20, 2025 by dealraker

[LC]

2 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Goes to show again that for Trump everything is personal. He just hates Trudeau. But he likes Putin and wrote love letters to Kim Yong Un. Go figure.

 

Meanwhile, Putin treats Trump like a lap-dog:

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed his real intentions in Ukraine by bombing civilian energy infrastructure after telling Donald Trump that Moscow would stop such attacks, said Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimi-putin-ceasefire-finnish-president-alexander-stubb-helsinki-energy-ukraine/

 

"Art of the deal"

[Xerxes]

6 hours ago, Sweet said:

Yeh, Canada is the problem…

 

Does he not seem to realise that his smack talking makes it far less likely Canada becomes a state?

 

 

Even Gondor is reeling from tariffs 

 

 

[james22]

6 hours ago, Sweet said:

Make it yourself is more expensive but it forces you to innovate and increase productivity too.

 

 

I believe there is a much more comprehensive vision than is understood.

[Sweet]

1 hour ago, james22 said:

 

 

I believe there is a much more comprehensive vision than is understood.

I saw that, I agree with Vance

[Sweet]

7 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Tariffs in most cases lead to the protected industries becoming less competitive over time. Many countries have tried, but I don’t know a single example where tariffs alone created a competitive industry.

 

I do think that tariffs against China are fair game because they clearly manipulate markets with their mercantilist policies and they indeed security risk if they run out communication infrastructure or all the cars on the road can become spy vehicles due to a host sensor attached a backdoor to Chinese army datacenters.

 

I don’t think blanket tariffs are the right answer because they cost consumers and also create even less competitive industries that over time that will scream for more tariffs.

There sure some things that any country will protect like food and I also think pharmaceuticals should be on that list. I think 90% of all drug ingredients now are coming from foreign sources. It’s not because it can’t be done here but because China and India are just cheaper and the prices for generics (which are 90% of the  columns) are race tonite bottom.

 

5 hours ago, changegonnacome said:

The record on this is poor - you protect an industry and shield it from global competition….and like tenured government employee…they become fat, lazy and complacent…domestic consumers pay more and get a poorer product relative to what they could have bought absent tariffs.

 

Bessent has called their plan a re-privatization of the US economy….when you take a step back and think about it….what your doing with tariffs is governmentizing the US economy…putting domestic producers behind artificial walls such that they DONT have to compete in a fully private market.

 

The ‘tell’ on some of this nonsense talk re: non-trade barriers….is this administrations focus on sales taxes in other jurisdictions…and using them as some kind of reciprocal yardstick measure…when everybody knows that sales taxes in Europe, for example, fall on domestic and international producers equally. Making them non-discriminatory re:imports. Crazy stuff.

For clarity, I’m referring to protection from the likes of China and their predatory trade practices, and to offshoring to save a few bucks.  
 

I’m not talking about tariffing friends or like minded countries.  

[SharperDingaan]

The reality is that for both Canada and Mexico the tariff rate is ZERO, as per the CUSMA trade agreement; negotiated and signed by Trump himself. The agreement runs through until 2036, and all that Canada and Mexico need do is let it expire.

 

Trump is a melting ice cube, and his only tool is chaos. To maintain it he has to burn the house, destroy goodwill, isolate the US from the rest of the world, and keep the public divided. But should he lose the senate after the midterms .... it's game over. 

 

The sh1te hits the wall when the US has to restructure its debt, and capital runs. Maybe the real reason for all the chaos?

 

SD

 

[dealraker]

4 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:

The reality is that for both Canada and Mexico the tariff rate is ZERO, as per the CUSMA trade agreement; negotiated and signed by Trump himself. The agreement runs through until 2036, and all that Canada and Mexico need do is let it expire.

 

Trump is a melting ice cube, and his only tool is chaos. To maintain it he has to burn the house, destroy goodwill, isolate the US from the rest of the world, and keep the public divided. But should he lose the senate after the midterms .... it's game over. 

 

The sh1te hits the wall when the US has to restructure its debt, and capital runs. Maybe the real reason for all the chaos?

 

SD

 

+1 .  I'm finally-finally-finally reading others with an accurate view.

 

 

[73 Reds]

2 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:

The reality is that for both Canada and Mexico the tariff rate is ZERO, as per the CUSMA trade agreement; negotiated and signed by Trump himself. The agreement runs through until 2036, and all that Canada and Mexico need do is let it expire.

 

Trump is a melting ice cube, and his only tool is chaos. To maintain it he has to burn the house, destroy goodwill, isolate the US from the rest of the world, and keep the public divided. But should he lose the senate after the midterms .... it's game over. 

 

The sh1te hits the wall when the US has to restructure its debt, and capital runs. Maybe the real reason for all the chaos?

 

SD

 

Agree in part.  The whole issue of tariffs is a long term nothing-burger.  Tariffs are imposed for one reason - to influence behavior.  Everything in politics is reactionary and the current US administration is clearly a reaction by voters as to perceived unfairness of policies of both the prior administration and The United States' financial responsibility relative to the rest of the world.  What you deem "chaos" is precisely what the majority of Americans voted for.  To what degree these policies are successful remains to be seen.  But any notion of permanent destruction lacks real context.  As Buffett has often said, we have survived and prospered through World Wars, economic depressions, pandemics and numerous other disastrous events.  The pendulum swings in both directions and when it swings too far either way it always reverses course.  This time will be no different but because it had swung too far to the left, it could take some time to reverse.      

[james22]

Since EU President Ursula von der Leyen announced weeks ago that Europe is commencing a new “era of rearmament,” the atlanticist press has been churning copy in a frantic effort to explain what living without subsidized defense means.

 

It looks like a bunch of pundits Googled, “How do major industrialized countries pay for their own defense?” The tone is what an editor breaking the news about Santa Claus to forty-year-olds would shoot for.  . . .

 

It’s a museum moment, watching European readers hear the concept of choices explained for the first time. 

 

 

https://www.racket.news/p/subsidized-europe-cries-in-despair

 

[cubsfan]

1 hour ago, 73 Reds said:

 Tariffs are imposed for one reason - to influence behavior.  Everything in politics is reactionary and the current US administration is clearly a reaction by voters as to perceived unfairness of policies of both the prior administration and The United States' financial responsibility relative to the rest of the world.  What you deem "chaos" is precisely what the majority of Americans voted for.  To what degree these policies are successful remains to be seen.  But any notion of permanent destruction lacks real context.    

 

Excellent - what a concept - the citizens finally push back on the failures of their government, 

but the formally entrenched powers resist the voters.

[SharperDingaan]

Quite agree, the majority of Americans voted for change, and the more radical the better; Americans will reap what they have sown, good or bad, and all the power to them.

 

But as with all new-born babies their eyes eventually open; and there is nothing like collapsing business, widespread unemployment and inflation to help the process. Trump doesn't deliver the goods by the mid-terms ... and he gets knee-capped.

 

Melt, baby, melt 

 

SD

 

 

Edited March 20, 2025 by SharperDingaan